Episode 202: USS Iowa Turret Explosion

this would never happen on a Trump-class battleship Support Traction: https://tractionpnw.org/Our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/wtyppod/ Send us stuff! our address:Well There's Your Podcasting CompanyPO Box 26929 Philadelphia, PA 19134DO NOT SEND US LETTER BOMBS thanks in advance in the commercial: Local Forecast - Elevator Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  My locals been going this whole time.

• 0:01Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 0:02Speaker 00

  I expect to see this in the final episode. The ZenCaster hasn't started yet.

• 0:07Justin Roczniak?

  No. Furthermore, the virtual camera is not recording the screen.

• 0:18Liam McAnderson?

  What is it recording?

• 0:19Justin Roczniak?

  It is recording nothing.

• 0:21Speaker 00

  You shouldn't do that. There we go.

• 0:23Justin Roczniak?

  Nope, that's audition.

• 0:25Speaker 00

  Okay, it's me.

• 0:26Justin Roczniak?

  There's ZenCaster, right? Okay, hold on. Let's see what we.

• 0:37Speaker 00

  Anyway, Liam, I got a Jeep.

• 0:38Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah, what'd you, what'd you get?

• 0:40Justin Roczniak?

  We gotta do a sync point.

• 0:41Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah.

• 0:41Speaker 00

  Oh, well, yeah, but I want to talk about my Jeep.

• 0:43Justin Roczniak?

  Well, we'll, we'll do the sync point, then you can talk about the Jeep, because otherwise it will be confusing for Devon.

• 0:50Speaker 00

  All right.

• 0:51Justin Roczniak?

  All right. Three, two, one, mark. Okay, good enough.

• 0:55Liam McAnderson?

  That was crispy.

• 0:57Speaker 00

  Nineteen ninety-two Cherokee XJ.

• 0:59Liam McAnderson?

  Oh, you're kidding?

• 1:00Speaker 00

  I am not. Four liter high output.

• 1:03Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:04Speaker 00

  OBD one, five-speed manual, uh, man, it's a Laredo, so it's got like the, the nicer seats and stuff, but it's manual, everything. Uh, you know, crank windows, no cruise, no ABS, which is good, because I don't want to deal with any of that shit. Um, I've already put nice tires on it, uh, I need bushings, but like, it's, it's sweet. It was owned by one guy, and that guy was responsible for the deaths of seven people, so it's got really good, well, there's your problem providence.

• 1:29Justin Roczniak?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:30Liam McAnderson?

  Uh, yeah, yeah, I'd say so, yeah, yeah.

• 1:32Speaker 00

  It was, oh, it was purchased new by Joe Wilcox, who led the doomed Denali expedition in the sixties.

• 1:38Justin Roczniak?

  Wow.

• 1:40Speaker 00

  Uh, yeah, he, he didn't drive it very much, so, uh, you know, it's got like a hundred and forty-two thousand miles. Yeah, yeah, I got a crazy deal on it, so I'm, I'm back among the, the auto enthusiasts living, so, plus, it's like, you know, peak Chrysler back when they were good. They were like two years out from inventing the Dodge Viper and, you know, kind of recalibrating the American auto landscape. So it's, you know, like that one brief moment where it looked like the end of history was through and America was just gonna like slowly improve forever. We had the Cherokee XJ, we were on our way to having the Viper, Phil Clinton was president.

• 2:12Liam McAnderson?

  Once upon a time, yeah, that's, that was definitely better.

• 2:15Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:16Liam McAnderson?

  Oh.

• 2:16Justin Roczniak?

  Amtrak was expanding.

• 2:18Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:18Liam McAnderson?

  Can you imagine, can you imagine like that sentence now, like Amtrak is expanding like new routes and shit?

• 2:24Justin Roczniak?

  New long-distance routes even.

• 2:26Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:27Justin Roczniak?

  They had, they had the Kentucky Cardinal, they had, they had the National Limited. I, no, they didn't have the National Limited anymore, excuse me, Bob.

• 2:34Speaker 00

  That was actually, I think, back when, uh, the Cascades started playing around with the idea of like, what if we did high-speed rail at our own trackage? We'll have this ready by like two thousand and five.

• 2:44Justin Roczniak?

  Oh, yeah, yeah. You know, that Florida high-speed rail was coming, uh, what else?

• 2:50Liam McAnderson?

  Um, and, and not to blame Brightline, because I, I, I do think that the vast majority of people who get murked by Brightline had it coming, but.

• 2:58Speaker 00

  I completely disagree, but go on.

• 3:00Justin Roczniak?

  Florida high-speed rail was killed by people who would later go on to invest in Brightline. That's a different episode.

• 3:09Liam McAnderson?

  No, that, that's this episode.

• 3:13Liam McAnderson?

  I've seized the radio stations.

• 3:14Justin Roczniak?

  That's, that's, that's a whole, that's a whole kettle of fish right there. That's, that's, oh, boy, well, some shit happened.

• 3:21Liam McAnderson?

  Um. Hang on one second, I just did, yeah, there we go.

• 3:25Speaker 00

  No, Brightline, Brightline and like, uh, Brightline mostly kills people because they're cheap. There are, the thing is, they do, they do anti-car propaganda by showing you the like three fatalities caused by some assholes swerving around seven lines of crossing gates, driving in opposing traffic, and then getting, you know, their, their.

• 3:44Liam McAnderson?

  More, yeah.

• 3:45Speaker 00

  Completely vaporized by a train, but the vast majority of the people they kill are people who live on one side of the tracks and don't have their car and have to walk across tracks that they don't protect, and just like split apart neighborhoods for like miles on end without any easy access.

• 4:01Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah, those people had it coming, those people had it coming, sorry.

• 4:04Speaker 00

  But, yeah, eighty mile an hour trains are not like, it's kind of like, it's like, uh, it's like a helicopter, so like a military helicopter or something, right? Where it's like, oh, yeah, I would hear it coming, and then it's like, no, you wouldn't. It's, it is over, by the time you hear it, it is too late.

• 4:18Liam McAnderson?

  It's done, right? You are, you are a fine red pace.

• 4:21Speaker 00

  Yeah, and especially in the US where everybody's like, oh, a train is like a fifteen mile an hour BNSF, you know, seven mile long, uh, just-in-time freight shipment, um, precision scheduled, not an eighty mile an hour passenger train, so.

• 4:33Liam McAnderson?

  I am ashamed that I bought into that propaganda then. That's, uh, that's, that's crazy. I, I had no idea, because like, you read, like, the, the, the stuff I've read, right? It's like, not much beyond like, okay, this person like drove onto the tracks.

• 4:45Speaker 00

  Yeah, no, uh, the Miami Herald did an incredible long-form piece of like years.

• 4:50Liam McAnderson?

  I remember seeing that, yeah.

• 4:52Speaker 00

  It was, it was really depressing, but it was so good, and a lot of it is kind of like, it's an engineering problem in the same way all the rest of this is, where it's like, if you build something fundamentally flawed in a way that people will necessarily have, end up taking shortcuts because you have.

• 5:07Liam McAnderson?

  Because they have to, right, yeah.

• 5:09Speaker 00

  Then they are going to die. It's like the same problem we have in like, with like Sound Transit in Seattle, where we built a bunch of the light rail at great, across a bunch of intersections, and like, it always has car accidents and like, you know, injuries or whatever, deaths. And it's like, well, yeah, because you split apart a neighborhood for like seven miles with the, you know, active train tracks that are used every five minutes or whatever, like, of course, it's gonna cause problems. It's like, you know, anyway, sorry, I.

• 5:34Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, that, that.

• 5:35Speaker 00

  I won't give Brightline any credit.

• 5:37Justin Roczniak?

  It needs to be elevated anyway, because of South Florida, you know, it's, it's gonna have to do it sooner or later.

• 5:45Liam McAnderson?

  It's coming, folks.

• 5:46Justin Roczniak?

  Florida Department of Transportation hasn't helped at all by, by building those insane roads and intersections like right through the train tracks.

• 5:53Speaker 00

  Or just build some fucking elevated walkways for people, like.

• 5:58Justin Roczniak?

  Or people don't, people don't use those.

• 6:00Liam McAnderson?

  Or those fun, uh, there's like wildlife bridges that they have in Europe, like.

• 6:04Speaker 00

  We think we have one of those here, I love it.

• 6:05Liam McAnderson?

  I didn't know that.

• 6:06Speaker 00

  Yeah, we have one over I-5 in Washington.

• 6:09Liam McAnderson?

  Oh, you have mentioned that, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 6:10Speaker 00

  Yeah, because, you know, I, the great, the great country, uh, for which I'm very patriotic, Washington State.

• 6:16Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, and speaking of states, oh, wait, that's a bad segue, hold on.

• 6:22Liam McAnderson?

  Keep it.

• 6:25Justin Roczniak?

  Welcome to, Well, There's Your Problem, a podcast about engineering disasters with slides. I'm Justin Rosneck, I'm the person who's talking right now. My pronouns are he and him. Okay, go.

• 6:37Liam McAnderson?

  I guess it's me, fuck, Jesus, I wasn't ready for that.

• 6:40Justin Roczniak?

  We got a Nova situation.

• 6:42Liam McAnderson?

  Nova, yeah, Liam, uh, I'm Liam McAdams, my pronouns are he, him, and so, I guess, I don't, I don't know.

• 6:48Speaker 00

  Hi, my name is Victoria Scott. I'm the person who's talking right now, my pronouns are she and her. Uh, I am your, I am the, the podcast quotas, uh, of trans, trans women for today.

• 6:58Justin Roczniak?

  Yes.

• 6:59Speaker 00

  It's November is, she's dead.

• 7:01Liam McAnderson?

  I, I can't, I can't believe that she's dead again.

• 7:04Speaker 00

  I know, got a real necromancy situation going on, where she just keeps dying and being revived.

• 7:09Liam McAnderson?

  Revived, yeah, yeah, yeah, well, I, I had something, but it's gone, it's gone.

• 7:14Speaker 00

  Well, and the thing is, is like, I haven't, people have asked me.

• 7:17Liam McAnderson?

  My wife's about to leave, I'll be right back. You guys can go, go, go.

• 7:19Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 7:20Justin Roczniak?

  We, we never saw Liam again.

• 7:22Speaker 00

  Yeah, he died.

• 7:23Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 7:23Speaker 00

  Um, people have been asking me about this, so I should probably just address it. I have a job. I finally, I left the Well, There's Your Problem job program because I got an actual job. I still host my podcast Trend Girlismo about, uh, automotive culture. I don't know what it's about, um, the collapse of empire and also cars.

• 7:41Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 7:41Speaker 00

  Um, but I have a job working for a nonprofit here in the city of Seattle, uh, helping trans people who are fleeing hostile states. So it's kind of like, uh, you know, it's a dream job sort of situation for me. Um, it's, uh.

• 7:55Justin Roczniak?

  About to say, business is booming right now.

• 7:58Speaker 00

  Yeah, we're, boy, how do people love our services, uh, which, you know, obviously, like, we're, we're really small and we don't have like a ton of funding. So our, what we do is a lot of like mutual aid and kind of peer support stuff. Um, but, uh, yeah, I'm, I'm working there and trying to like help build out, um, a lot of the new stuff that we're doing, assuming we get, you know, some more resources, assuming that we can get some people sort of volunteering and on board with us. So, uh, yeah, it's called Traction. I work for this segment called Project Open Arms, which is the initiative to like help people flee. A lot of people end up coming to Seattle, not all of them do. Uh, we help people go to Twin Cities and Chicago and even like, I think we've had a few that are like Philly and Baltimore

• 8:36Speaker 00

  and kind of like easy to see board. Um, but, uh, yeah, so that's, I probably won't be on here a ton. I've got like a couple of episodes I want to write. Um.

• 8:44Liam McAnderson?

  Oh, I, I, I assume you were telling them about your new job? I just wanted to be trying, I know what you're talking about.

• 8:49Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. Um, but yeah, so I probably, I have a couple of episodes I still want to write, but like, I probably won't be on here as much because like, well, there's your problem job program work. It has a one hundred percent successful placement rate.

• 9:01Liam McAnderson?

  I, so one of the things I was, I was talking to Rin about, um, first of all, congratulations, I was at the two off-air, but, but genuinely, congratulations.

• 9:08Speaker 00

  Thank you.

• 9:09Liam McAnderson?

  It is rewarding. It sucks, but it's rewarding.

• 9:12Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 9:12Liam McAnderson?

  Uh, but one of the things I was talking to Rin about, she was like, hey, like, um, when she was, I think, I think like Sam said in his invoice, um, and, and my wife was like, uh, hey, Sam's like the researcher, and I was like, yeah, and she goes, oh, my God, it is a make-work program. And I was like, yes, it is.

• 9:32Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, but it worked.

• 9:33Liam McAnderson?

  It works, it works, it works.

• 9:35Speaker 00

  Call, call this podcast the New Deal, uh, because they, they, there sure is some progress if this works in administration.

• 9:43Justin Roczniak?

  We're jobs, we're jobs creators. We create the jobs.

• 9:47Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah, uh, my, that's my favorite thing, is we're an economic engine of growth despite our own best intentions.

• 9:54Speaker 00

  Um, yeah.

• 9:55Justin Roczniak?

  Only company hiring in Philadelphia, the problem is we don't hire in the city.

• 9:59Liam McAnderson?

  No.

• 10:01Speaker 00

  Yeah, but I'm back today because, uh, November is dead, as previously mentioned, and so I, you know, I gotta, I gotta help out, I gotta cover. So I'm, I have no idea what we're even talking about.

• 10:13Justin Roczniak?

  And speaking of death.

• 10:15Liam McAnderson?

  There it is.

• 10:16Justin Roczniak?

  You see, on the screen in front of you.

• 10:18Liam McAnderson?

  Banger.

• 10:19Justin Roczniak?

  Are two turrets, each with three sixteen-inch guns, one of which doesn't look so good. They have, uh, may, may have, uh, had a problem, fell off, uh, its elevation. Uh, there's a lot of smoke. That's right, folks, we're talking about that time when the USS Iowa's number-two turret exploded. And then the cover-up of that explosion.

• 10:47Liam McAnderson?

  I, I do want to acknowledge that other podcasts in the Napvithay Extended Universe have done this, and we're doing it now because, shut up.

• 10:54Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, exactly, exactly. Look, with, with, there, there's no, the statute of limitations on that has expired.

• 11:05Liam McAnderson?

  Oh, man, it's gonna be a real shame when we have to resurrect you from the dead, Roz.

• 11:09Justin Roczniak?

  What? No, it'd be great. I'll be back from the dead.

• 11:11Speaker 00

  The only podcast with a 100% fatality rate.

• 11:14Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 11:14Liam McAnderson?

  Or like the surgeon we talked about, who like the surgeon with the what 200% or 300% fatality rate? Cause he died, the patient died, and the guy died of shock. That's us. It's podcast form. But I can't wait for my mom to listen to this one when she started to brag to her friends about her son, the successful podcaster.

• 11:35Speaker 00

  Thank God my mom's dead, so I don't have to worry about that one.

• 11:38Liam McAnderson?

  Oh, okay. Well, now I feel bad.

• 11:41Justin Roczniak?

  My parents are dead.

• 11:44Justin Roczniak?

  But before we talk about that, we have to do the goddamn news.

• 11:48Speaker 00

  Oh, we don't have the goddamn drops. Jesus Christ.

• 11:53Liam McAnderson?

  What is this, episode five without it?

• 11:55Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, I think so. Something like that. Yeah.

• 11:57Speaker 00

  I think I've now been on more episodes without it than I was with it.

• 12:01Liam McAnderson?

  I just don't understand. Like, I do literally understand because like November's getting a mixer. November's also not here. No problem. But like, at some point, we gotta, we gotta do a new standard. That's just us like playing a recording of us doing that.

• 12:15Justin Roczniak?

  So there's, um, the, the, the oil crisis deepens as Saudi Arabia invades Yemen and is immediately repelled. And the Houthis bomb all the oil infrastructure in Saudi Arabia. It's really funny.

• 12:33Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah.

• 12:34Justin Roczniak?

  It's a really funny thing that happened. Um, as, as someone who is a great fan of our president, uh, D-Growth Don.

• 12:43Justin Roczniak?

  This is, this is, uh, this is an amazing development. There's gonna be no oil, which means no cars, which means trends.

• 12:53Speaker 00

  The thing that's incredibly funny here, right?

• 12:54Liam McAnderson?

  I know 92 Jeep Laredos, huh? Yeah. How's that feel, dumbass?

• 12:59Speaker 00

  So I bought, I bought that Jeep and literally it was like the next day that everything was like, oh God, it's all over. Like that was when the glue started to come up. Yeah. I was like, cool. 15 miles a gallon. Sweet. This is right. I knew, see, here's the thing. I waited all summer to buy this car until I had like a job and some stability. And I was like, the minute I buy this, the entire global economy is going to collapse. Like I know it. And it literally was the day of. And so actually I take credit, death to America. Uh, I give that. It's actually me for buying my Jeep. No, the thing that's funny about this, right? Is that it's like, do you mind if I go off for a second?

• 13:34Justin Roczniak?

  Please do. Yeah.

• 13:36Speaker 00

  So on Tran Galismo this week, I have written, we're recording tomorrow, uh, but we are, we have six or seven pages of notes on the history of Yemen. Because I was like, I need to know what's going on here.

• 13:46Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah, of course. Fascinating country, genuinely.

• 13:49Speaker 00

  Yeah. Seriously. It's like, it, it should absolutely get more play. As usual, the US funded infinitely the worst thing happening. And eventually, given enough time and money, that did happen. And now we like, we are now like, this is just another form of blowback, right? Is that we don't have oil now. But the thing that's funny, right? It's like, uh, most of Saudi Arabia's crude goes to like Asia. And all of the Saudi oil fields are on the like eastern half, in the eastern province, like right along the, the, um, where the Strait of Hormuz is, they ship it all out through the straight. And so obviously they haven't been able to do that for a while and how they've managed to keep things from like completely going haywire.

• 14:31Speaker 00

  They've got this huge pipeline that carries seven million barrels a day from the eastern province all the way to the west where they ship it through the Red Sea and down through the Strait of, um, Bab al-Mandeb, which is where Yemen is. It's like between Yemen and Djibouti?

• 14:44Justin Roczniak?

  Djibouti.

• 14:46Speaker 00

  Uh, in Africa. And it's, and it's a really tight choke point, but like, you know, it's, they're still getting oil out via the sea and they can ship it over to, uh, so like Southeast Asia and primarily China. Um, and so the thing that's funny about how this has worked out is, uh, Saudi Arabia has been engaged in a proxy war as part of the civil war between Yemen's like officially recognized government and the Houthis rebels, which kind of actually run the whole place at this point, uh, for like 14 years. And the Houthis are now have taken control of a bunch of the islands in, um, the Strait of Bab al-Mandeb. And they said they're gonna start blowing up Saudi ships, but only Saudi ships. So the US doesn't want to get involved because we're busy in Iran, right?

• 15:30Speaker 00

  Um, so we're actually not gonna help the Saudis here. We, aside from giving them infinite amounts of money and we're gonna sell them F-35s and stuff. Um.

• 15:38Liam McAnderson?

  Which means they're immediately go to the Chinese, but that's fine.

• 15:40Speaker 00

  Yeah. Well, and also they, they, the Houthis just took out an F-15 this week. Like there's dudes in cargo shorts with like AKs over their shoulders, posing on the, the blown up tail of an F-15.

• 15:51Justin Roczniak?

  Hell, yeah.

• 15:52Speaker 00

  Yeah. Houthis, complicated ideologically. Uh, they do, they, they are not like a progressive force for good or, or socialists or whatever, but that shit goes hard. It just, it's just cool. Um, but, uh, China has managed to suppress most of their oil's like demand globally, like for imports by using these massive reserves that nobody knew they had. And they're finally running out of that and they really need oil again, just in time for the Houthis to now basically shut off Saudi Arabian exports to Asia. So China has been arming Iran, which has then been sending the arms to the Houthis, uh, who are now blowing up Saudi Arabia. And now China has to go to Iran and be like, hey, can you please tell them to stop doing that?

• 16:33Speaker 00

  Uh, because although we enjoy you fucking up America's oil supply, maybe it's complicated. Um, now it's fucking with our money. Uh, and so now the shit can really hit the fan because if China starts running out of oil, they import like nine million barrels a day, I want to say. And this is like reduced demand.

• 16:52Liam McAnderson?

  Jesus Christ.

• 16:54Speaker 00

  Yeah. And like they have, they, they, the reason that they have been able to do this for so long is they had basically put a ban on exporting refined goods. But the capitalists got kinda antsy and they started exporting them again. And now they're burning through their supplies really quickly. Um, so, uh, it's completely out of America's hands. We, we have nothing to do with this. They're like, we can't stop this if we wanted to. The, the beehive is fucked. Uh, it, it doesn't matter what the swelling is now. That's, that's not up to us. It's, it's in the bees' hands.

• 17:24Justin Roczniak?

  So it's, you know, uh, what did you think D-Growth was gonna look like? Vibes, essays? No, sorry. We're here, folks. The oil-based economy is dying. Uh, it may already be dead. It just hasn't stopped moving yet. As, as someone who owns a bicycle, I am excited. Um, although I still need to, I, I, I need a new inner tube for the rear tire. It punctured like two days ago.

• 17:51Speaker 00

  Well.

• 17:51Justin Roczniak?

  You know, but.

• 17:53Speaker 00

  The thing is, Roz, do you like to eat food?

• 17:55Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, eating food is pretty good.

• 17:56Speaker 00

  This may affect you.

• 17:57Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 17:58Speaker 00

  I don't know if you've seen, uh, if you've seen how much diesel fuel currently costs?

• 18:03Justin Roczniak?

  Oh, it's like infinity dollars.

• 18:05Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 18:05Justin Roczniak?

  It's like pricing it in quartz in California.

• 18:08Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah, I saw that.

• 18:10Speaker 00

  Yeah. It's like, it's like over, it's like 10 bucks in California. It's like nationally, like I think the highest ever been. And of course, since the US doesn't have electric freight transport anywhere, um, basically every single thing that you need to buy.

• 18:23Justin Roczniak?

  Got rid of that in the eighties.

• 18:24Speaker 00

  Yeah. Unless, unless you, unless you do like, um, unless you have a farm and you live on the commune and everything you grow just suits you. Um, and you don't need society at all, which hint you do, uh, it's probably gonna suck. Unless you like make a ton of money, in which case I imagine the K-shaped economy thing will just continue. And like, you'll never notice.

• 18:46Justin Roczniak?

  Folks, folks, time to invest in oil as a commodity.

• 18:50Speaker 00

  This guy named Brent is just cleaning the fuck up.

• 18:53Justin Roczniak?

  Dude, Brent's, Brent's doing so great right now. Brent and his friend, West Texas. I don't know why they call him West Texas, but you know.

• 19:01Speaker 00

  Anyway, the, the funniest thing about this pipeline is that, um, what's his name? Uh, Chris Wright or Mark Wright or whatever. The guy who runs the Department of Energy was out on like CNBC, like, don't worry, this pipeline that they just blew up, that was how they were getting all of their oil out of the country will be fixed in like a couple of days. And it's like every single specialist mag I read about this was like, people are like, if it's fixed within a couple of months, that will be quick. And also now that it can be struck, it will never be peaceful again. Like this is just never going to be like, it's gonna be like the straight, right? Where it's like some oil leaves from it, but it's never gonna be like a, a sure bet ever again. Um, so everything will just get worse. Again, we just can't tap the brakes. Runaway train. Midterms in like, what? A month and a half?

• 19:46Justin Roczniak?

  There's an interesting development in oil and gas related to the midterms, actually. Um, which is the Texas Railroad Commissioner race is competitive.

• 19:55Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah.

• 19:56Justin Roczniak?

  Holy shit.

• 19:57Liam McAnderson?

  Beau French is an insane person, as we learned.

• 19:59Justin Roczniak?

  They got a guy who's too racist for Texas as the default Texas Railroad Commissioner. And just so everyone's aware, the Texas Railroad Commissioner is the de facto regulator of basically all oil and gas in the United States. Um, you know, just because you have so much power over such a large market as Texas. The Railroad Commission doesn't regulate railroads anymore. It only does oil and gas.

• 20:30Speaker 00

  Was that the guy who was freaking out about like UT students celebrating?

• 20:34Justin Roczniak?

  Yes.

• 20:35Speaker 00

  Yeah. So they were like not white and he was like, America has fallen.

• 20:39Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah.

• 20:39Speaker 00

  Like openly.

• 20:40Liam McAnderson?

  My favorite thing is, uh, and like, obviously you shouldn't trust these people. They're, they're snakes just like him, but that fucking Karl Rove is like, nah, I'm gonna vote for the Democrat. He's vaguely funny to me, uh, which is also how I live. The Karl Rove was still alive.

• 20:55Justin Roczniak?

  Well, that, that, his opponent, John Rosenthal is like, uh, you know, protect trans people, anti-Zionist, uh, Jewish, uh, state assembly member. All this other stuff like we got, they got the potential for the world's most progressive oil and gas regulator in Texas right now, just because Beau French can't shut his mouth. It's really funny. I'm excited for it. Um.

• 21:21Liam McAnderson?

  Oh, wait. Oh, wait. I, I wanna hear, I wanna read you something funny. Come on, I'm on, uh, he's dead. Beau French's Wiki page. This is a, this is a fun nugget, right? Ready? Beau French was a business partner of Chris Kyle, the author of American Sniper.

• 21:37Liam McAnderson?

  Training company Kraft International. Following Kyle's death in 2013, French and a business partner were sued by Kyle's widow, Tara, Taya. Taya? That's not a name.

• 21:49Justin Roczniak?

  Taya.

• 21:49Liam McAnderson?

  For allegedly forcing her out of the company. Although French and the partner denied the charge and the suit was later dropped, the parties reached a settlement agreement in 2014, which stipulated French not use Chris Kyle's name, likeness, logo, or image. Amazing.

• 22:02Speaker 00

  I do love how much they all screw each other over.

• 22:05Liam McAnderson?

  Oh, yeah. Cause it's just, there's all these people hate each other, right? Like there's, it's just a matter of like being a useful idiot. Like.

• 22:11Justin Roczniak?

  It, it's just like, like, like the guy is so, so bad that he is, he, he is gonna throw the least competitive political office in the United States, like the least competitive, important political office.

• 22:26Speaker 00

  Karl Rove, welcome to the resistance.

• 22:28Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 22:31Justin Roczniak?

  So, so on that very small bright spot, um, uh, again, if you are in Texas, vote, vote, uh, it make sure you go to the polls and vote for John Rosenthal.

• 22:50Justin Roczniak?

  What the fuck is Trump doing with the Kennedy Center?

• 22:53Liam McAnderson?

  I don't.

• 22:54Speaker 00

  I think he's gonna run a bulldozer.

• 22:55Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah, I don't.

• 22:56Justin Roczniak?

  Apparently, yeah, no, this is, I mean, this story, I know that like, this is not the, the, the most insane thing going on right now, but like, what the fuck is going on with the Kennedy Center?

• 23:07Speaker 00

  Um, I think the best way to view Trump at this point is like, you know, it's countrywide family annihilator.

• 23:15Justin Roczniak?

  I think so, yeah.

• 23:16Speaker 00

  Like, I don't like how this is going. I will simply, I'll destroy it. I'll, you know, this is somebody who's like, oh, yeah, I, I don't get to like have the toy. Well, I'm going to kill all of you.

• 23:27Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, yeah, Trump's had this like vendetta against the Kennedy Center for this his second term.

• 23:33Speaker 00

  It's because.

• 23:34Justin Roczniak?

  Tried to put his name on it and then, uh, and then the judge said, you can't put your name on the Kennedy Center because you're not John F. Kennedy. And, uh, and now, and, and then, you know, his new board has claimed the Kennedy Center is bankrupt and I don't know, I'd been in the, uh, the, and it's falling apart. And, you know, I don't know, I've been in the Kennedy Center several times. It looked basically fine.

• 23:57Speaker 00

  Yeah. Well, I mean, he's like ripping out trees in DC to like build another golf course and he wants to build this stupid like arc to triumph. And like he, the, the, we, I, you know, we went for train girlismo and we covered the freedom 250, uh, grand prix. It was around the, the footsteps of the Capitol and like on the, in the middle of the national mall. And it's like, it's all, it is, it's insane going to DC and seeing how much he has tried to remake that city in his image. And like, it is, obviously it's half-assed and half-baked, like everything else he does, because he's, this is what, these are not, you know, intelligent fascists. And they're not good at what they do, but the attempt is to basically turn DC into like, you know, as much of a monument to Trump as it is to Washington.

• 24:40Liam McAnderson?

  Garmania, yeah. I will say, uh, David Roth, formerly of that's been, uh, the factor, uh, had said something that I think is, is true, but I can't remember the exact quote, but basically what he said is that like, Trump is gonna take us all with him essentially.

• 24:55Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 24:56Liam McAnderson?

  We all, we all, we all have to get in the boat with him. And I think that like this Kennedy Center representation is very like, like very true, right? Because like, I mean, I, I do think that like having the Kennedy Center is a net good and makes sense. Like as the idea of like showcase the arts and also the Virginia, what, what do you do over there? The Virginia High School Theater Awards?

• 25:18Justin Roczniak?

  Uh, that's the last time I was at the Kennedy Center, which admittedly is quite a long time ago now that I think about it, but it was, uh, yeah, Bishop Pyron High School was nominated for Cappy. So, uh, my brother was in the theater program, so I got to go, go to the Cappy's award ceremony. That was, that was, uh, that was a pretty good time. Uh, I don't think the building has, I mean, the place was immaculate back then. I can't imagine it's deteriorated enough. In like 10 years, like that, you know, you have to demolish it.

• 25:47Speaker 00

  I think this is part of it too, right? Is it like, they would rather they, as part of the like capture of all truth, they have to regulate everything with like direct, uh, control of like what the narratives are, what, what stories can be told. And they can't do that with this. I don't know why. I don't know if it's like the way that it's structured or how the board was set up or whatever. And so the, the, it's preferable to just destroy it because it's embarrassing.

• 26:11Justin Roczniak?

  I guess so, yeah.

• 26:12Speaker 00

  When I went to the, when I went to the fucking Smithsonian, I went to the National History Museum, um, when I was there for that stupid, god awful fucking fascist shitshow of a race. And they like, they had an exhibition for America's 250th about like the national animal of America, which is the buffalo. And they, their entire exhibit mentioned nothing about how the, the extermination of the buffalo was an attempt to genocide native people.

• 26:37Liam McAnderson?

  Right.

• 26:38Speaker 00

  It was, there was no link. And so it's like, cool. We've, we have now established like this alternate history where everything is sanitized and fine. And if you can't, if you can't do that in totality, it's not going to work. So you might as well, and they're just starting in DC. It's like, it's a, it should be a state and it's not. They get more control and leverage over this shit. It really actually drives me insane, but also at the same time, it's kind of like a little funny, like I'm not gonna lie.

• 27:02Justin Roczniak?

  Now.

• 27:03Speaker 00

  Yeah, DC statehood now, but also like, it was kind of funny when they knocked on the east wing, you know?

• 27:07Justin Roczniak?

  That was pretty funny. Uh, that, that is way funnier than demolishing the Kennedy Center.

• 27:12Speaker 00

  Fair, yeah.

• 27:13Justin Roczniak?

  Wing, the east wing was kind of a shitty building. Um, you know, I, no, I agree with Trump on the ballroom. That's the thing. The ballroom's a good idea, right? The other stuff he has done, really bad ideas.

• 27:27Speaker 00

  Going to the polls in 2028, like, well, he destroyed the economy, uh, you know, he hates trans people. Ice is out of control, but the ballroom's a good idea. I got a ballroom.

• 27:37Justin Roczniak?

  Good idea.

• 27:39Liam McAnderson?

  Who was the president of Liberia during the Liberian civil war? Charles something?

• 27:45Speaker 00

  I don't know.

• 27:45Liam McAnderson?

  Okay. Well, he had a campaign slogan that was, he killed my mother, he killed my father, but I shall vote for him. So.

• 27:54Liam McAnderson?

  Charles Taylor, maybe?

• 27:57Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah, Charles Taylor. I'm so good at knowing things. Uh, I was talking to my mom the other day about how you can't import snooze anymore because of the minimus. And explaining that I am now a single issue voter for getting my importation of snooze back.

• 28:14Justin Roczniak?

  Oh God, yeah. I mean, there's so many, uh, we, it's been a while since we did a mainline episode. There's so many news items to cover, like the Canadian tariffs in Canada.

• 28:24Speaker 00

  Amazon jet that they just forgot to land.

• 28:27Justin Roczniak?

  Oh, right. Yeah. And they did, they did a bad job on that one.

• 28:30Speaker 00

  Yeah. Probably a bunch of other shit happened. I don't remember. I don't know. I mean, I've, I've, I've taken the stance of, um, I, because obviously there's been a bunch of like anti-trans turns from like Democrats who have no spines.

• 28:43Justin Roczniak?

  They're trying to push that guy, that guy in.

• 28:46Speaker 00

  Cool. I, I'm not, I like, I have pride. I, I won't vote for you. I might actually go vote for the Republican just to spite you. Um, we could all lose propane tank straps to the bicycle.

• 28:59Speaker 00

  Like fuck you. You, you think you can, you can make my rights optional? Well.

• 29:03Justin Roczniak?

  It's, it's, it's frustrating to see them looking at what the labor party did and saying, yep.

• 29:08Liam McAnderson?

  Good idea. One for one for it.

• 29:10Justin Roczniak?

  That's our path, boys.

• 29:12Speaker 00

  Yeah, well, they, you know, all respects to like British leftists, but, uh, having used that as a cautionary tale, I've, I've turned, I've entered that into my model of the world and I will do everything possible. If you are an anti-trans Democrat, I will, in, in the state of Washington, I will devote my life to you losing.

• 29:31Liam McAnderson?

  I mean, that seems reasonable, rational to me, like.

• 29:34Speaker 00

  Yeah. And I'm sure plenty of people tried that in the UK as well. I'm not saying that people didn't. I'm just saying that like, I, I have become insanely hardline immediately. Uh, but that also happened. Um, a bunch of children's hospitals stopped providing care to trans people, even though they were in theoretically safe, safe states. And a bunch of attorneys general won't do shit about it because they're all cowards.

• 29:54Liam McAnderson?

  Right. Just capitulating before anything's even happened. Yeah.

• 29:56Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. Um, oh, they, they'd lost like another two F 16s or whatever, since we recorded last two, I think.

• 30:02Justin Roczniak?

  Oh, that's, that's.

• 30:03Speaker 00

  They just keep piling them into the earth, like over the US.

• 30:07Liam McAnderson?

  Haven't leveled up there yet.

• 30:09Justin Roczniak?

  That's true. Except for Voyager.

• 30:13Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah. Well, that was goddamn news.

• 30:21Justin Roczniak?

  You know, you know, there's a Zencastr drop function. We could just put the sound effect in there.

• 30:26Liam McAnderson?

  Uh, I've always wondered why we haven't done that, but that's okay.

• 30:29Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, that's, that makes fun, that, that, you know, whatever. Um, all right. So before we start, I want to acknowledge, like the main source for this podcast is a book called A Glimpse of Hell.

• 30:42Liam McAnderson?

  Great title.

• 30:43Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah. Charles C. Thompson, the second, who was a producer for 60 minutes, I want to say. It's a very, very good book. You should go read it. I mean, what we're going to be able to talk about here is like barely scratching the surface of just how fucked up the accident was, and also the investigation and just everything about the events we're about to discuss. I mean, this, there's so much detail. It's a fantastic read. Go out and, go out and buy this book, even if you don't care about battleships. Or it's just, if you, if you wanna, if you, if, if you wanna, like a hell of a story.

• 31:24Justin Roczniak?

  But anyway, first we must ask, what is battleship?

• 31:29Liam McAnderson?

  Uh, obsolete.

• 31:31Justin Roczniak?

  Yes.

• 31:32Liam McAnderson?

  I can't believe he died live on air.

• 31:34Justin Roczniak?

  No, not quite. Um, so a battleship is essentially a really, really big, a battleship is, you know, as, as like a popular term, right? I don't know. You, you could assign that to any kind of Navy ship, but a battleship as like the formal term is a specific kind of very, very large, very, very heavily armored ship that has very, very, very big guns on it. And you can point those guns at things that you want to go away.

• 32:09Speaker 00

  Crucially, if you're talking with somebody who has ever been in the Navy, ever, even if they're like a disillusioned bet. Um, and I know this from personal experience, if you want to piss them off, call any boat with a gun on it, a battleship.

• 32:21Liam McAnderson?

  I love that.

• 32:22Speaker 00

  Yeah. It's like a great way to annoy somebody you care about.

• 32:27Justin Roczniak?

  But yeah, battleship, it's bigger than a destroyer. It's bigger than a frigate. It's smaller than an aircraft carrier. It's, uh, it's bigger than, it's, it's bigger than most kinds of ships out there. It is much more heavily armored. Like the idea of these things is we're going to take out the big guns. And even if we're under like heavy enemy fire, we're getting hit by shells, torpedoes, all kinds of bullshit. Well, we can still keep going. Um, you know, in practice though, the way these were deployed, a lot of the times was sort of like, we're never going to send these things into the type of conflicts that they're designed for, because it's going to be such a

• 33:09Justin Roczniak?

  morale loss if they sink a battleship.

• 33:14Speaker 00

  It's a DPS that you're unwilling to use.

• 33:17Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, pretty much. Um, and the USS Iowa class pictured here, right? This was the largest class of battleships built by the United States with the biggest guns and heaviest armor. And we stopped after that. There was another class designed afterwards, but never built. Because, uh, people realized, oh, we just build an aircraft carrier.

• 33:41Liam McAnderson?

  Good Lord of the aircraft carrier. Yeah.

• 33:42Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 33:43Speaker 00

  I do really like that you can see the, uh, like the little sideways drift from the bow wave.

• 33:49Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 33:50Speaker 00

  Because it's moving itself sideways from firing its guns.

• 33:54Justin Roczniak?

  The guns are really big. They're really big guns. They're pretty cool. Actually. Yeah. Um, so anyway, these made sense when you were building them just before World War Two, which is when the Iowa class was started.

• 34:08Justin Roczniak?

  And, you know, they fought World War Two. They fought in Korea.

• 34:14Justin Roczniak?

  The USS New Jersey fired its guns in Vietnam.

• 34:19Justin Roczniak?

  And then it was like, you know, these things, we really don't need them anymore. They put them in the mothball fleet. Uh, you know, maybe you could reactivate it in case of a major conflict. And then President Grandpa was elected.

• 34:31Liam McAnderson?

  Oh, good.

• 34:33Justin Roczniak?

  Ronald Reagan, our first president grandpa.

• 34:36Liam McAnderson?

  Fuck. He ruined everything. It's midnight in America. All right. Everyone's fucking dying. Everyone's dead. Fucking do not construct, do not consult an astrologer on what's going to happen to learn if you have to shell the Soviet Union, dickhead.

• 34:50Justin Roczniak?

  Well, President Grandpa consults his astrologer to find out if he has to shell the Soviet Union. And the answer is yes.

• 35:00Liam McAnderson?

  I hate everything.

• 35:01Justin Roczniak?

  We need a 600 ship Navy to counter the Soviet Navy, the notoriously competent institution.

• 35:09Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah, I was gonna say.

• 35:10Speaker 00

  Well, yeah, cause I mean.

• 35:11Liam McAnderson?

  Please, uh, please look up the cursed disaster.

• 35:13Speaker 00

  Yeah. I was gonna say, this is before they gave all those ships to Pepsi, right? So like, those were clearly the prime of the, of the, uh, world's fleet.

• 35:22Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, yeah. Definitely, definitely not a Navy that can, you know, just sink its own ships just by hanging around.

• 35:28Speaker 00

  Let me just check.

• 35:30Liam McAnderson?

  Good at it too.

• 35:31Speaker 00

  I'm going to go to the Wikipedia page for the, uh, Russian invasion of Ukraine and just do a quick count of how that's been going for them.

• 35:38Liam McAnderson?

  Dead, all dead, all dead.

• 35:43Speaker 00

  There's like, there's like 19 year olds in gamer socks and taking down the, uh, the prime of the, I guess it's still Soviet fleet. I mean, they haven't really upgraded their ships since then, have they?

• 35:55Justin Roczniak?

  For pretty much.

• 35:56Speaker 00

  Built any new, have they built any new war materials since they became the like Russian Federation?

• 36:01Liam McAnderson?

  So I'm actually, I'm, I'm looking up the same thing.

• 36:03Speaker 00

  They can't have.

• 36:05Liam McAnderson?

  I mean, they've got to build.

• 36:05Speaker 00

  They went, all that money went straight to grift.

• 36:08Liam McAnderson?

  Surely they built like, I don't know, like a littoral combat ship, something like that.

• 36:12Justin Roczniak?

  I mean, we barely built those.

• 36:14Liam McAnderson?

  I, I, I, you know what I meant though? Like green water Navy thing. You know what I meant? Like, like, like a little, little, little guy, right? Like a riverboat cruiser.

• 36:22Justin Roczniak?

  Oh, they do have a river Navy. Yeah.

• 36:24Liam McAnderson?

  So, uh, hold on. Okay. Victoria and I are both on the Wiki page. Yes, go ahead, Roz.

• 36:30Justin Roczniak?

  Here's, here, here was the plan as part of this 600 ship Navy. Now, some, some ships we're going to build new. Some of them we're going to reactivate from the reserves, including the battleships. Fuck it. What's going to go wrong?

• 36:43Speaker 00

  Is it about having Alzheimer's that makes you want to build bigger battleships?

• 36:47Liam McAnderson?

  Oh, hang on, hang on, Victoria. Uh, they focus on submarines such as, I kid you not, the Lada class and the nuclear, oh boy. Uh, Yasin class, nuclear powered attack submarines design work commenced in earnest in the 1980s. The first submarine was built in 1990s to early 2010s with commissioning in 2013. I assume they've all been sunk and everyone on board them is dead.

• 37:13Speaker 00

  All right. So I guess they have built some new stuff. Okay. So Russian Federation, you know, blowing up a Russian Federation, naval ship in, from a 19 year old Ukrainian in gamer socks, flying a drone from like a thousand miles away.

• 37:26Justin Roczniak?

  I mean, they have an awful, uh, they have an awful kill ratio because the ships usually sink themselves before they're even in sight. You know, but yeah. So, all right, we're going to reactivate the battleships from World War Two. This is the most Ronald Reagan idea I think he had.

• 37:44Liam McAnderson?

  So I have several questions about this, which I'm sure will be answered, but I'm looking at the Russian Navy Wiki, so I can't be bothered. Um, so do they, do they, like, this has got to involve like, not just like, you know, okay, we're just going to send it out to sea. This has got to involve like retrofitting for like.

• 38:01Justin Roczniak?

  There.

• 38:01Liam McAnderson?

  Navigation, stuff like that, like age of systems. Yeah. Okay.

• 38:05Justin Roczniak?

  There's a comprehensive modernization program with new armaments. Let's look at some of them, right?

• 38:13Liam McAnderson?

  Oh, for Christ's sake.

• 38:13Justin Roczniak?

  We have our old friend. Oh, look, a civilian airliner.

• 38:20Speaker 00

  It looks like a landlord's special minion.

• 38:25Justin Roczniak?

  They put some extremely heavily armored tomahawk missile launchers on there. Uh, the idea, yeah, cause.

• 38:34Liam McAnderson?

  Jesus.

• 38:35Justin Roczniak?

  Look at the idea being that you could still use it like a battleship where you're getting constantly shelled by Germans and launch a tomahawk missile.

• 38:45Liam McAnderson?

  That was obsolete in 1930.

• 38:51Justin Roczniak?

  They got other anti-ship missiles on there, right? They have a, a cool drone they can launch, and this is to aid in aiming the artillery, right? Because, well, isn't that the thing, right? It's the artillery. That's what we want to hear about. None of this modern shit.

• 39:11Liam McAnderson?

  Why? Okay. So this is a legitimate question. Why are we then not just building more artillery? That's gotta be cheaper, right? You just get a bunch of howitzers and string them together.

• 39:22Justin Roczniak?

  Well, I, I mean, yeah, I, you're on the, you're on the right track here, Liam, because all that modern armament is a bunch of liberal bullshit. This, this is the real thing.

• 39:32Speaker 00

  It's why we gotta go back to the steam cannon launchers and aircraft carriers too.

• 39:36Liam McAnderson?

  Great white Navy, huh? The great white fleet. Yeah. I remember Teddy Roosevelt.

• 39:39Speaker 00

  Wait, uh, Roz, I got a question for you. How does the Iowa class compare to the Trump class?

• 39:45Justin Roczniak?

  I don't know. Well, so the Trump class is currently only an idea.

• 39:50Speaker 00

  Well, yeah, but like we have the AI drawn schematics.

• 39:54Justin Roczniak?

  I have no idea.

• 39:55Speaker 00

  God, if you're, if you, if you are an elderly person and you ever find yourself thinking about how good battleships are, you should go to a like cognitive specialist immediately.

• 40:06Justin Roczniak?

  Time, time to, uh, time to see how good you are.

• 40:08Speaker 00

  Maybe reconsider. Yeah. Maybe reconsider your driver's license. Like as a, this is a public safety announcement.

• 40:16Justin Roczniak?

  So there are three turrets with three 16 inch guns each, right? This is the, the part that's above deck that rotates. Everything else is static. You know, you have, uh, you have all the powder rooms down here. You got the rooms with the shells. You got all this crap, right? Uh, this thing fires shells that weigh as much as a Volkswagen Beetle, right? Uh, the battleship New Jersey was said to have sank an island with one of these shells in Vietnam, like.

• 40:50Justin Roczniak?

  There, there was a whole island and they lobbed so many shells at it, it disappeared.

• 40:59Justin Roczniak?

  This is a

• 41:00Speaker 00

  No wonder conservatives love these fucking things.

• 41:02Justin Roczniak?

  I mean, yeah, big, big gun. Cool. Big gun.

• 41:05Speaker 00

  Well, big gun, cool. And also just like the, the, the conservative military fantasy is that you go up against it. Basically an unarmed opponent.

• 41:13Liam McAnderson?

  And still lose.

• 41:18Justin Roczniak?

  These systems were built in the late thirties and by the time they're reactivating these ships. Well, it's no longer the late thirties, right? There's no real modernization that goes on here. There's, it's all very manual, right? There's nothing in terms of like safety interlocks. These turrets are cramped, they're loud, they're unpleasant, they're dangerous, they're

• 41:41Speaker 00

  I'll be right back.

• 41:42Justin Roczniak?

  Okay. They're designed for a time when we placed less value on human life.

• 41:49Liam McAnderson?

  Well, so that's kind of my question, right? Like I, so I was just on the wiki for the whatever Trump class or whatever the leadership is defiance. And it's just like, this is like, this is what I don't understand, right? It's like, by and large, like, and I'm not sympathetic to the Pentagon of all fucking people. But what I do, from what I've understood, it's like, the Pentagon more than once has been like, we don't need this and we don't want to do it. And, and then you get, you know, degrowth on over here being like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. We're gonna have a battleship that hasn't been relevant since goddamn, you know, the Hoover administration.

• 42:21Justin Roczniak?

  It's barely relevant then.

• 42:23Liam McAnderson?

  I know, I know. I just, I don't understand this. Like, you know, I, I think that's, that's kind of what I, the, the fundamental thing is that like, I can understand a lot of bullshit. But this is, this is just one that like, just baffles me, right? Like the six, the six hundred ship navy, it's like, yeah, but we have aircraft, we have nuclear powered aircraft carriers and submarines now.

• 42:43Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, but, but you need a battleship.

• 42:44Liam McAnderson?

  You don't need a bat for

• 42:46Justin Roczniak?

  No, you need a battle. So you can shoot the big gun.

• 42:50Liam McAnderson?

  Why can't we just, all right, all right, all right, let's, let's, let's, let's, all right, let's put our, our, our Reagan caps on, right? So we're gonna turn the dial all the way up to fucking drooling and, and sundowning and whatever else. Okay, great. Okay.

• 43:02Justin Roczniak?

  Well, I just think it's cool when they shoot the big guns.

• 43:05Liam McAnderson?

  That was a lot better than I expected it to be, and I'm a little annoyed.

• 43:09Liam McAnderson?

  Why do we not simply that nuclear carriers are real big, right? Like the, the, what's the, what's the, the, the, the big one right now?

• 43:17Speaker 00

  The Ford.

• 43:19Liam McAnderson?

  Ford class, there we go. Um, so why don't we, and I, hang with me, folks. Why don't we simply point a hundred and five millimeter guns on the aircraft carrier? Everybody wins.

• 43:31Justin Roczniak?

  Well, cause the turret can't rotate because it'd be on the runway.

• 43:35Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 43:36Liam McAnderson?

  Okay, I'm, I'm quitting. All right. Send me my, send me my check. Send me my check. I'll see you, I'll see you.

• 43:41Justin Roczniak?

  It would obstruct the airplanes. You need a, a debt anyway.

• 43:45Liam McAnderson?

  Put it low, put it at the waterline for all I fucking care.

• 43:48Justin Roczniak?

  But then there's a big, we did an episode of the podcast about this. You can't do that. It sinks the ship.

• 43:56Liam McAnderson?

  The thing that really pisses me off, right?

• 44:00Liam McAnderson?

  Is that you're right far more often than you're wrong.

• 44:06Liam McAnderson?

  Yes, go ahead. I love this electronics, nineteen forty-three to nineteen sixty-nine. Oh, good.

• 44:11Justin Roczniak?

  Yes. So, so how do you load the gun? Okay, here, here, here we go, right? Here, here is a shell. Look how big that is. Very large. Next to a man.

• 44:22Liam McAnderson?

  Damn.

• 44:23Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah. So the shells are really, really heavy. They're brought up to the gun on an elevator. That's, uh, this guy here, I mean, essentially like a dumb waiter system. Tips them over, they roll down into this chute here, right? And there's a big hydraulic ram back here, right? And the big hydraulic ram rams the shell into the breach of the gun, right? At the bottom of the shell down here, that'll be a color.

• 44:51Speaker 00

  It's literally just an enormous gun.

• 44:53Liam McAnderson?

  Oh, like a musket. I mean, this is a musket. Like, I'm seeing, I'm seeing the words big silk bags of gunpowder, which I'm gonna tell you, I don't like that much.

• 45:02Justin Roczniak?

  The, down here is a copper band and the copper band engages with the rifling of the barrel. As the shell is rammed in there, right? Therefore, the projectile spins when it comes out of the gun. It's sort of like mechanical deformation. It actually, the gun barrel wears out fairly quickly as a result of this. But that's the way it's done, right? Then the same elevator will come up and discharge these big silk bags of powder, right? Gunpowder. These will also be rammed into the gun, but crucially, at a slower speed than the projectile, right?

• 45:46Justin Roczniak?

  Because if you over ram the powder, bad things happen.

• 45:51Speaker 00

  This is, how did we not lose all of these ships?

• 45:54Justin Roczniak?

  I, you know, there's only been a couple of turn explosions.

• 45:57Liam McAnderson?

  Dumb luck and a deal with the devil.

• 45:59Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah. Yeah. So, so choosing between the two speeds for ramming, there's no safety interlock. The, the rammer man just has to get it right every single time.

• 46:13Liam McAnderson?

  Wait, wait, wait, just has to know?

• 46:15Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 46:16Liam McAnderson?

  Oh, yeah.

• 46:17Speaker 00

  The, the bright line philosophy of loading a gun.

• 46:20Liam McAnderson?

  Fuck, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 46:22Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 46:22Liam McAnderson?

  Do it, do it right. It's not your problem anymore. Hell, yeah.

• 46:25Justin Roczniak?

  Exactly. Just, just do it right every single time and you'll be fine, right? This is

• 46:34Speaker 00

  Can you imagine having like OCD and working here?

• 46:38Liam McAnderson?

  No.

• 46:39Speaker 00

  Holy shit.

• 46:40Liam McAnderson?

  I wasn't gonna let you in the Navy in the first place.

• 46:43Speaker 00

  Just like, oh, the intrusive thoughts have got to be crazy.

• 46:46Liam McAnderson?

  Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I'm gonna go, I'm gonna have to see baby. Let's, let's do it.

• 46:50Justin Roczniak?

  Once you've rammed the shell in and rammed the powder in, you close the breach. And then the gun aims and fires, right? And that's the process. I mean, you know, there, there's been a rather rosy projection about how operating a turret works. By, uh, whatever the heavy turret simulator do hickey is on Steam right now. No, no, it's all very manual. You need like fifty people to do it, you know? Cause there's, there's these guys up here and then you got like thirty guys working in a powder room.

• 47:29Speaker 00

  It's like scaling up the misery of being the like ball turret gunner.

• 47:34Justin Roczniak?

  Yes.

• 47:35Speaker 00

  To like fifty people. God, it's crazy.

• 47:39Liam McAnderson?

  It is baffling to me that this is manual. It is baffling to me that this is manual.

• 47:43Speaker 00

  Well, yeah, cause I mean, when they invented this in the thirties, they had invented robotics yet.

• 47:48Liam McAnderson?

  I understand that, but like it's whatever, it's the eighties. Like we have fucking cool stuff and computers exist now. They're not just, we're not just running around with goddamn idiot anymore.

• 47:58Speaker 00

  But think about how bad it would be for like the, the libido, the libidinal like urges of the Navy if we had to like automate this.

• 48:05Liam McAnderson?

  Oh, you wanna talk?

• 48:06Speaker 00

  Like those fifty men are hard.

• 48:08Liam McAnderson?

  Yes, I know. I was gonna, you gotta pout. I know the, I know, I know.

• 48:13Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah. You're just like, yeah, we computerized the turrets and then you just toss a HP laptop into the breach.

• 48:20Liam McAnderson?

  All right, how you go? Good luck.

• 48:24Speaker 00

  This is why we gotta check their testosterone now. You gotta be, you gotta be a high T to ram the gunpowder into the bore.

• 48:30Liam McAnderson?

  No, no, no, go back. We're doing that. I missed.

• 48:33Speaker 00

  Yeah, we're mandatory testosterone testing. Certain military officials over the age of like thirty-five, not even like, cause originally it was gonna be optional and now it's literally mandatory. And they will force you to take testosterone supplements if you say you have like low libido or something.

• 48:48Liam McAnderson?

  Okay, good. All right. So we just, so, so, so the answer is clear. The answer is.

• 48:53Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 48:53Liam McAnderson?

  Everybody, I implore you, listening, watching, whatever you're doing, we're all gonna join the Navy. We're all gonna get real weird. Look at me in my eyes. Real weird.

• 49:04Justin Roczniak?

  In the Navy.

• 49:06Speaker 00

  See, I'm like

• 49:09Liam McAnderson?

  Great song, dude.

• 49:10Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, it's really good one.

• 49:11Speaker 00

  I don't think we can successfully make the US Navy weirder than it is.

• 49:15Liam McAnderson?

  We're gonna, we're gonna, we're gonna queer the Navy is what we're gonna do.

• 49:17Speaker 00

  You can't do that anymore.

• 49:19Liam McAnderson?

  No, you get, just keep turning the dial. We can do this.

• 49:21Justin Roczniak?

  You couldn't do it then either.

• 49:23Liam McAnderson?

  You could absolutely do it then.

• 49:25Speaker 00

  Liam, are you familiar with the city of San Francisco?

• 49:29Liam McAnderson?

  Unfortunately, yes.

• 49:30Speaker 00

  You can't make the Navy gayer.

• 49:32Liam McAnderson?

  I'm gonna force them in the Navy, I think is my response to this.

• 49:37Justin Roczniak?

  Let's look at the USS.

• 49:39Speaker 00

  You're telling me that there could be fifty butch women inside that turret ramming the bore full of gunpowder? I'm actually, I'm on board now.

• 49:46Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah, I'm sure. Yeah. No, yeah. Fuck you. Sign my ass up. Sign Ross's ass up too. I don't care what he wants.

• 49:54Justin Roczniak?

  Press gang.

• 49:57Liam McAnderson?

  If I ever have to join the military under duress, you are absolutely coming with me.

• 50:03Liam McAnderson?

  This is my emotional support, Ross.

• 50:06Justin Roczniak?

  Please be mess officer. Please be mess officer.

• 50:12Justin Roczniak?

  Congratulations, you got bilge pump cleaner.

• 50:16Speaker 00

  Honestly, like, I feel like if I was gonna, if I was gonna be press gang into the Navy, it would be pretty cool to actually be the person who's loading the gun, not because the job would be good, but because if anybody ever gave me shit, I could kill 50 people.

• 50:29Justin Roczniak?

  Oh, hold on to that thought.

• 50:35Speaker 00

  Like, let's say they gave me shit for being gay or something, right?

• 50:39Justin Roczniak?

  Hmm.

• 50:39Speaker 00

  That would be a great way to get back at them. Anyway, I'm not doing, I didn't like read through the notes beforehand or anything. I'm just kind of spitballing some ideas that I would have as a devious, like tricky homosexual.

• 50:51Justin Roczniak?

  Yes. So let's look at the Iowa. Our story starts as USS Iowa is being overhauled. This isn't like the main overhaul that restores the ship. This was a subsequent overhaul. It's being overhauled in preparation to go relieve the USS New Jersey, which was stationed in Lebanon, where they'd been firing guns and everything and anything over there. It was in an actual conflict and they kept missing like nearly every single time.

• 51:27Justin Roczniak?

  And time was of the essence. So the new captain of the USS Iowa, Fred the Moose, Mooseley, elected to forego some important turret repairs. So he could get out of the shipyard in Norfolk more quickly and devote those resources to the engines instead. This is going to cause some problems, right? And with that, I guess we should look at some of our cast of characters, right? So this is Captain Mooseley here.

• 52:02Liam McAnderson?

  They're actually close to New Mussolini, I just want to put that out.

• 52:05Justin Roczniak?

  Ah, yes. Uh, the Moose, he was a big college football guy. That was his thing. He played college football. He'd let you know about it every single time. He approached being the captain of the ship.

• 52:19Speaker 00

  He was a battleship captain because he had enough CTE to get the necessary Alzheimer's to be into them.

• 52:24Liam McAnderson?

  Don't worry about that.

• 52:25Justin Roczniak?

  Well, he was an office guy. He was a man predicted to exist in 1878 by one W. S. Gilbert. Um, now landsman, all whoever you may be, if you want to rise to the top of the tree, if your soul isn't fettered to an office stool, be careful to be guided by this golden rule. Be careful to be guided by this golden rule.

• 52:52Liam McAnderson?

  So good.

• 52:53Justin Roczniak?

  Stay close to your desks and never go to sea. And you all may be rulers of the Queen's Navy.

• 53:00Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah, alright.

• 53:01Justin Roczniak?

  He was an office guy. He, he spent all his time as he rose through the ranks in an office in the Pentagon or in the Navy office in Washington DC. He was not like someone who went out to sea frequently. He was not a guy who, he had a command of a destroyer briefly, but he is trying to improve his career and his superiors are like, look, look, Mooseley, if you, if you want to write, if you want to make Admiral, you need a C command.

• 53:32Speaker 00

  And so you cannot blow up the ship, we'll promote you.

• 53:35Justin Roczniak?

  All you have to do is not blow up the ship.

• 53:39Liam McAnderson?

  I just want to point out, I just want to point out one thing, and this is not to his credit. Mooseley graduated in 1966 with a class ranking of 812 out of 868.

• 53:48Speaker 00

  He was good.

• 53:49Liam McAnderson?

  That's, that's too many officers, man. That's too many fucking officers.

• 53:52Justin Roczniak?

  That's, that's, that, uh, they had a lot, the shit, this is, this is like, that's only like half the people on the ship, though. Um, it's like a six, 1600 people on the ship. You need a lot of officers.

• 54:06Liam McAnderson?

  And he's dead.

• 54:07Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah. So he relieved Captain Larry Sequest, who was the sort of respected and admired captain. He had really good relations with his officers. The men all loved him. He was running as tight a ship as could be achieved with the Iowa. We'll sort of talk about that in a bit. Um, you know, everyone liked Larry Sequest. Um, Mooseley shows up and he's like, alright, I want to get one thing straight with you guys. Fuck you.

• 54:41Liam McAnderson?

  His name is Sequest, the old guy's name was Sequest. I, that's called nominative determinism.

• 54:46Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah. So, so Mooseley comes in and he's screaming at people. He's installing his own, like special cronies. You know, he, he, he, he and his cronies sort of try and kick basically anyone who's a senior officer who's competent off the ship, you know? It's, it's, it's, again, you gotta read the book. It's pretty crazy, right? You know, a lot of people, what the first, uh, the first meeting and, uh, what's the, the officers, uh, the wardroom? Um, you know, everyone is just leaving in disbelief because you're like, why is he, nothing's happened yet? Why is he just screaming at everyone?

• 55:25Liam McAnderson?

  Um, you just got here, man, calm down.

• 55:27Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, exactly. Um, so, uh, another important character here is the fire control master chief, Stephen Skelly, right? And so Stephen Skelly was also, uh, popularly known as the pots and pans man. What? Previously, he sold kitchenware before he joined the Navy.

• 55:53Liam McAnderson?

  World's finest. World's finest Navy, baby.

• 55:55Justin Roczniak?

  His thing was being a big dumb nerd about battleships and specifically gunnery onboard battleships, right?

• 56:05Liam McAnderson?

  Okay, I actually, this does sound promising because those guys tend to take safety seriously. I'm gonna bet he doesn't though.

• 56:11Justin Roczniak?

  No, no, he does not.

• 56:13Liam McAnderson?

  Okay, great. Thanks, Freddie Foreshadowing.

• 56:16Speaker 00

  You gotta love when somebody is like autistic about a thing, but not about like operating the thing safely. Yeah, like, you know, it's, it's almost cute when it's about like, I don't know, like putting your Jeep in very precarious situations. Um, but it's less so when it's a shit full of people and like a gun with like 50 dudes inside the gun.

• 56:36Justin Roczniak?

  So, yeah, you, you would think this would be a good thing. It was not, um, Captain Sequest's officers kept, uh, Skelly on a pretty short leash, but under the Moose, he was allowed to conduct all sorts of unauthorized experiments with the 16 inch guns.

• 56:54Liam McAnderson?

  Why?

• 56:54Justin Roczniak?

  He's using illegal powder configurations. He's using different types and batches of powder to try and get either more range or more accuracy out of the guns, all in frag, flagrant violation of safety regulations, right? Um, and even more alarmingly, sometimes these experiments worked. We'll get to that later.

• 57:19Speaker 00

  Hello and welcome to the USS Iowa. Uh, we have a segment on the ship called Safety Third.

• 57:25Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 57:26Liam McAnderson?

  I'm Moose and welcome to Jackass.

• 57:30Justin Roczniak?

  We have Clayton Hartwig, who, who worked in turret two. Uh, nice Seventh Day Adventist boy, wouldn't hurt a fly. Um, I, I didn't write as much in there as I should have anyway. And we have over here is Kendall Truitt, who is a bastard and one of our protagonists.

• 57:49Liam McAnderson?

  Sonic frog.

• 57:50Justin Roczniak?

  So he, he, uh, after, after the last time he left the Iowa, he stole a car and drove up to visit his mom in, um, like Illinois, I want to say, and then stole a different car to drive down to Norfolk to, uh, get back on the ship, right? Amazing. It was a Camaro, I think.

• 58:13Liam McAnderson?

  Oh, hell yeah. Well, if you're gonna steal a car, right? Like.

• 58:15Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, exactly. Um, he is the shipboard loan shark, right?

• 58:22Speaker 00

  Official position?

• 58:25Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah. Something like, you know, like, like a huge amount of enlisted men are in debt to him.

• 58:30Speaker 00

  This is the kind of shit. This is the kind of shit that we, the innovation and like small business, like can do attitude that we have lost by outsourcing this kind of work to CalShee and, and all these fucking sports betting firms. Like we, we've deprived an entire generation of men like Kendall.

• 58:49Justin Roczniak?

  Exactly, exactly. You know, a couple of times, uh, he gets away with it too, just because, you know, uh, so many men are in debt to him. You know, one of the officers has to come down and declare a debt jubilee, which he does by just handing Kendall a huge check.

• 59:07Speaker 00

  See, okay, I just zoomed in on this image and I understand why he was allowed to get away with it. It's because he has the operator glasses that people on Twitter think makes you an extra lethal, uh.

• 59:15Justin Roczniak?

  Oh, yeah. He has this, he, he looks like Mr. Navy. Um, you know, this, this is a big advantage for him, right?

• 59:23Speaker 00

  Hair like a Lego brick.

• 59:25Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 59:26Speaker 00

  You know?

• 59:28Justin Roczniak?

  The other thing I wrote down here is I was thinking, okay, you come in to park your car before deployment. You don't want to lose that parking stub. You know, you come back six months later and you don't remember if you parked in the olive drab lot or the gunmetal gray lot, you know?

• 59:44Speaker 00

  Well, just you, you got, that's why there's so many like options packaged for Dodge Challengers. So you can find it in the lot.

• 59:51Justin Roczniak?

  That's true.

• 59:52Speaker 00

  Next to all the other Dodge Challengers that everybody else bought.

• 59:55Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah, but I got mine in Hellraiser, a real color Dodge will sell you.

• 59:59Speaker 00

  I know. I will, I, I hate to hand it to Stellantis, but their color names have been pretty good since about nineteen seventy.

• 1:00:06Justin Roczniak?

  Another two guys who were important to the story, um, who I couldn't find pictures of were, uh, Dan Meyer, who is, I think he's promoted a few times through the course of this story. So I, he ends up as a lieutenant and gunner's mate, first class Dale Mortensen. Um, Dan, uh, Dan Meyer in particular seems to show up everywhere on the ship and be one of the last generally competent people around, right? So anyway, Captain Fred Musley takes charge and they go to the dry dock. And this is where we got to talk about the problems in the turrets, right?

• 1:00:45Liam McAnderson?

  Right, okay.

• 1:00:46Justin Roczniak?

  So there had been some modernization of the electronics in some of the turrets, right? They had new circuit boards and everything, or they had newish circuit boards. And one of the problems with, I, I, I was never able to get this straight. They were either upgraded with the refurbishment of the ship and they weren't good. Or they had just had this problem since nineteen thirty-nine, but every time the guns fired,

• 1:01:14Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:15Justin Roczniak?

  Every time the guns fired, the circuit boards would just fall out of their housing.

• 1:01:20Liam McAnderson?

  Oh, good.

• 1:01:20Justin Roczniak?

  And it, you know, and you, everything would go dark.

• 1:01:24Liam McAnderson?

  One use only circuit boards, yeah.

• 1:01:26Justin Roczniak?

  Pretty much. Yeah, yeah. It was, you know, in order to use the guns, you sort of had to bypass everything with alligator clips. They're leaking hydraulic fluid everywhere. The firefighting systems were non-functional. The compressed air tanks, the compressed air tanks are used to blow compressed air into the gun barrel. So that after each round, you can flush out all the horrible, volatile, flammable gases in there. You know, the compressed air tanks didn't work. Now, that meant you had to get compressed air from the main ship system from engineering, which was inconsistent.

• 1:02:08Justin Roczniak?

  The ready safe switches were inoperative. That's sort of the stuff that prevents the gun from firing unless you really want it to. So.

• 1:02:16Speaker 00

  Chrysler built this?

• 1:02:19Liam McAnderson?

  Stellantis.

• 1:02:20Speaker 00

  Yeah, like this sounds like a nineties Chrysler product.

• 1:02:24Justin Roczniak?

  The lighting was inadequate, particularly in turret three, I want to say. They had to use twenty watt light bulbs because anything else would blow the fuses.

• 1:02:36Liam McAnderson?

  Oh my God.

• 1:02:38Justin Roczniak?

  In turret two, the powder hoist was inoperable, so they had to haul it all up the stairs.

• 1:02:45Speaker 00

  I do love the idea of having mood lighting inside your like naval ship turret.

• 1:02:49Liam McAnderson?

  Gamer lighting.

• 1:02:50Speaker 00

  I, it would, it would go crazy in there though. Like, can you imagine how good the sex would hit? Like, yeah, we're fucking on a gun that can kill everybody aboard and we have mood lighting.

• 1:02:59Liam McAnderson?

  Bisexual, yeah.

• 1:03:01Speaker 00

  Damn, making the Navy sound cool. I'm sure nothing will change this in the future slides of this episode.

• 1:03:06Liam McAnderson?

  Don't worry about that.

• 1:03:07Justin Roczniak?

  So to fix all of this would cost one million dollars.

• 1:03:14Liam McAnderson?

  Okay, that sounds reasonable by naval standards, so I'm sure they're not gonna do it.

• 1:03:18Justin Roczniak?

  By Navy standards, yeah. Captain Fred Busily

• 1:03:23Liam McAnderson?

  Oh boy.

• 1:03:23Justin Roczniak?

  had just taken the ship out, or he was gonna take the ship out for sea trials. And he was like, it's gonna be real embarrassing if this thing can't make full speed. So he redirects all of that funding to engineering, which was also a department that was having a lot of problems. And the gunnery officers had to resort to cum shawing, right? Which is essentially.

• 1:03:50Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's what I was just talking about in the ship. Doing it inside the turret.

• 1:03:54Justin Roczniak?

  That's sort of wheeling and dealing with the shipyard workers to get work done in the turrets to get anything fixed.

• 1:04:02Speaker 00

  Obviously I miss Nova always whenever she's not on this podcast, but now I really miss Nova being here.

• 1:04:07Justin Roczniak?

  Well, yeah.

• 1:04:07Speaker 00

  The sexual tension we could make from this is crazy.

• 1:04:10Justin Roczniak?

  Nah, yeah, I, I, uh, God, come back Nova.

• 1:04:19Speaker 00

  It just, like, I, I, I, I know that she would have something good for this. Cum shawing?

• 1:04:23Justin Roczniak?

  Cum shawing.

• 1:04:24Liam McAnderson?

  Oh, oh, Rita Hayworth in Cum Shank Redemption now. Come back tonight.

• 1:04:31Liam McAnderson?

  Cum Shaw Shank Redemption, there we go. I got it. I got it. I got it.

• 1:04:35Justin Roczniak?

  Able to correct some issues this way, but functionally the turrets were still in pretty much the same shape that they were in nineteen thirty-nine, except worse, you know, because of age. No one in charge really cared about this. So long as the guns could fire, it was all good, right? The weapons officers are like way more concerned about stuff like the missiles and the, the gun that shoots down civilian airliners and all that other crap, right?

• 1:05:03Liam McAnderson?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:05:03Justin Roczniak?

  Another problem in the gun was the powder. No new powder had been manufactured since nineteen fifty-two.

• 1:05:11Liam McAnderson?

  What?

• 1:05:12Justin Roczniak?

  Well, most of it dated back to the nineteen thirties.

• 1:05:17Liam McAnderson?

  Okay. All right. Yeah. Why not? I don't, I don't even care anymore. Fuck all these people.

• 1:05:21Justin Roczniak?

  While the ship was in dry dock, the powder had been stored in unventilated barges on the James River, where various nefarious chemical reactions could have been accelerated by hot and swampy temperatures.

• 1:05:38Speaker 00

  That's a crazy sentence you just wrote.

• 1:05:42Justin Roczniak?

  When the powder was reloaded, many bags of powder were covered in mold. They smelled of ether and the various batches of powder had been intermixed, making firing inaccurate and unpredictable. Despite being warned by nearly all of his subordinates that the powder was bad, the new ship's gunner, Master Chief James Hickman shrugged and said, yeah, it's probably fine.

• 1:06:07Liam McAnderson?

  It, but, but, but it's not.

• 1:06:10Speaker 00

  I mean, like, what would he have done if he had said they weren't? Did they have more powder that was newer?

• 1:06:15Justin Roczniak?

  Yes.

• 1:06:16Speaker 00

  Oh, well then I guess he's just stupid.

• 1:06:20Speaker 00

  I was really trying to find a systemic cause to not blame this one guy, but now fuck him.

• 1:06:24Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah. So, uh, um, it's in Dan Meyer. I'm not sure if he was an ensign at this point. I think of, the rank is confusing here. I don't understand ranks. A Dan Meyer gunner's first mate, uh, first class, uh, Dale Mortensen, taking upon themselves while the powder's being loaded to, uh, go find the worst of the worst shit and toss it over the side.

• 1:06:54Justin Roczniak?

  But most of the bad powder makes it on anyway, but you know, once you shoot the powder, it's downrange's problem, right?

• 1:07:03Speaker 00

  Well, yeah, but it's gotta make it out of the barrel.

• 1:07:05Liam McAnderson?

  If, if.

• 1:07:06Speaker 00

  Which seems like a problem if your gunpowder is bad. Not that I'm like, you know, a gun expert, but it seems like that is an important part of firing a gun.

• 1:07:15Liam McAnderson?

  I, uh, don't, so you're, you're, you're a trans woman living in the Pacific Northwest. You are basically a, a, a, a American sniper marksman.

• 1:07:26Speaker 00

  Call me, call me Christina Kyle.

• 1:07:30Liam McAnderson?

  Hopefully you don't get gotten the same way, but yes.

• 1:07:33Speaker 00

  How did he get got anyway?

• 1:07:35Liam McAnderson?

  Uh, he got, he got, uh, shot at a shooting range, right?

• 1:07:39Justin Roczniak?

  Oh.

• 1:07:40Speaker 00

  Likely thing to happen.

• 1:07:41Justin Roczniak?

  Likely twice.

• 1:07:42Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah. He got wrecked at a shooting range.

• 1:07:45Speaker 00

  Well, yeah, I hope, I would like to avoid that. No, I'm gonna do.

• 1:07:48Liam McAnderson?

  Murdered by Eddie Ray Ruth at the rough, at the Rough Creek Lodge, uh, near Chalk Mountain, Texas. Yeah.

• 1:07:53Speaker 00

  My, my goal is to end up with my Jeep, like somewhere where people are like, how did it get there? You know, like, like the, you know, and there's that scene in Jurassic Park where there's like the Ford Explorer in the tree.

• 1:08:04Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:04Speaker 00

  I'm trying to dice through some shit like that.

• 1:08:06Justin Roczniak?

  How, how do you get a, how do you get the Jeep Cherokee into the nutty putty cave?

• 1:08:13Speaker 00

  Four-wheeling through a, a, a Magara fault.

• 1:08:19Justin Roczniak?

  All right, it's time to talk about stunts. The James River is very crowded with naval vessels and is very shallow in a lot of areas, making it notoriously difficult to navigate, especially for a wide, flat-bottomed ship like the USS Iowa. Oftentimes, but not always, these battleships would need assistance by tugboats and a civilian pilot to enter the harbor. Now, the previous captain, uh, Sequest was an extremely good helmsman and would often do this on his own just to keep in practice. But Fred Musley takes the ship out on August twenty-fourth, nineteen eighty-eight with a new untested navigator,

• 1:09:03Justin Roczniak?

  a new untested helmsman.

• 1:09:05Liam McAnderson?

  Yes.

• 1:09:06Justin Roczniak?

  For an excursion around the bay.

• 1:09:08Liam McAnderson?

  Oh, great talk.

• 1:09:09Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah. When, when they returned to the James River from the Chesapeake Bay, uh, it was just about a day later. Despite the fog that had rolled in, the moose decided he doesn't need any stinking tugs. He had his helmsman sail right up over the bridge tunnel, down the James River, promptly had near messes, near misses with three other naval vessels, ran over every buoy denoting the location of nimble shoals, which the ship then beached itself on. This wrist brink, bricking the engine's cooling systems with soft mud, but by heroic efforts from Chief Engineer Jerry Ware, that was avoided.

• 1:09:54Justin Roczniak?

  He knew those engines real good. He knew that if, if you stopped them, you were fucked. He had to run them full blast just to keep the mud from solidifying in the systems.

• 1:10:04Liam McAnderson?

  Like an air-cooled Porsche. Hell yeah. Don't get stuck in traffic.

• 1:10:08Speaker 00

  No, I was thinking, this is more like, uh, when you, when you've got a GM product and you got some pretty old deck school in there, you just gotta redline the shit out of it so it doesn't congeal.

• 1:10:20Justin Roczniak?

  So they were beached there for about an hour and Musley asked for a tug and a civilian pilot. So that's gone poorly. Master Chief Skelly went around every regulation in the book to figure out how to shoot a shell as far as humanly possible. Coupled with the fact that the moose didn't really schedule shots that often, essentially every salvo from the sixteen inch guns was some kind of bizarre experiment.

• 1:10:51Justin Roczniak?

  We're talking about custom hollowed out shells filled with cluster munitions.

• 1:10:56Liam McAnderson?

  Oh, good.

• 1:10:56Justin Roczniak?

  Right? Shells. Shells with timers attached so they can act as depth charges.

• 1:11:03Speaker 00

  Can you please? Yes, I've got a, I've got a special one for you today. Here, can you fire this war crime for me, please?

• 1:11:10Justin Roczniak?

  He referred to them as his baby killers. Yes.

• 1:11:16Speaker 00

  I love, I love how whenever you try to like, everybody ever tries to make an excuse to the military, like we see this a lot now with the bombings of like civilian boats off the, in the Caribbean, right? Where it's like, well, let's do some 5D chess about how it's not these guys' fault and they, you know, the Nuremberg Defense is actually real for them.

• 1:11:35Liam McAnderson?

  No.

• 1:11:35Speaker 00

  And then anytime any of them open their mouths, they're like, I fucking love war crimes.

• 1:11:40Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah, you're just like, alright.

• 1:11:44Justin Roczniak?

  It was like, damn, that would be war crime even if there was drugs on the boat.

• 1:11:50Justin Roczniak?

  The crews performing these experiments were largely untrained in gunnery because, again, the moose didn't use the guns very often. It was difficult to train people. This particular experiment made Dan Meyer and Mortensen really mad, though. This was an experiment to shoot a modified ancient shell from before World War II with seven bags of powder, including one supercharged bag, right?

• 1:12:24Liam McAnderson?

  No.

• 1:12:27Speaker 00

  These guys would have been so good as like gun tubers or something, you know? They shouldn't have been controlling a naval ship, but they probably would have made some good videos.

• 1:12:35Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah. They voiced their concerns to superior officers who said, yeah, that sounds bad. And they let the experiment go on anyway.

• 1:12:45Liam McAnderson?

  Right.

• 1:12:47Justin Roczniak?

  On the day of the shoot, in a show of confidence in the safety of the test, the entire bridge crew, all the officers on the bridge of the ship, crammed themselves into the armored helmsman's citadel.

• 1:13:00Liam McAnderson?

  Right.

• 1:13:02Justin Roczniak?

  Now, surprisingly, this test worked. The shells flew 48,000 yards, that's 27 miles, and they were only about 75 yards off target. This was, in fact, a record for 16-inch gun artillery, although there had been some tests back in the 50s with nuclear artillery that had gone farther. Now, from this test, no data was gathered and nothing was learned, but Captain Fred Musley was able to brag about it.

• 1:13:34Speaker 00

  I don't want to hand it to him, but like 27 miles, 75 yard?

• 1:13:39Justin Roczniak?

  That's pretty good, yeah.

• 1:13:40Speaker 00

  Is pretty good. Like, it's completely pointless. You risked everybody's life for nothing. This was already like 30 years obsolete, but it is, I mean, if you're gonna enter a dick measuring competition that's completely pointless anyway, and you do measure an insanely long dick, it's kind of like, well, I suppose that is kind of.

• 1:13:57Justin Roczniak?

  20, 27 miles of dick.

• 1:14:00Liam McAnderson?

  Oh, yes.

• 1:14:02Justin Roczniak?

  You gotta.

• 1:14:03Speaker 00

  I think it's really funny that like, I think it's really funny that Pete Hegseth is the latest in a long line of like, American military greatness. We just make these guys.

• 1:14:12Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah. Another stunt was the John Wayne shoot.

• 1:14:17Liam McAnderson?

  No.

• 1:14:18Justin Roczniak?

  There was a senior officer who saw a cool picture of a battleship firing off six rounds at once from the two forward turrets aimed just off the starboard side of the bow and decided he would like to have the Iowa have such a cool picture, right? So the John Wayne shoot was born, so-called because it would be cool, like John Wayne.

• 1:14:43Liam McAnderson?

  Oh, my God.

• 1:14:44Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:45Liam McAnderson?

  Wrong, wrong, dumb and bad.

• 1:14:48Speaker 00

  Are you, are you familiar with Gil Scott-Heron?

• 1:14:51Justin Roczniak?

  Yes.

• 1:14:51Liam McAnderson?

  Yes.

• 1:14:52Speaker 00

  Are you familiar with Gil Scott-Heron's song, "B Movie"?

• 1:14:55Liam McAnderson?

  Yes.

• 1:14:56Justin Roczniak?

  I never listened to that one.

• 1:14:57Speaker 00

  It is one of my favorite songs by him. It feels like it never, unfortunately, goes out of style, but it's largely about how America desperately sought a savior in the form of John Wayne, but John Wayne was not available, so they got the next best thing, Ronald, as, as Gil Scott-Heron called him, Ronald the Ray Gun.

• 1:15:17Justin Roczniak?

  Ronald the Reagan.

• 1:15:18Speaker 00

  Yeah, and I just can't stop thinking about it for this entire story. This culture is so fucking stupid.

• 1:15:26Liam McAnderson?

  And, oh, Killer Mike has a song about Reagan. Is it just called Reagan?

• 1:15:29Justin Roczniak?

  That's just right, Ronald Wilson Reagan 666.

• 1:15:33Liam McAnderson?

  Yep.

• 1:15:33Justin Roczniak?

  Yep. Turrets one and two were aimed about 15 degrees starboard, so from where we're looking in this picture, they'd be going

• 1:15:45Justin Roczniak?

  this way a bit. Turret one, that's the forward turret, got off three rounds. Turret two got off three rounds, and in the process, because the guns were aimed in such a way, the turret two's guns were on top of turret one's guns.

• 1:16:01Liam McAnderson?

  Jesus Christ.

• 1:16:02Justin Roczniak?

  It ripped all the bloomers off turret one's guns. That's the, the big, the big

• 1:16:09Justin Roczniak?

  fabric, whatever you call it, that, that is over the, that covers the area where the gun rotates up and down, right? They're, they're very big, like, heavy, expensive canvas thingies that are impossible to replace. Yeah, and it ripped them all off, right?

• 1:16:30Justin Roczniak?

  There was the huge fireball from turret two flashed all the accumulated nasty water in the bloomers into steam, right? This was luckily not able to penetrate the turret, but the shockwave did. All the electrics went out in turret one.

• 1:16:47Justin Roczniak?

  You know, and anything that was like tack welded to the wall fell off, right? All the lights went out, everyone was screaming, it was chaos and pandemonium. From the outside, there was so much steam, it looked like the turret was on fire. The turret also started on its own, slowly rotating towards the port, right? But there was also chaos on the bridge. The captain wanted the cool picture, right? With the electrics out on turret one, that wasn't gonna happen. So he was furious and hooting and hollering and yelling, and everyone's yelling at each other on a bridge, when a chief suggested, why not fire by percussion, right? And this is sort of a final method of desperation, where you physically fire the gun,

• 1:17:32Justin Roczniak?

  not through some electrical system or something you can control remotely. No, there's a little firing hammer on the inside of the gun, you attach a hook to it, and you pull a piece of string, right? This bypasses all the safety procedures and interlocks such that they existed, right? And the moose thinks this is a great idea. He gives the order to do it. And the guys in turret one are like, no, no, fuck you, no. Right? One of the gunners like just throws the percussion string down the, down the shaft of the turret, right? You know, everyone, and the, the bridge just responds by yelling louder.

• 1:18:16Justin Roczniak?

  You know, this is a fuck you, no, fuck you type situation. This dance continues for a while, until both Dan Meyer and Dale Mortensen calmly ask the bridge to look at where the guns were pointing.

• 1:18:30Liam McAnderson?

  Come on, mutiny.

• 1:18:31Justin Roczniak?

  Turret one was now pointed directly forward, and if the turret had had obeyed the order to fire, it would have shot the bow off the ship.

• 1:18:41Liam McAnderson?

  Should have done it, should have done it.

• 1:18:43Speaker 00

  It is, every time I hear any story about the US Navy, I'm kind of amazed we haven't had more mutinies.

• 1:18:50Liam McAnderson?

  Oh, yeah, me too.

• 1:18:50Speaker 00

  It like, being at a ship at sea sucks. I have friends who've been like civilian mariners, I have a couple who have been like on naval, US Navy ships. It's terrible in the best of times, and the fact that it's just, it's just all these guys up and down, the whole like.

• 1:19:06Justin Roczniak?

  It's always just guys, guys screaming at each other constantly over nothing.

• 1:19:10Speaker 00

  And they're always like, you are, like, they basically do the Lord Farquaad speech every time they fucking deploy. It's like, where it's like, some of you will die and I don't give a fuck. Like, you're, you are toys for me to play with, so I can move my way up the ranks and retire and write a book about, you know?

• 1:19:26Liam McAnderson?

  How hard, how hard it was, right?

• 1:19:28Speaker 00

  Yeah, like, it's just, it's insane to me.

• 1:19:30Liam McAnderson?

  I thought that you all died.

• 1:19:31Speaker 00

  I like, I was really, I was really, when I started seeing pictures of the gray slime meat that they were serving aboard ships in, in the, like, Strait of Hormuz area.

• 1:19:41Liam McAnderson?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:19:42Speaker 00

  I was really hoping we were gonna get like the US battleship Potemkin. It would have been so cool if our battleship Potemkin had been the Abraham Lincoln. It just would have been, it would have felt right, you know? I would have been like, yeah, that's my America, baby. And then, you know, sail into, anyway, I can't say the rest of that sentence.

• 1:19:55Liam McAnderson?

  No, you can't. Don't.

• 1:19:57Speaker 00

  No, I, I, look, I said some shit on here that Devin didn't bleep, and I heard back later, and I was like, I'm not saying that again. Devin let a few through that I was like, I love you, Devin, but I was like, that was probably not the most advisable thing for me to have said. Because, you know, Cash Patel runs the FBI. I don't want him to listen to this recording.

• 1:20:18Liam McAnderson?

  No, but he's, he's fucking donkeys, whatever it is he's doing these days.

• 1:20:21Speaker 00

  That's true, yeah. I mean, thank God that they're doing the inverse Mr. Hands investigation, where they just create more Mr. Hands.

• 1:20:30Liam McAnderson?

  Can we, can we move on to the next?

• 1:20:35Speaker 00

  I'm sorry, you don't like my, you don't like the Pacific Northwest culture I try to bring to this show?

• 1:20:39Liam McAnderson?

  I don't want to do horse fucking or being fucked by a horse or whatever it is we're doing now.

• 1:20:44Justin Roczniak?

  The two, the two gunnery officers here over the sound-powered phone, that's a fun thing they got on ships. It's a phone that uses no electricity, it's just powered by sound. They hear from the bridge, every single officer up there say, oh shit, in succession.

• 1:21:02Justin Roczniak?

  Thus ended the John Wayne shoot.

• 1:21:04Liam McAnderson?

  Jesus.

• 1:21:05Justin Roczniak?

  There were further exercises to come.

• 1:21:08Liam McAnderson?

  Great.

• 1:21:09Justin Roczniak?

  You may guess that this ship had some morale problems.

• 1:21:13Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah, yeah, that that sounds about right. Yeah.

• 1:21:15Justin Roczniak?

  Sailors in turret one in particular were like openly discussing committing suicide.

• 1:21:22Liam McAnderson?

  Oh.

• 1:21:22Justin Roczniak?

  Everyone sending letters home proclaiming the damn ship is a mess. It's gonna blow up. You know, it was, it was, it was not a good situation out there. Then came Fleet X, right? In early April, I want to say this is, yeah, 1988. The USS Iowa ships out to participate, participate in Fleet X three eighty nine, right? Which was a series of naval exercises designed to show off the capabilities of the newly refurbished battleship.

• 1:21:55Justin Roczniak?

  Hold on a second.

• 1:21:56Liam McAnderson?

  Oh, he's dead.

• 1:21:58Justin Roczniak?

  I'm just gonna live with that.

• 1:21:59Liam McAnderson?

  All right.

• 1:22:00Justin Roczniak?

  Part of these exercises included a secret missile experiment.

• 1:22:06Liam McAnderson?

  What?

• 1:22:07Justin Roczniak?

  The USS San Jacinto would lob an actual honest to God armed and everything tomahawk missile at the USS Iowa to test some fancy new electronic countermeasures.

• 1:22:21Liam McAnderson?

  Why?

• 1:22:22Justin Roczniak?

  Just put on the ship.

• 1:22:23Liam McAnderson?

  Why you, we have computers at this point. You could just, okay. Yeah, it's fine.

• 1:22:29Justin Roczniak?

  No, we gotta test it.

• 1:22:30Liam McAnderson?

  It's fine. Everything's live.

• 1:22:34Justin Roczniak?

  We gotta see what happens.

• 1:22:37Justin Roczniak?

  This, this test was kept secret from the crew.

• 1:22:40Liam McAnderson?

  Wonder why?

• 1:22:42Justin Roczniak?

  It was the only knowledge anyone had about it was it's weird that they, uh, a crane lifted this truck trailer full of, uh, uh, electronic equipment onto the ship. And there's these weird civilians who won't talk to us on board. What the hell is going on? Some of the gunnery crew broke into the trailer and found out about the experiment. And they were unhappy about the situation.

• 1:23:08Speaker 00

  How have we never had a, a major mutiny? How? Seriously?

• 1:23:13Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:14Speaker 00

  They're lobbing actual armed missiles at you for fun.

• 1:23:18Justin Roczniak?

  Theoretically, if the electronic countermeasures didn't work, the missile was supposed to pull away at the last second and then go whack into a Liberty ship.

• 1:23:28Liam McAnderson?

  Sure it was.

• 1:23:29Speaker 00

  I'm doing the jerk off motion here. Okay.

• 1:23:33Speaker 00

  But is it legal to advocate for mutiny? What's the, can we get a lawyer in the comments really quick? So I can tell where my jokes can, how far I can go with it.

• 1:23:43Liam McAnderson?

  Surely we could just ask my dad.

• 1:23:45Speaker 00

  Yeah. Can you call him really fast and see if I'm legally allowed to make these many jokes about mutiny?

• 1:23:49Liam McAnderson?

  Hang on. Let me look. Simple refusal to obey is not mutiny. Um, uh, yeah, I think we can get in trouble. It sounds like we can get in trouble.

• 1:23:57Speaker 00

  Damn. Okay. Well.

• 1:23:58Liam McAnderson?

  We're not, we're not a part of the UCMJ, so I don't know what they're gonna do.

• 1:24:03Speaker 00

  It would be kinda crazy if they just started court. It'd be crazy if they started court marshaling random trans women because we wear camo. Like, that's actually the technically qualifies. He was a combatant.

• 1:24:13Justin Roczniak?

  I don't know. I don't know how they'd find you.

• 1:24:16Speaker 00

  I mean, presumably the IRS would just share my address.

• 1:24:19Justin Roczniak?

  Oh.

• 1:24:20Liam McAnderson?

  You gotta not pay taxes.

• 1:24:21Justin Roczniak?

  I was making a camouflage joke.

• 1:24:24Speaker 00

  God damn it. Jesus Christ.

• 1:24:28Justin Roczniak?

  Turret two was scheduled for an overhaul.

• 1:24:30Liam McAnderson?

  Anyway.

• 1:24:31Justin Roczniak?

  The night before the tomahawk test, which was performed to the best of the completely untrained crew's ability, which is to say poorly. There was also a new experiment to be performed that day. Skelly was gonna use D eight four six powder charges. And that eight four six just refers to the batch number of gunpowder, right? It's sort of, uh, um, you know, cause each batch performed a little bit differently. There was not a lot of consistency. And he was gonna use D eight four six powder charges on a twenty seven hundred pound shell, which is the biggest one. Now, one of the notable things about that particular batch, D eight four six,

• 1:25:14Justin Roczniak?

  is they had a very distinctive feature on all of the bags. Large friendly letters that say, warning, do not use with twenty seven hundred pound projectile.

• 1:25:25Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah, but.

• 1:25:25Speaker 00

  I do love the example image of the bag here that appears to be just taken as like a conversation piece in somebody's home. Like, there's like a, a nice pleasant wood floor and like a, a really like tasteful blue painted. It's not a, that's not a military base. That's just somebody's house.

• 1:25:45Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:45Speaker 00

  I know what you are.

• 1:25:49Justin Roczniak?

  So anyway, warning, do not use with twenty seven hundred pound projectile. That sign, that's probably for somebody else.

• 1:25:57Liam McAnderson?

  That can't stop because I can't read.

• 1:25:58Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah. Now, the worry with the D eight four six, uh, lot is that this is a, this particular batch of powder was known to burn very, very quickly. And the Navy was worried that too much pressure would build up behind a heavier shell before it started moving. And rather than being propelled out the barrel, it would just explode the barrel. So with this in mind, it's the nineteenth of April, nineteen eighty nine. Okay, the date I said earlier was wrong. Excuse me.

• 1:26:31Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah, fine.

• 1:26:31Justin Roczniak?

  Nineteen eighty nine, there's a pre-fire meeting. It establishes all the parameters. We'll fire all the guns to port unless we feel like firing starboard. Or maybe we want to do it at some angle. Doesn't matter. We will fire all the guns in a direction. Right? We're gonna fire all the guns, including the ones we can't fire because they don't work. If you're confused by the firing plan here, just consult the firing plan, which we didn't write.

• 1:27:01Liam McAnderson?

  Oh, good. Oh, good.

• 1:27:02Justin Roczniak?

  Um, we're gonna use the illegal powder and shell combination, except in turret one, where Mordenson just flat out refused to allow it. And we'll fire the gun at some point during the day. Is that all clear? Does everyone get that?

• 1:27:19Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:20Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:20Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah. So we're, so we're fucked is what I'm hearing.

• 1:27:22Speaker 00

  How did we win the Cold War?

• 1:27:24Liam McAnderson?

  We didn't.

• 1:27:25Justin Roczniak?

  Because the Russian Navy is worse than this somehow.

• 1:27:31Speaker 00

  Jesus Christ, I cannot believe we managed to pillage the entire earth for all of its wealth.

• 1:27:37Liam McAnderson?

  I.

• 1:27:37Speaker 00

  And directed here with this.

• 1:27:39Liam McAnderson?

  I know.

• 1:27:39Speaker 00

  It's really like.

• 1:27:41Liam McAnderson?

  Baffling. It's baffling.

• 1:27:42Speaker 00

  Genuinely, ideologically, obviously, like, we're terrible, but.

• 1:27:47Liam McAnderson?

  But they're worse, so fuck them.

• 1:27:49Speaker 00

  But just how?

• 1:27:50Justin Roczniak?

  Captain Boosley tells the bosun to give the order to man the turrets.

• 1:27:56Speaker 00

  Oh, uh, Roz, I think you mean boat swain.

• 1:27:58Justin Roczniak?

  It's not.

• 1:27:59Speaker 00

  I can read that word. It says boat swain.

• 1:28:01Justin Roczniak?

  It's the bosun. It's the bosun, Victoria. It's bosun. God damn it.

• 1:28:08Justin Roczniak?

  I don't even know how to respond.

• 1:28:09Liam McAnderson?

  I do want to say, uh, you keep saying, uh, moosily, and I wish you would say boosily because it sounds like boosie or boy pussy, and I think that's funnier. Can you?

• 1:28:18Justin Roczniak?

  This is moose pussy.

• 1:28:21Speaker 00

  Let's see. Yeah, it's about an hour and a half in, so it's about right. We're only halfway through the slides.

• 1:28:25Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:26Speaker 00

  That's about the right point for that.

• 1:28:28Justin Roczniak?

  Only about thirty minutes later, the turrets were manned and as ready as they could be. New additions to the turret crews were helpfully provided by the master at arms, who simply took anyone who looked like they were lollygagging and shoved them into a turret.

• 1:28:44Liam McAnderson?

  Like as ammo or just to work there?

• 1:28:48Justin Roczniak?

  Just to stand around. This included legal man, first class, more, Robert Morrison and Michael Hilton, who were now standing around inside turret two, getting in the way of everything because they had no assigned duties because they were part of the ship's legal counsel. Uh, not gunners.

• 1:29:10Liam McAnderson?

  What? What? Sure. No, I don't, it doesn't even matter. Doesn't even matter.

• 1:29:14Justin Roczniak?

  No, it looked like if you can lean, you can clean, you know? Another late addition was Clayton Hartwig, who wasn't scheduled to be in the turret that day, but was regrettably the best qualified man available for the job, right? Uh, I, shit, I want to say, I forget if he was in charge of the whole thing or if he was, he was, um, the point is he was in the turret, I guess. Um, and so the exercise began. They're gonna fire the guns. Turret one misfired and it misfired again, I want to say. In breach of regulations that said in peacetime, you had to, uh, um,

• 1:29:54Justin Roczniak?

  clear the misfire before you fired any other guns, um, they kept shooting, right? On the bridge, the moose was entertaining the top brass who dropped in for the exercise. He said to Vice Admiral Jerome Johnson, now this, this is my best turret. Watch these guys shoot. Gave the order for turret two to shoot.

• 1:30:17Speaker 00

  Now watch this drive.

• 1:30:18Liam McAnderson?

  Now watch this drive.

• 1:30:20Justin Roczniak?

  Turret two exploded.

• 1:30:26Justin Roczniak?

  There's a massive fireball that tore through the gun room into the turret officer's booth, made its way downstairs to the powder handling room where it ignited further bags of powder, which caused a second explosion. These bags have been coated in a new wear-reducing polyurethane jacket.

• 1:30:44Liam McAnderson?

  Oh, yeah, they did.

• 1:30:46Justin Roczniak?

  Decomposed into cyanide gas.

• 1:30:49Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah, it did. Yeah. Hell, yeah. This is awful.

• 1:30:53Justin Roczniak?

  A third blast followed nine minutes later. I believe that was from antifreeze that had been stored topside illegally.

• 1:31:02Speaker 00

  Jesus Christ.

• 1:31:03Justin Roczniak?

  Nearly everyone in the turret was killed instantly. The only survivor.

• 1:31:07Liam McAnderson?

  You'd hope, right? This will reach out and liquefy pretty quick.

• 1:31:11Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:12Speaker 00

  Oh, my God.

• 1:31:13Justin Roczniak?

  The only survivors were way down in the magazine. They had a hell of a job evacuating through the exploded area. They reported glowing red hot surfaces, arms, legs, heads everywhere.

• 1:31:26Speaker 00

  It is, it is the ball turret at sea. But like, you can kill fifty people at once instead of one. Cool. I, I love manmade horrors beyond my comprehension. I think it's sick.

• 1:31:37Liam McAnderson?

  I feel like this was kind of within your comprehension, right? Like.

• 1:31:40Speaker 00

  I don't, I'm not gonna lie to you. I don't.

• 1:31:43Liam McAnderson?

  There's.

• 1:31:43Speaker 00

  If I walked into a room where the walls were glowing red and it was full of disembodied body parts, I don't know how well I would comprehend that. I'm not gonna lie.

• 1:31:52Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah, fair enough.

• 1:31:52Justin Roczniak?

  Oh, there's some crazy body horror in the book. Like, my God.

• 1:31:57Liam McAnderson?

  Don't like that.

• 1:31:58Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah. The moose like looks at this and has no fucking clue what to do.

• 1:32:03Liam McAnderson?

  Oh, really?

• 1:32:04Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah. He sounds general quarters and everyone does the normal general quarters panic. You know, get to your battle stations, baden down the hatches, so on and so forth. The result was that the hatches were now badened down and the firefighters couldn't get anywhere.

• 1:32:22Liam McAnderson?

  Oh, my God, dude.

• 1:32:25Justin Roczniak?

  So they have to unbatten down the hatches and um, oh God, the new chief engineer. Because if you remember the heroic effort to save the ship by the previous chief engineer. Obviously, that guy was good at his job, so he was fired.

• 1:32:42Speaker 00

  Oh, my fucking god.

• 1:32:43Justin Roczniak?

  The new chief engineer panics and tries to cut the power to the front of the ship where the fire was, right? And that would have shut down the fire pumps. Luckily, another officer intervened and said, fuck that guy. I'm chief engineer now. Send that guy to the brig.

• 1:33:03Justin Roczniak?

  And so, yeah, no one on the bridge knows what the fuck is going on. There weren't even blueprints of the turrets to refer to, so people knew where stuff was connected to. So you could figure out how the fire might spread. Dan Meyer was the helmsman for the day. Cause he's, again, he just shows up everywhere. He offers to go down to the turret and survey the damage. He goes down there with two other guys. They have breathing apparatus and they enter a sort of hell, right?

• 1:33:33Speaker 00

  That sounds about right.

• 1:33:34Justin Roczniak?

  You have the, all the powder bags are glowing bright red. There's bodies everywhere. There's body parts everywhere. They, they, they, they go in and they pretty quickly retreat because it's just, even with the breathing apparatus, it's so inhospitable in there. And they tell the moose, you gotta flood the turret with seawater right now, right? And this was done and below decks, this smothered the remainder of the flames, right? Above decks, the turret is still on fire. Shortly afterward, the ship starts listing alarmingly far to starboard, so they start pumping the seawater out.

• 1:34:14Justin Roczniak?

  And that was slow going because of the pumps. They brought in portable submersible pumps. And they kept getting clogged with body parts.

• 1:34:23Speaker 00

  Jesus Christ.

• 1:34:24Justin Roczniak?

  In the meantime, the firefighters had finally fought through all of the locked hatches on the ship. And they got access to the gun rooms where everything was on fire. There's headless bodies and bodyless heads everywhere. Like, there's, there's like five or six pages in the book of just straight up body horror of people who were disembodied, disemboweled and straight up turned to goo, right?

• 1:34:49Speaker 00

  Should laugh at that, but yeah.

• 1:34:50Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, and this is.

• 1:34:51Speaker 00

  We all come with a horror in our own ways here.

• 1:34:53Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, exactly. This is when the looting started.

• 1:34:59Justin Roczniak?

  Which is, in the chaos, a bunch of sailors took it upon themselves, alright, boys, this is now, we're gonna break into people's lockers.

• 1:35:08Speaker 00

  Jesus Christ. What the fuck is going on in the Navy?

• 1:35:14Justin Roczniak?

  Nothing good. No, my bad, Victoria.

• 1:35:20Speaker 00

  No, see, you've mixed up your trans women. I don't actually want to be in the military. I just like ammo.

• 1:35:24Justin Roczniak?

  Those who want to be a lawyer, I don't know.

• 1:35:29Justin Roczniak?

  Now, there was in fact, a team of naval investigative service accident investigators on another ship nearby. The USS Coral Sea. And they were told, nah, we don't need you guys, right? Once the fires were out, recovery of bodies and equipment started with almost no attempt to document the condition of the turret, the location of the everything. There was no attempt to preserve any evidence. In fact, they started cleaning and repainting the turret almost immediately with broken equipment and other useless junk thrown overboard because evidence is a made up concept by detectives to sell more detecting.

• 1:36:14Speaker 00

  My wife plays this game. She, she plays a bunch of games that are kind of just like, she's sort of like, you know, does a little bit of an edible, turns out for a bit. I, you know, I sit on the couch and read and she'll like play a little like mindless game before we go to bed. It's like part of her routine. And so I get to see a bunch of sort of like game of the week sort of steam.

• 1:36:33Speaker 00

  You know, flavor of the week kind of, you know, relaxing games. And the one that she's been playing a bunch recently is viscera cleanup detail.

• 1:36:41Justin Roczniak?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:36:42Speaker 00

  Like mop up blood. It's like you play in as like the person who cleans up the video game level after like, you know, the events of Half-Life happened, right?

• 1:36:50Justin Roczniak?

  Yes.

• 1:36:51Speaker 00

  If somebody had to do that with this, and it's like, yeah.

• 1:36:55Justin Roczniak?

  Horrifying.

• 1:36:56Speaker 00

  Genuinely horrifying. Like, no, I mean, like, one of the things I've thought about in the past is like, I, I remember reading somewhere about like tank warfare. And like, generally speaking, it's not that hard to repair a tank after certain kinds of hits. The hardest part is rinsing out the guys inside it before. And like, that seems like what happened here. And that just, it sounds bad.

• 1:37:16Justin Roczniak?

  Yes.

• 1:37:17Speaker 00

  Like that, that feels like it would give you a new kind of PT, like turbo PTSD that just, we, I don't know what kind of therapy you would need. I'm sure we wouldn't give it to you. Like, it just, we're oppositionally opposed to that as like a foundational tenant of like the US military. Like, nah, suck it up, man. Oh, God, Jesus, fuck.

• 1:37:38Justin Roczniak?

  The moose convenes a meeting with the officers and the ship's legal counsel. When the investigators come, don't tell them nothing. Right? A lot was at stake. The battleship program is already on thin ice because it was a stupid idea. An accident like this could terminate it permanently if the turrets or the powder or anything like that was found to be unsafe, right? We gotta keep our phony baloney jobs.

• 1:38:05Speaker 00

  Makes sense.

• 1:38:06Justin Roczniak?

  And independent investigator was appointed for in one officer informal investigation Admiral Richard Milligan. He arrived in pretty short order toward the site of the accident. Then it was time to take testimony from the sailor, sailors.

• 1:38:24Speaker 00

  Sailors.

• 1:38:24Justin Roczniak?

  Sailors, yeah. That's, that's a commentary on the Navy right there.

• 1:38:29Speaker 00

  There you go.

• 1:38:30Justin Roczniak?

  Anyone who had testimony about the accident should report to the ship's legal office. And about a hundred sailors showed up to the legal office. Most of them had to be turned away because the two legal men, whose job would be to take the testimony, had been shoved into the turret for no reason and blown up.

• 1:38:50Speaker 00

  Oh, my God.

• 1:38:51Justin Roczniak?

  And the senior legal officer couldn't handle the workload. Now, a controversial appointment to the investigative committee was Captain Joseph Micali as a technical advisor, right? He was, he was basically in charge of large bore gunnery in the Navy. And he determined from a quick inspection, well, there's nothing wrong with my guns or my powder. This had to have been sabotage. Whoa. But who? And why? And how?

• 1:39:28Speaker 00

  I do love that they, they hired, they called up like, uh, conflict of interest Georg.

• 1:39:35Speaker 00

  And they were like, hey, man, we, we need some help. Can you be unbiased?

• 1:39:38Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:39Speaker 00

  He was like, yeah, I got you.

• 1:39:40Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, I got you. I got you. No problem. These questions and more would be answered soon, but I have to use the restroom.

• 1:39:48Speaker 00

  Oh, good. Me too. I, what, I have to run the thing by myself on the Beastie Boys freeze frame?

• 1:39:55Justin Roczniak?

  Yep.

• 1:39:55Speaker 00

  Come on.

• 1:39:57Justin Roczniak?

  Just keep saying intergalactic and planetary. We'll be right back.

• 1:40:03Speaker 00

  I guess I could just talk about my Jeep.

• 1:40:05Justin Roczniak?

  Alright, I'll stay. No, I have to go. Sorry. I was like, I'll stay. No, I won't.

• 1:40:11Speaker 00

  I guess I get to do an advertisement for myself. Um, I was gonna do it at the end of the show, but, uh, I mentioned at the beginning of the show that also, hi, everybody. Uh, it's good to be back on. I, I've heard a bunch of you have missed me, uh, and I probably won't be here as much because as I said at the beginning of the show, I've got this job now. And I work for traction. And, uh, I did want to say, I was gonna say at the end of the episode, but I'll just do it now. If you are a trans person who is stuck in a, you know, bad state, if you're living like a red state and there's a lot of laws that make your life harder, it's difficult to get jobs or whatever, um, you know, our project open arms will, you can reach out. We're pretty, we're pretty booked.

• 1:40:50Speaker 00

  We are trying to on board more volunteers and get more capacity. Um, but you can reach out to us and we will do our best to connect you with somebody who can at least try to help you walk, like walk through the process. You know, we don't have like, we can't promise anything, uh, like super drastic because like, you know, we're a pretty small organization and we do our best. A lot of it is just mutual aid and peer support, but, um, it, you know, it can be helpful to have somebody who's like familiar with at least where you're trying to go. If you're like, oh, I want to move out to the West Coast and you don't know anybody out here. Now you probably do if you reach out to us. So, um, yeah, if you're in one of the situations that just feels like things keep getting worse, um, you do not have to be stuck there forever. Uh, I did this a while ago. Like I moved to Seattle about three years ago from rural Idaho. I didn't use traction.

• 1:41:32Speaker 00

  Because I just had some friends here who, you know, basically like helped me get out here, helped move my stuff. You know, I couch, couch surf for a while or whatever. And life did really get a lot better. Once I was in a place where I felt like safe and, you know, supported. So, um, things can be better. Uh, and if you are somebody who lives in a safe place, um, like Twin Cities or Chicago, or, you know, we have a lot of people in Seattle and Portland, um, and you want to volunteer, uh, please hit us up. We could always use more people who can help work as like peer navigators or like find out data for us. It'd like help, um, you know, sort of deal with the like influx of people who are trying to, you know, get moved and just get, get the more information, try to help them find jobs, try to, you know, review their resumes,

• 1:42:14Speaker 00

  give them the help with comfort letters, all that kind of stuff. Um, and if you have money, and if you have money, please give us money. That'd be great. But if you're listening to the show and you're transgender, you probably don't. So, um, anyway, this is not an official advertisement. Uh, we aren't, the traction is not affiliated with, well, there's your problem. Everything I say here is because I feel like saying it. Um, and I like what we do and I think it's worth, you know, doing public awareness about it. So there's my advertisement. Also, you should listen to Train Girl Esmo. There we go. That's, that's my other ad. Yeah. Talk a bunch about traction, advertise Train Girl Esmo.

• 1:42:47Justin Roczniak?

  Why is it called traction?

• 1:42:49Speaker 00

  Uh, trans community action.

• 1:42:51Justin Roczniak?

  Oh, I see. I see.

• 1:42:53Speaker 00

  Acronym ish kind of thing.

• 1:42:54Justin Roczniak?

  So my mind immediately goes to trolleys.

• 1:42:57Speaker 00

  Um, no, that, you know, it's a, you know, and also like, you know, spiritually, we're trying to like, help people get, get some forward momentum in their lives. Stop being stuck in like places like Salmon Idaho or Reno, Nevada, or Houston, Texas, all places I've been stuck in my life.

• 1:43:11Justin Roczniak?

  It's not ideal to be stuck in Reno.

• 1:43:13Speaker 00

  No, a miserable place. I mean, I feel bad because I have a friend who is there who's one of the most delightful human beings to ever been in my life. Um, and she loves Reno and she does a ton of work to make it a better place, but it's just like, it was not the place for me, you know?

• 1:43:27Justin Roczniak?

  That's where you go to.

• 1:43:28Speaker 00

  And she's, she is very much fighting an uphill battle.

• 1:43:31Justin Roczniak?

  It's where you go to shoot a man just to watch him die. Yeah.

• 1:43:34Speaker 00

  Or hate crime somebody.

• 1:43:35Justin Roczniak?

  I've been in Reno once briefly, but I was very sick and all I saw was a concrete retaining wall.

• 1:43:42Speaker 00

  Oh, you went through the train trench there?

• 1:43:43Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, I went through the train trench. Yeah. I was like, I was real excited to see the, the new Reno station. And then I got really sick and I was like, I can't. I, all I could do was open my eyes and say, yep, I'm in Reno. And then I fell back asleep.

• 1:43:56Speaker 00

  Huh. Yeah. I mean, you didn't miss a ton.

• 1:43:59Justin Roczniak?

  There's not much there.

• 1:44:00Speaker 00

  It is like, they got the arch. I mean, the thing is, is like, if you enjoy kind of American decay and sort of like, if you would like a time capsule of like, what actual seventies Americana, like the return stuff, like what would we be returning to? Well, it'd be this. Uh, Reno downtown is really cool for that because it mostly sucks.

• 1:44:18Justin Roczniak?

  That makes sense.

• 1:44:19Speaker 00

  If you want to go to like the most depressing casino of your life, you should go to like the Cal Viva or something. Um, which is just kind of fossilized from like 1973, uh, because the layer of cigarette smoke, it's just sort of permeates the entire interior as it cased everything in a Atari amber.

• 1:44:37Justin Roczniak?

  Oh damn, you know, it sounds like almost as good as an off track betting parlor in New York City.

• 1:44:42Speaker 00

  Yeah, really. It really is kind of, um, but yeah, I'm not a big, big Reno fan, unfortunately. And I've found it to be very hostile if you were transgender.

• 1:44:48Justin Roczniak?

  It was very confusing, that particular trip. Well, both trips I've taken to California now. A lot more rain than I expected. I heard there was no weather out there, apparently not.

• 1:44:59Speaker 00

  I mean, that's only true for like a small, like San Diego.

• 1:45:02Justin Roczniak?

  I guess that makes sense. Yeah.

• 1:45:04Speaker 00

  And like LA, I guess a little bit, although LA like it rains like once every six months and then everybody crashes their car at once.

• 1:45:10Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, yeah. I was, uh, I was, uh, I was taking on a tour of Malibu the day it was raining and I was like, why are we doing this? I don't want to be here.

• 1:45:19Speaker 00

  We have regained a Liam.

• 1:45:21Justin Roczniak?

  Have we regained Liam?

• 1:45:22Speaker 00

  We have regained Liam.

• 1:45:23Liam McAnderson?

  Hey, sorry about that.

• 1:45:25Justin Roczniak?

  All right. So in that case, as we said, sabotage, wah. But why, who, wow, how, et cetera. Well, there was, there were some leads, right? So Kendall Truitt and the now dead Clayton Hartwig had been good friends, but I thought we were good friends. Yeah. So, but yeah, on the ship, they were rarely seen apart. They had a good report, you know, yada, yada. They were very good friends. So of course all the crew were spreading rumors and making gay jokes, right?

• 1:46:04Liam McAnderson?

  Makes sense.

• 1:46:05Justin Roczniak?

  As it happens, there was an incident where they were like wrestling each other while they were supposed to be on watch, right? And, uh,

• 1:46:14Liam McAnderson?

  It's wrestling like, uh, what you, is this like a metaphor or a?

• 1:46:17Justin Roczniak?

  No, no, this is, this is just, this, this is just dumb 19 year olds.

• 1:46:25Justin Roczniak?

  And they were briefly investigated for the crime, the heinous crime of homosexuality.

• 1:46:31Liam McAnderson?

  That is the eighties.

• 1:46:33Justin Roczniak?

  In the Navy.

• 1:46:34Liam McAnderson?

  In the Navy.

• 1:46:35Justin Roczniak?

  Imagine, right? And this was under Captain Sequest and, uh, they, they pretty quickly determined, no, there's nothing there. That's, that's not real. Um, but they weren't goofing off on duty. So they got like a, a extra duty for that. Right? This is just a close platonic friendship between a nice devout Seventh Day Adventist boy and a complete bastard loan shark car thief, right? And I think that's beautiful.

• 1:47:07Speaker 00

  It's like me and Jordan on Train release mode, just yin and yang.

• 1:47:13Speaker 00

  We're so back and so over.

• 1:47:14Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah. One thing which is common in the Navy is for good friends to take out life insurance policies

• 1:47:23Liam McAnderson?

  Oh boy.

• 1:47:23Justin Roczniak?

  and name their friends as beneficiaries. This goes way back to like World War II and everything. Um, you know, in this case, Kendall Truitt was the beneficiary of Clayton Hartwig's policy to the tune of $50,000.

• 1:47:41Liam McAnderson?

  Uh huh.

• 1:47:43Justin Roczniak?

  Now, after the incident.

• 1:47:45Liam McAnderson?

  Oh, I forgot to tell you, I took life insurance out on you at one point.

• 1:47:48Justin Roczniak?

  Oh.

• 1:47:49Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah, it's a good cough. Yeah. Keep coughing like that. Can you do it?

• 1:47:52Speaker 00

  No, actually every, every podcast is actually just a ton team with a bunch of like, with a bunch of like,

• 1:48:01Speaker 00

  look, I watched Archer. I know what a ton team is.

• 1:48:03Liam McAnderson?

  The old double, the old double news. It's like an early form of life insurance, basically where the last person remaining of the group collects the pot.

• 1:48:11Speaker 00

  It's like reverse life insurance.

• 1:48:14Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:14Speaker 00

  That's, everybody pays in and then yeah, the last survivor gets it all. And obviously these are, these became illegal basically the minute they were invented because it, there's a huge incentive to kill people.

• 1:48:24Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah. Yes. They are still common among the French, which makes sense.

• 1:48:28Speaker 00

  Uh huh.

• 1:48:28Justin Roczniak?

  Oh, we be.

• 1:48:30Speaker 00

  No, regular life insurance pays out when you die, babe.

• 1:48:36Speaker 00

  Inverse, inverse life insurance.

• 1:48:38Liam McAnderson?

  It's the same mechanical process. It's, no, it's, think of it like a death lottery, right?

• 1:48:45Speaker 00

  Babe, you want to just be fourth, Mike?

• 1:48:49Justin Roczniak?

  It's, uh, it's, uh, as my, um, uh, engineering economics professor put it, life insurance is a, a bet, uh, with the, uh, insurance company. If you die, you win.

• 1:49:02Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah. But here's the thing, right? Uh, as I've explained many times, and especially to my wife, uh, I bet her half my stuff that I would love her forever.

• 1:49:10Justin Roczniak?

  Yes.

• 1:49:12Liam McAnderson?

  I really don't want to have to get more stuff. So, uh,

• 1:49:17Justin Roczniak?

  Let's go gambling.

• 1:49:19Liam McAnderson?

  No, I don't gamble. You know this.

• 1:49:22Justin Roczniak?

  So at the ceremony on the shore, Truitt planned to give all that money to Hartwig's surviving family, the Kubachinas, Kubachinas, I'm not sure which.

• 1:49:33Liam McAnderson?

  Doesn't matter.

• 1:49:34Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, it doesn't matter. Um, they agreed to this in person on the day of the ceremony, but Clayton Hartwig's sister Kathy, Kathy, excuse me, why am I saying, you know, this is.

• 1:49:44Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah, who gives a shit?

• 1:49:45Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:46Speaker 00

  I do appreciate your commitment to fucking up every.

• 1:49:50Liam McAnderson?

  You're allowed, you just hit the two hour mark. Uh, so we're good, we're good.

• 1:49:53Justin Roczniak?

  Podcasting madness is setting in.

• 1:49:57Liam McAnderson?

  You got it.

• 1:49:57Justin Roczniak?

  Kathy took upon it herself to see if she could convince the Navy to help ensure that Truitt made the correct decision since as we are all aware, he's a bastard, right? This letter winds up in the hands of Admiral Milligan, who finds it very interesting that Hartwig and Truitt were so close and there was this insurance policy. And there was, you know, Truitt had various convictions for illegal actions. And, you know, maybe we can connect this with the sabotage of turret two. And so the theory is assembled.

• 1:50:40Liam McAnderson?

  So they blew it up on purpose to collect the life insurance money recklessly endangering the lives of many.

• 1:50:45Justin Roczniak?

  No, no, there's more, there's more.

• 1:50:46Liam McAnderson?

  For Christ's sake.

• 1:50:47Justin Roczniak?

  There's more.

• 1:50:48Liam McAnderson?

  Yep.

• 1:50:49Justin Roczniak?

  Hartwig and Truitt were gay lovers.

• 1:50:52Liam McAnderson?

  So?

• 1:50:53Justin Roczniak?

  But Hartwig had been jilted when Truitt, like a gay man does, married a woman. Right? And in a subsequent depressive state, resolved to take himself out and everyone else with him. He constructed a bomb to blow up turret two, which he inserted into God, the gun just before it fired. It was the perfect plan.

• 1:51:19Liam McAnderson?

  But it's not the perfect plan. The perfect plan would just to be to blow the thing up with a tomahawk missile. They were firing at the ship anyway.

• 1:51:25Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. I also.

• 1:51:29Speaker 00

  I love when you open up the box of the entire history of America post-World War II and it's just McCarthyism. Like, oh shit, I'm sorry. It's lavender scare again. That's all we got.

• 1:51:40Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:40Speaker 00

  Lavender scare again, mom.

• 1:51:44Justin Roczniak?

  There was also, there was also an alternative theory that Truitt killed Hartwig for the insurance money. That one didn't have legs and also they were still gay in that theory. So anyway, naval investigative services were called in.

• 1:51:57Liam McAnderson?

  Okay.

• 1:51:58Justin Roczniak?

  And this is, this is, this is the agency that preceded NCIS. It was just NIS, right? They went down for a separate scandal that happened at the same time as this. It was called Tailhook. Um, which was, uh, uh, that was a whole, that was a Las Vegas hotel party that went too far. Um,

• 1:52:20Liam McAnderson?

  As all the good ones do.

• 1:52:21Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah. But we got to introduce Tom Goodman and Ed Goodwin, Naval Investigative Services Official Gadar Unit.

• 1:52:30Liam McAnderson?

  The blowjob brothers. Yes.

• 1:52:34Justin Roczniak?

  No, no, that's gay. That's bad.

• 1:52:36Liam McAnderson?

  The opposite of, what?

• 1:52:37Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:38Liam McAnderson?

  Oh.

• 1:52:40Justin Roczniak?

  The blowjob, but only for women, brothers.

• 1:52:42Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:42Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:43Liam McAnderson?

  Ring the clip like a doorbell, moving on.

• 1:52:45Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah. The mission is simple. Determine two things. Was he gay? And seriously, bro, how gay was he?

• 1:52:53Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah, I was gonna say.

• 1:52:54Justin Roczniak?

  So they first call on Kathy Kupacina to find out, under the auspices of helping out with the life insurance situation, what's going on, right? This interview goes poorly. They inform Kathy that her brother Clayton was a homosexual. She tells them, no, that doesn't sound right, which was a disappointing answer for the Goodman wins.

• 1:53:20Liam McAnderson?

  Goodman wins.

• 1:53:22Justin Roczniak?

  It proves difficult to interview the family in the family home, what with the kids screaming and all that. So they try conducting the interviews individually at the agents hotel rooms, where again, having put people through the rigmarole, they try and get Kathy to break down and admit she knew Hardwig was this sort of degenerate homosexual, which didn't happen, right? Um, a copy of Hardwig's will was found. So the agents paid to visit the Hardwig's parents' house and look through Hardwig's bedroom, right? They find not only the will, they find incriminating evidence of homosexuality.

• 1:54:04Liam McAnderson?

  Oh, do that.

• 1:54:04Justin Roczniak?

  He's writing letters.

• 1:54:06Liam McAnderson?

  I write letters.

• 1:54:07Justin Roczniak?

  That's pretty gay.

• 1:54:08Liam McAnderson?

  Oh.

• 1:54:08Justin Roczniak?

  Right?

• 1:54:09Liam McAnderson?

  Thanks, man.

• 1:54:10Justin Roczniak?

  Here's the kicker. The letters were to girls. Ew.

• 1:54:14Liam McAnderson?

  So, so just to, all right, let's, let's put on our lavender panic hats. It's all, it's all do it. All right. So I want to be very clear about something. You ever hear the Greg Giraldo bit where he's like, can you imagine writing like a Civil War airline out? Don't fuck nobody while I'm gone. That, that, but for dudes, maybe? Question mark?

• 1:54:35Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 1:54:35Liam McAnderson?

  Look, I, again, we're very, we're very open on this podcast.

• 1:54:39Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 1:54:39Liam McAnderson?

  We're all, whatever. You just don't join the Navy is my advice. You fuck all the dudes you want, just don't join the Navy.

• 1:54:44Speaker 00

  If you notice, if you notice, I haven't said anything. And I, it's because I'm trying to rotate my mind a bit, I can say. Cause I'm like, so do you, do you mind if I make, if I be a huge downer for a second?

• 1:54:57Liam McAnderson?

  Go for it.

• 1:54:57Speaker 00

  Can I, can I? Okay, cool. Permission to be a downer received engaging. Uh, when I was working at NASA, um, I was part of the ERG, you know, Employee Resource Group for gay people, uh, at Johnson Space Center. And we did like a monthly meetup and most of it was like, we all hung out and had like cookies and talked. And it was me who was like, the closet was translucent, but I was still kind of in it. And then a bunch of people who like had loved ones who had died of AIDS in the eighties. And then a couple of gay people who had somehow managed to survive the gauntlet of being hired by NASA to work on classified like space shuttle missions while they were gay in the eighties. And having to like convince the FBI that no, this is just my roommate, you know?

• 1:55:40Speaker 00

  So like, um, and so we, we had one month where we went, all sat down in a room and watched a PBS documentary about the lavender scare. Which was like, in retrospect, you know, this is my first kind of introduction to this. And it was like, in retrospect, like they, they focus a lot on the Madison society. And I disagree with some of those, like, uh, attacks that was taken. It was a lot of reformists versus kind of radical sort of, uh, talk. And it was PBS. So, you know, they were pretty happy with the reform. Doesn't matter. Yeah. If you ever watch a, a film about gay people who worked for the government, dedicated their lives trying to make things better. Um, and a bunch of them were hounded to death and killed themselves because of being gay in a room with a bunch of people who spent the first 15 years of their career, desperately hoping that didn't become them.

• 1:56:24Speaker 00

  It is the most emotionally affecting thing you could ever be part of. It's, it was just unbelievable to be in a room of people where it was like, yeah, this was real. This is what I, how my career went. And the whole time I was there, I was just like, God, I hope we never get back to this. Uh, so now I can't, yeah, I'm, I'm like, yeah. My blood is at a temperature that is actually on, it's like the, the, it's the powder bags. It's glowing. If you pointed a thermal gun at me right now, I would show up, I'm like, uh, missile lock.

• 1:56:56Liam McAnderson?

  Could Victoria shoot down a Sopwith camel?

• 1:56:59Justin Roczniak?

  Hmm. Uh, I'm not, I, I don't trust the Navy to answer that question.

• 1:57:02Speaker 00

  I played a lot of the Snoopy Flying Ace PlayStation two video game. So maybe shot down the red bear and a bunch. It's like a nine year old.

• 1:57:09Liam McAnderson?

  Radio.

• 1:57:10Speaker 00

  Thank you. Anyway, I'm going to go back to being quiet now.

• 1:57:12Justin Roczniak?

  Kathy Kupacina, who is part of the Seventh Day Adventist, uh, family, later describes these agents as extremely homophobic.

• 1:57:23Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 1:57:24Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah. The agents, meanwhile, instead of listening to the testimony, made up some bullshit about how the Kupachinas were all saying F slur this and F slur that. And it was obvious that Clayton Hardwig was gay and a disappointment to the family. And this kind of like, you know, I, all kinds of crap. It's, it's insane.

• 1:57:47Liam McAnderson?

  All right. I, I know it's not, it is, it is personally his fault because he did everything wrong. But we, we got it. We gotta dig up Reagan.

• 1:57:55Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 1:57:55Liam McAnderson?

  We gotta do it. We got it. We got a cadaver sign on Reagan.

• 1:57:58Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:57:59Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah. Kendall Truitt transferred off the Iowa in May of that year and was brought in for NIS questioning. Goodman and Goodwin had a simple question. Exactly how gay were you and Clayton Hardwig?

• 1:58:14Liam McAnderson?

  Born in a mountain, raised in a cave?

• 1:58:19Speaker 00

  Gunning and fucking is all that crap?

• 1:58:21Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah. Questioning lasted three hours. Truitt was never informed he was the subject of a potential criminal investigation. They received permission to search his locker, but the most incriminating evidence was in his apartment. The agent showed up to search the apartment. They met Truitt and his wife. And they said, my God, this gay man has an attractive sexy wife.

• 1:58:48Liam McAnderson?

  Deep cover.

• 1:58:48Justin Roczniak?

  Right? What?

• 1:58:50Liam McAnderson?

  Deep cover?

• 1:58:51Justin Roczniak?

  Deep cover, apparently, yeah. They, they, they are astonished by the presence of sex toys in the bedroom.

• 1:58:58Liam McAnderson?

  They're marital aids, Roz.

• 1:59:00Justin Roczniak?

  Marital aids, yes. And even more incriminating and a testament to the bad character of this man.

• 1:59:10Justin Roczniak?

  This man who works as a gunner in a battleship has books about battleship gunnery. Only a violent mind would have that. They took the books as evidence.

• 1:59:21Liam McAnderson?

  What?

• 1:59:25Speaker 00

  I am thinking, and like, I will admit, like, just given the sample size of people I hang out with regularly, having books about military equipment does correlate with being homosexual.

• 1:59:37Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:38Speaker 00

  This might be just my sample size. But it does seem to hold.

• 1:59:43Justin Roczniak?

  Several other interviews with sailors and family and so on go similarly. No one relates any evidence of Clayton Hardwig's homosexuality. All of them speak highly of his character and his mental state before the accident. He had a lot to live for. He was going to go to a, a sort of prestige post, uh, in London after his deployment on the Iowa. He had a, you know, he was, he was excited for that. This testimony, however, was apparently taken on opposite day because none of it registers with Goodwin and Good, uh, Goodman. And furthermore, none of it was recorded or written down. So they can say whatever they want.

• 2:00:25Liam McAnderson?

  Come on, assholes.

• 2:00:28Speaker 00

  I like how, I like how the, the ACAB thing holds so true that it even applies to like inter-agency, like the cops. Like these guys only investigate the Navy and presumably have also been through all of what involves being in the Navy. And they're still just like the most rotten bastards ever lived. Like if anybody is ever going to see themselves as the same, cut from the same cloth as the people they're investigating, it's presumably the guys who serve in the same branch of military as the guys they're investigating. Nah.

• 2:00:57Justin Roczniak?

  No.

• 2:00:57Liam McAnderson?

  Nah.

• 2:00:58Justin Roczniak?

  Nah, nah.

• 2:01:01Justin Roczniak?

  So of course, the next thing that happens is it leaks to the media. None of this was supposed to go out in the public. It's an early phase of the investigation. So yeah, it all leaks.

• 2:01:13Liam McAnderson?

  Ah, watertight, baby.

• 2:01:16Justin Roczniak?

  The press do what they love the most, which is both sides reporting.

• 2:01:19Speaker 00

  Yeah, you know, it's a sacred duty of journalism to endanger as many trans people as possible. But it was the eighties. So it was just gay people then.

• 2:01:26Justin Roczniak?

  Just gay people in general. Yeah. So an article appeared on May 25th in the Washington Post explaining that the Navy was investigating the Iowa turn explosion under the suspicion that it was sabotage by homosexuals.

• 2:01:44Liam McAnderson?

  And they did this with a straight, I hate to make a joke here, but a straight face, if you will.

• 2:01:48Justin Roczniak?

  I'm actually not sure if this article was the one that said it was by homosexuals. It might've been a NBC News piece that came out shortly afterwards. Right. This is sensational, right? Even though the author of the piece didn't believe the official line of inquiry. Cause let's be clear, no one involved who had a rank lower than Admiral, believed the official line of inquiry, except for like a few exceptions. Of course it had to be reported that way, right? You have to say, well, the Navy is investigating these people for this, you know? And, uh, and they don't do a lot to counter the narrative, right? Suddenly Clayton Hartwig and Kendall Truitt's names were mud, right?

• 2:02:34Justin Roczniak?

  And the deluge of media attention wouldn't stop for the Hartwigs for years. This also sort of forces the Navy to retrench its case against Hartwig, which was very flimsy to begin with. So they started a new round of interviews.

• 2:02:48Speaker 00

  Jesus fucking Christ.

• 2:02:50Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, Kendall.

• 2:02:52Speaker 00

  Here's the thing that's really offensive here, right? It's like then the, then these people for the rest of their lives are going to be litigating whether or not they were gay. Not even whether like, just taking it face value that if they had been gay, obviously they would have blown up the ship and 50 people.

• 2:03:07Justin Roczniak?

  Yes.

• 2:03:07Speaker 00

  Because you know, that's gay people for you, right? They love to commit mass murder. I, I'm so mad. I'm sorry. If I sound furious, it's because I am.

• 2:03:17Justin Roczniak?

  That, that, that is, that it is crazy looking back at this in year of our Lord 2026 and like, you know.

• 2:03:26Speaker 00

  Do you know what this is exactly? Do you know what this is exactly? Like, uh, you know, I mean, and obviously like granted, people have not died in this. So it is not a one to one comparison, but the tenor of this reminds me exactly of the, the internet, the, um, what was it? The IOC, the Olympic committee talking about, uh, Castro Semenya. And like whether or not she was eligible to compete. And then everybody was like, oh, is she transgender? And it's like, that was never in question. You're talking about like bullshit, like testosterone standards that have nothing to do with trans people. And then it becomes a culture war over us, completely negating the entire original issue. Where it's like, you people are, if it's like, you're, you're, you're hunting down imaginary trans people because you're so scared of the concept of coming across one.

• 2:04:11Speaker 00

  And it's like, this isn't even about us. Anyway, sorry, I'm, I'll, I'll be normal now. I'll be, I won't be furious.

• 2:04:17Justin Roczniak?

  I, I, I'm, I'm, I'll, I'll do my best to change, to, to, to change that.

• 2:04:24Speaker 00

  Thanks. Great.

• 2:04:26Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah. We gotta, we gotta talk about now the interrogation of David Smith.

• 2:04:31Speaker 00

  Are you familiar with the shapes place? I'm going to go there.

• 2:04:36Justin Roczniak?

  So David Smith was one of Hartwig's, uh, few other close friends, right? The NIS descended on him, took him to an interrogation room. There was Agent Tom Goodman there and a different guy, right? They sat him down. Unfortunately, he did not ask for an attorney. Folks always ask for an attorney when you're talking to police.

• 2:04:57Liam McAnderson?

  Goddamn time.

• 2:04:58Justin Roczniak?

  In fact, don't talk to police at all, if you can avoid it.

• 2:05:01Liam McAnderson?

  Nope. Every day, shut the fuck up Friday.

• 2:05:03Justin Roczniak?

  For over seven hours and 40 minutes, the agents tried to plies out some admission that Smith knew Hartwig was planning something that he was a disturbed prevert of some kind. He was out to murder himself and his fellow sailors. The agents threatened him with 47 counts of accessory to murder, perjury, obstruction of justice, so on and so forth. And Smith, to his credit, didn't quite crack the first session. He was let go. He returned to the USS Iowa where he had to stand for a nine hour watch. And then the agents were like, you know, we really should, uh, audio recorded that, uh, interview.

• 2:05:45Justin Roczniak?

  Let's bring them back. So they brought him back immediately. This time they, they did a videotape and audio recording. So it'd be harder for him to recant his statements later. And Smith, at this point, very sleep deprived, basically loony. He spills the beans. He's like, yeah, yeah, Hartwood was gay. And he was always trying to fuck me and he made a bomb. And I saw it once. He showed it to me. He took it out of his bag. He had a big square timer on it with big digital numbers.

• 2:06:18Liam McAnderson?

  Guys just carrying around a bomb. It's like a everyday carry sort of dealer.

• 2:06:23Justin Roczniak?

  And this astonished the agents. Finally, some progress. We have something. Of course, of course. Why didn't I see it before? A time bomb. Yes, a time bomb that tested that ruffian. Of course he knew from the ship's firing plans, the precise moment the guns would be loaded and go off. Such a well-oiled ship as the Iowa, there could be no doubt. And of course, of course he'd be right there to plant the device. It was the perfect plan. But of course you couldn't keep it to yourself. You had to tell someone you needed them to know of your dastardly scheme, but that, that would be your downfall. I'm on to you Clayton.

• 2:07:03Liam McAnderson?

  That was beautiful and alarming.

• 2:07:10Liam McAnderson?

  How's your voice feeling bud?

• 2:07:12Justin Roczniak?

  Pretty bad.

• 2:07:16Justin Roczniak?

  With that naval investigative services initiated the process to subpoena every receipt from every radio shack within 200 miles of Norfolk naval base. David Smith showed up the next day to recant all of his testimony. But there was also further evidence recovered from Clayton's car.

• 2:07:38Liam McAnderson?

  Big fuck off dildo.

• 2:07:40Justin Roczniak?

  The book. My God, the book. Getting even the complete book of dirty tricks. Such a nefarious tome, a dastardly dictionary of deceit, a calamitous codex. A good Christian character would own the madman Clayton seized by lust, but jilted by his lover. Dove into this horrible handbook for instructions on bomb construction.

• 2:08:11Justin Roczniak?

  Getting even the complete book of dirty tricks is a 60 page joke book. This was waved around as evidence in multiple press conferences. Exactly who this was for remains unknown. Again, no one was buying any of this whose name didn't start with Admiral.

• 2:08:35Justin Roczniak?

  There was however, some actual testing going on in this investigation. Aside from the Navy's toxic Yowie fan fiction, they were trying to do some testing, right?

• 2:08:53Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah. Yeah. It's hard on my voice.

• 2:08:57Speaker 00

  It was worth it. If this is your final podcast, that was a wonderful stand.

• 2:09:02Liam McAnderson?

  Genuinely one of the, one of the funniest bits I think you've ever done.

• 2:09:06Liam McAnderson?

  Terrific.

• 2:09:08Justin Roczniak?

  At the Naval Surface Warfare Center, Dahl Green Division in Virginia, there were multiple test fires to try and replicate the exact way that the time bomb exploded the shells. Of course, Misselli was in charge, right? The test gun was an ancient rusty and the barrel was about 90% worn down. But it was what they got, right? Despite their best efforts, they can't replicate the exact way the shell was stuck in the barrel. 44 inches up. Eventually they switched from the time bomb theory to a chemical explosive theory, which I believe the, the theory was he made a, he made a bomb out of, um,

• 2:09:53Justin Roczniak?

  Brill cream, a little dabble do ya?

• 2:09:55Liam McAnderson?

  Sure. Yeah.

• 2:09:57Justin Roczniak?

  They, they can't get that one to detonate on impact at all. It would either light up the gunpowder before ramming or fizzle out inside the barrel, right? Section of the accident shells rotating band. We pointed that out earlier. It's the copper ring that sort of engages with the rifling of the barrel. Right? They were sent off for testing at the Norfolk naval shipyard and independently to the FBI crime lab in Washington. Right? At the Norfolk naval shipyard, they found the smoking gun. This copper ring was contaminated by silicon. Silicon can only come from an integrated circuit such as one might find on a timer from Radio Shack.

• 2:10:42Justin Roczniak?

  Used to construct the time bomb. Proof of blasphemy given hand in the shot.

• 2:10:54Justin Roczniak?

  And the FBI asked, has there been any potential for contamination between the incidents? And the tests and the Navy said, no, the only thing we've done to the shell was to drill into it with huge drills and attach hooks to pull it back out of the shell and drenched it in a chemical called break free and also several other things, various lubricating oils, whacked it a few thousand times with a industrial hammer, right? And the FBI said, I don't know, that sounds like there could have been some contamination. And Captain Misselli said, nah, nah, that's not contamination. And the FBI walked off the case.

• 2:11:39Speaker 00

  I love the idea of just walking up to like, uh, Sculder and Mulder and Scully and dropping a big like fucking dripping wet with PB blaster shell on a lab desk and being like, here, just as it was fired. So I've watched a lot of X-Files lately. So mentally, the FBI is just those two to me.

• 2:12:02Justin Roczniak?

  There was also some interest in grabbing the other two shells from the turret that had been stuck in the guns and which were also laboriously and, um, you know, very, very loudly extracted from the guns. They, they had been pulled out and the Navy lost them. So they couldn't do comparative analysis. So, you know, obviously, uh, what, what we got there? That's some, that's some fine forensic work, boys. Case closed. Uh huh. So.

• 2:12:35Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah. All right. All right. Cool. Wrap it up.

• 2:12:37Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah. No, that's, that's what the Navy does. That's, and they're like, the only thing left to do is inform the families.

• 2:12:44Speaker 00

  Oh.

• 2:12:47Justin Roczniak?

  The Navy is done with the investigation. Now they have to inform the families.

• 2:12:52Speaker 00

  They're done with the investigation. So they decide that the guys are gay and that's it?

• 2:12:56Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 2:12:57Speaker 00

  Like, that's the actual conclusion of the investig- they literally could not get anyone to say, yes, they were gay. And they just decided that this is what they were going with.

• 2:13:05Justin Roczniak?

  You know, I guess.

• 2:13:06Speaker 00

  I fucking hate America. I fucking hate America.

• 2:13:11Liam McAnderson?

  Probably the correct take. Yeah.

• 2:13:12Speaker 00

  I, I, I hope that we get our asses kicked, which we are.

• 2:13:18Liam McAnderson?

  The land, what is this guilty land? The crimes of this guilty land can all be purged through blood.

• 2:13:23Justin Roczniak?

  Hold on, there's still more though.

• 2:13:24Liam McAnderson?

  Oh my God. I hate everything.

• 2:13:26Justin Roczniak?

  So the way they decided to inform the families is we're going to film a propaganda video explaining exactly how Hardwig had constructed a bomb and inserted it into the gun, killing himself and 46 of his crewmates.

• 2:13:40Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah. Can I cut you off there, Ross? We've all, we've all seen the video. It shares, if I could turn back time, music video shot on the deck of the USS Missouri. We've all seen it.

• 2:13:49Justin Roczniak?

  That one also had a juicy, or no, the Mississippi had a Tern explosion. Excuse me, not the Missouri. Yeah. So as well as how the testing was performed, the results of said tests, you could, if you knew what you were looking at, you could see some interesting editing on these, uh, on these tests.

• 2:14:06Liam McAnderson?

  Oh, really? Could you?

• 2:14:06Justin Roczniak?

  But, you know, this, this, uh, this tape was to be brought to each and every family who, uh, of a victim on either VHS or Betamax. And if the family did not have a VHS or Betamax player, they were going to bring that to them. Or in a few cases, they had to bring the whole television.

• 2:14:28Liam McAnderson?

  What about LaserDisc?

• 2:14:29Speaker 00

  Wheeling, having a naval officer wheel in the fucking substitute teacher. Yeah. So anyway, here's how faggots killed your child and 47 other people. I can say it.

• 2:14:42Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah, but I can't.

• 2:14:43Speaker 00

  Well, I'm sorry.

• 2:14:44Liam McAnderson?

  I'm always alarmed.

• 2:14:45Speaker 00

  Try sucking dick then, and you could get to say it too.

• 2:14:49Liam McAnderson?

  I feel like I have to go the whole way, right? Like I got a divorce, my wife, just marry Roz, which again.

• 2:14:53Justin Roczniak?

  Look, I have it from, I have it from some, uh, sources in naval investigative services, uh, services that you can have a wife and still be gay.

• 2:15:03Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:15:04Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 2:15:05Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah. What do you want to hang out next?

• 2:15:06Justin Roczniak?

  Uh, yeah, that's a good point. So basically everyone thought this was bullshit, right? Most defended, of course, were the Hardwigs and the Cubachinas who had, you know, a Navy man show up and say, all right, I watched this video explaining how your son is a psycho mass murderer. Anyway, have fun. Bye.

• 2:15:26Liam McAnderson?

  See ya.

• 2:15:27Speaker 00

  So what happened to Hardwig through this?

• 2:15:30Justin Roczniak?

  Well, Hardwig's dad.

• 2:15:31Speaker 00

  Well, the other guy. Sorry.

• 2:15:32Justin Roczniak?

  Truitt as, uh, Truitt hired a really high powered, scummy Miami lawyer.

• 2:15:38Liam McAnderson?

  Like the good kind or the bad kind?

• 2:15:40Justin Roczniak?

  Oh, the bad kind, but good results.

• 2:15:42Liam McAnderson?

  Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:15:43Justin Roczniak?

  Cause that's one of the things that happens is that because he's, yeah, cause he's, uh, getting really, really, really up in the face of the Navy. This goes to congressional hearings.

• 2:15:54Speaker 00

  Oh my fucking God.

• 2:15:56Justin Roczniak?

  Because no one believes the story. It's so stupid, right? And so Senator Sam Nun announces that Sandia National Labs would get involved in testing the, the shell's copper band for contamination.

• 2:16:12Liam McAnderson?

  I gotta, I gotta ask a possibly a rhetorical question. Why are we not using the national lab we have in the first place?

• 2:16:18Justin Roczniak?

  Uh, because this investigation was started as a sort of informal, one officer investigation.

• 2:16:26Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 2:16:27Justin Roczniak?

  So there's no, no authority was out there that could change it until we, we wound up here. So this is an independent lab. They mostly do like, uh, you know, national sort of nuclear engineering, you know, secret squirrel shit, but you know, they're independent to the Navy. They don't have a huge stake in the matter, right? Um, the Navy had continued their investigation into the contaminants in the barrel of the gun and the shell. Cause um, the, the, the conclusion of the report was actually distributed before the report

• 2:17:07Justin Roczniak?

  was actually finished. Um, they found interesting stuff in the barrel and on the shell.

• 2:17:14Speaker 00

  We know the answer we want. We just have to figure out how to get to it.

• 2:17:17Justin Roczniak?

  They found calcium, chlorine, PET, plastic, glycol's, my God, man, glycol's like you find in Austrian wine. What's going on?

• 2:17:28Liam McAnderson?

  Oh my God, it's evil Riley.

• 2:17:30Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah. And Dr. James Borders from Sandia Lad had to sit them down and explain that chlorine and calcium come from seawater, which you may find on a battleship. The PET fragments were probably from pens or eyeglasses or anything else sailors brought into the gun room.

• 2:17:50Speaker 00

  Yeah, they were probably liquefied when they fucking explosion happened.

• 2:17:53Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah. And the glycol's were from the break free. The Navy also claimed to have a single miniscule iron fiber coated in calcium and chlorine. That was proof, proof of the use of a chemical explosion. And Dr. Borders travels to Crane, Indiana, where this single miniscule iron fiber was stored. Uh, he goes to the naval laboratory and the technician produces the envelope with the fiber in it. This is genuinely a very tiny thing. It's like a hundredth of an inch long. It's like, it's, it's, it's even smaller in diameter. You know, it's like many, you can barely see it with your eye. So they open up the envelope

• 2:18:35Justin Roczniak?

  with the fiber in it and shook it out into a Petri dish and nothing came out. Where'd it go? Probably the same place as the missing two shells. Anyway.

• 2:18:45Speaker 00

  You gotta love it. You gotta love an investigative service whose approach to evidence is like, my girlfriend is in Canada.

• 2:18:52Liam McAnderson?

  No, you can't see her.

• 2:18:55Justin Roczniak?

  She goes to another school.

• 2:18:57Speaker 00

  Jesus Christ. Oh my God. Well, hey, we're back to it being funny again, because this is the stupidest thing I've ever heard in my life.

• 2:19:04Liam McAnderson?

  Truly not the stupidest.

• 2:19:06Speaker 00

  It's, it's a good thing. I guess these guys weren't gay.

• 2:19:09Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 2:19:10Speaker 00

  I'm surprised they didn't try to like, come up with some reason that AIDS did this. This feels like the general climate of the eighties.

• 2:19:17Justin Roczniak?

  Truitt take an HIV test.

• 2:19:19Speaker 00

  Why? I am so, Jesus fucking Christ, man. Jesus fucking Christ. I can't believe, I cannot believe that it is 2026 and basically I and everybody I know has to devote their lives to clinging by their fingernails to keep this stupid, regressive shit hole society from backsliding into this exact shit again, because another stupid motherfucker with an obsession with battleships and who has Alzheimer's runs everything. It's great.

• 2:19:55Liam McAnderson?

  We don't know. So I have, I, I will, I will credit my mom with this one. Uh, I don't think he has Alzheimer's. Uh, my mom's theory, remember she is a psychologist?

• 2:20:05Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 2:20:06Liam McAnderson?

  She has a doctorate, uh, is that it's advanced late stage syphilis, which I choose to believe instead.

• 2:20:13Speaker 00

  Sure. Yeah, I'll take that. Fine.

• 2:20:16Liam McAnderson?

  Really matter, but it's, it's objectively funnier if we're being led to our doom with the guy that just like has terminal brain rot from like fucking bad.

• 2:20:25Speaker 00

  Yeah. All right. I'll, I'll accept this into my worldview. Either way, the champagne's gonna fucking pop the same.

• 2:20:30Justin Roczniak?

  Oh yeah. So the scientists at Sandia are convinced of a simpler explanation. Over ramming, right? The ramming arm, as we mentioned before, manually controlled, the possibility of accidentally ramming powder at high speed, causing it to ignite spontaneously was entirely possible, right? There's no safety interlocks that prevent this. A distracted gunner could simply do it by mistake. And one of the things that was distracting the gunner that was unusual in this turret was that the powder elevator wasn't working. So, you know, everything had to be delivered by hand rather than the normal procedure, right? Sandia did some small scale

• 2:21:14Justin Roczniak?

  tests that made sense. Captain Misselli was unimpressed by these, but he agreed to do full scale tests at the range at Dahlgren, using a test rig, which is just a 16 inch steel cylinder, which they dropped a big rocket or something into to simulate the ram, right? Um, and the way this investigation had gone, the media circus surrounding it.

• 2:21:39Justin Roczniak?

  Was so pervasive in the culture at the time that the moose starts to think this is, this is not working, guys. This is a real bad situation. He's called to testify in front of the Senate Armed Forces Committee. As such, he has to prepare for the testimony. You know, he does his due diligence. He reads up all the existing documents and he comes to the conclusion that the theory Hartwig did it was bullshit, which puts him in an awkward position because now he has to toe the party line, which means lying to Congress to continue the smear campaign against a dead man in front of the dead man's family. And to his

• 2:22:24Justin Roczniak?

  credit, he can bring himself to say it was sabotage, but he can't say, and Clayton Hartwig did it.

• 2:22:31Liam McAnderson?

  Oh, okay. Well, all right. Well, that's kind of your thing, right? Isn't that the whole thing?

• 2:22:36Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah. Yeah. He thought it was somebody. He didn't know who.

• 2:22:40Liam McAnderson?

  Oh, but I thought he was pretty sure. It sounded like he was pretty sure like 10 minutes ago.

• 2:22:44Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, no, he, he was like, fuck, no shit. And mostly toed the party line, not completely as such torpedoed his own career. He was probably only a few months from making Admiral and winds up retiring not too long afterwards.

• 2:23:02Liam McAnderson?

  Oh, too bad.

• 2:23:03Justin Roczniak?

  Very briefly, he was a hero in the eyes of the families, but you know, this left room for further doubt about the narrative brought forward by the investigation. Tests are still ongoing at Sandia and Dahlgren, which is when we have to do a heist.

• 2:23:21Liam McAnderson?

  We're doing a heist?

• 2:23:23Justin Roczniak?

  On the powder bags.

• 2:23:24Liam McAnderson?

  No, no.

• 2:23:25Justin Roczniak?

  Are a trim layer, right? This is a thin layer of extra powder that's added to each bag to ensure all the bags weighed the same. Each trim layer is different. It's just like a little extra bag attached to the bag. Micali's tests were using powder bags other than the ones involved in the accident. When Sandia Labs scientist William Chambers visited the ship, he asked, is there any powder left over from the accident? And one of Lieutenant Dan Meyer's gunner's mates said, yes, there is. I'll go get it. And he got it and he handed it over. This was spotted by one Lieutenant Kevin Hunt, who started hooting and hollering

• 2:24:10Justin Roczniak?

  about it being evidence. You can't take it off the ship, so on and so forth. He tries to physically snatch this jar of powder away from the Sandia scientist. And the scientist simply walks off the, walks down the gangplank and off the ship.

• 2:24:28Speaker 00

  The Navy would just walk out the Navy if you're.

• 2:24:31Justin Roczniak?

  You can't, you can't do shit to me. I'm a civilian. And so Lieutenant Dan Meyer, who had no involvement in this, was then arrested, then released for weekend leave, then personally arrested by the moose on Monday, confined in the master at arms office, which was bizarre because that meant he had access to the one and only outside telephone line on the ship, which he used to his advantage by asking his dad to pull some strings to get him out of the situation.

• 2:24:59Liam McAnderson?

  Oh, my God.

• 2:25:00Speaker 00

  God, really, this is the most naval story of all time. Every single aspect of this is like, yep, that sounds like the Navy.

• 2:25:09Justin Roczniak?

  Then he was released again, kicked off the ship for good. The folks from Sandia Labs arrived at Dahlgren with new knowledge of the powder and specifically the trim bags, right? Micali was finishing up the last of his drop tests, none of which had resulted in even a fizzle. And they asked, can we fiddle around with the powder bags a bit? Make them look a bit more like the ones that are actually on the ship, right? And that was mostly to have a bit more space in between the pellets in the trim bag, right? So they go out and do that. And they retreat to the bunker and Micali ran the test and boom, the whole test rig vaporized. Oh, fuck.

• 2:25:50Speaker 00

  That might be the problem. So you're telling me that it was nobody's fault except for like a manufacturing error that they didn't know what caused this?

• 2:25:56Justin Roczniak?

  Well, that and the storing the powder on the barge and untrained crew. And I mean, there's so many, there's so many causes here. In order, we're in out that very day to stop firing all the 16 inch guns. No one thought this was something that was, no one thought this was a potentiality.

• 2:26:18Speaker 00

  Like you can't pin this on one guy is what I'm saying. Even if you were like trying to be like, I'm, I'm.

• 2:26:25Liam McAnderson?

  I'm the dumbest human being alive, right?

• 2:26:27Speaker 00

  Yeah, I cravenly want to climb the career ladder on the, on somebody's dead body. You can't find a single person.

• 2:26:34Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 2:26:34Speaker 00

  Cause this problem started 50 fucking years ago when they decided to make the gunpowder and then store it on a barge. Cool. Great. Love that. Are you telling me that systemic causes made this accident happen and they blamed it on gay people?

• 2:26:47Justin Roczniak?

  Just a little bit. Yeah.

• 2:26:49Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 2:26:50Justin Roczniak?

  No one. So the Iowa investigation on the Navy's part was reopened. And furthermore, during a later visit, a scientist from Sandia had a novel idea about the missing shells, which was to ask a random guy on base where the shells were. And he was like, yeah, they're over there.

• 2:27:13Justin Roczniak?

  There were the two heavily damaged shells sitting next to a warehouse. Controlled testing was back on. Sandia found similar contamination on those shells as the accident shell that had been used to prove the presence of the time, not the time bomb, the, the Brule cream bomb, right?

• 2:27:33Liam McAnderson?

  Yep. Yep. Hell, yeah.

• 2:27:34Justin Roczniak?

  And the Navy said, no, you didn't.

• 2:27:37Liam McAnderson?

  All right. Beauty, beauty. It's the only, it's the only rational answer at this point.

• 2:27:44Justin Roczniak?

  Micali's crew does further tests with a 16 inch gun and a mockup of a rammer. Four of these tests produced, produced explosions with various levels of over ram. The Navy responded with la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la. I'm not listening. But you know, the Sandia report disagreed. So.

• 2:28:10Liam McAnderson?

  I deserve better than this.

• 2:28:13Justin Roczniak?

  We're forced into a situation. The Navy has to revise their report and all they can say is, we don't know. Oh, we don't know what happened.

• 2:28:23Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

• 2:28:24Justin Roczniak?

  It might've been sabotage. We don't know what happened.

• 2:28:26Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 2:28:27Justin Roczniak?

  And.

• 2:28:27Liam McAnderson?

  I might've, I might've sharted in there. Who knows?

• 2:28:30Justin Roczniak?

  They do sort of a non apology to Clayton Hartwig's family and also to Kendall Truitt. At the very least, it was interpreted by, as an apology by the press. And there were a lot of subsequent lawsuits. Hartwig sued the government, NBC News, et cetera. All these were dismissed. Families of the victims sued the Navy. That was dismissed. The only lawsuit that went anywhere was when Fred Mosely, Captain Micali, and a few other officers sued the publisher and author of Glimpse of Hell, our big source for this particular episode.

• 2:29:11Justin Roczniak?

  And also Lieutenant Dan Meyer. And this was settled out of court. So the conclusion to all of this was the Navy was like, yeah, maybe it wasn't that guy. And maybe they weren't that, that gay, but we don't know.

• 2:29:27Liam McAnderson?

  Who's to say?

• 2:29:27Justin Roczniak?

  You know, we, we, we, we don't know.

• 2:29:35Speaker 00

  Can't say that. Yeah. Can't say that.

• 2:29:38Liam McAnderson?

  What are you, type out the shot, what you want to say? I'll say it for you.

• 2:29:43Speaker 00

  I can't write these down.

• 2:29:45Liam McAnderson?

  Ah, coward.

• 2:29:46Justin Roczniak?

  But there was good news. Captain Fred the Moose Mosely landed on his feet and was put in charge of the Lockheed Littoral Combat Ship Program.

• 2:30:00Liam McAnderson?

  One headquartered in Moorestown.

• 2:30:02Speaker 00

  Jesus Christ.

• 2:30:03Liam McAnderson?

  Forever, baby. Yeah. Old RCA.

• 2:30:07Speaker 00

  Well, good for him.

• 2:30:09Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 2:30:09Speaker 00

  Great. I'm glad that his career was safe.

• 2:30:12Justin Roczniak?

  Well, that and the Navy is a defense contractor now.

• 2:30:15Speaker 00

  So he makes three times the money and does have to work.

• 2:30:20Speaker 00

  That was how it was at NASA. It's like, if you want to go actually make money, go work for a defense contractor with the skills you got here.

• 2:30:26Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah.

• 2:30:27Speaker 00

  Do less work and make more money.

• 2:30:29Liam McAnderson?

  There's nothing wrong with defense contracting.

• 2:30:32Justin Roczniak?

  I don't believe that.

• 2:30:33Liam McAnderson?

  No, there's nothing wrong with defense contracting. Leave that in. Leave that in. Leave that in.

• 2:30:37Speaker 00

  Why would you?

• 2:30:37Liam McAnderson?

  This is the thing I earnestly believe. This is the thing I earnestly believe.

• 2:30:40Speaker 00

  Okay, Liam, I'm well.

• 2:30:42Liam McAnderson?

  I'm being very sarcastic. I hope we're all aware of that.

• 2:30:45Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 2:30:46Liam McAnderson?

  So, so my favorite thing is that many, this was long before I was born, but um, my grandfather worked in old RCA and then before that for, oh my God, it was not NASA, but it was the heart of the Navy. I may have that wrong. That was around the uh, the Aegis program and the Apollo recovery missions in the ocean. And then he was like, and then he got cancer. He's like, well, I need better insurance. So here I go. And it like worked for RCA for like a million years. And that's how my mom went to college. Don't worry about that.

• 2:31:23Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:31:24Liam McAnderson?

  I had nothing to do with it. I am clean as a whistle.

• 2:31:27Speaker 00

  Obviously, like, there's material incentives to do it. And I've met.

• 2:31:30Liam McAnderson?

  Well, that's the fucking problem, right? Like, this is what, like, Ross has hit on this a million times, is that like, if you go to engineering school and you're what, like, a hundred fifty K in the hole in debt, like, what, like?

• 2:31:41Speaker 00

  Yeah, no, I mean.

• 2:31:42Justin Roczniak?

  It makes a lot of sense.

• 2:31:47Speaker 00

  If you're looking at like, the purpose of a system is what it does, the purpose of the American system is to get you to compromise on all of your morals and do whatever anybody will pay you to do, because they put you in a position where you have no choice.

• 2:31:58Liam McAnderson?

  Right, where you have to do it, right?

• 2:31:59Speaker 00

  Um, that said, still don't think you should talk about it proudly, you know? It's one of those things where it's like, look, I recognize there's lots of gray areas and lots of things, but if you work for Lockheed Martin, probably don't tell me. And if you do tell me, you should probably say it pretty cheaply. That's where I kind of fall on the matter.

• 2:32:15Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah, but you could work for the, um, okay, you could work for the next generation overhead persistent infrared. Oh, it's a missile warning constellation. God damn it. All right, yeah, moving on.

• 2:32:24Speaker 00

  Do you know, it was funny. I read something recently about like, testing they had done back in, I don't know, the nineties.

• 2:32:28Liam McAnderson?

  Testing, oh, testing they had done? Is that what you said? Okay.

• 2:32:31Speaker 00

  Yeah, like psychological testing, where they had, did like war gaming, and they put a bunch of conservative freaks all together on their own team.

• 2:32:38Liam McAnderson?

  Right.

• 2:32:39Speaker 00

  Um, and like, had them play war games against like, uh, you know, as NATO against like Baltic states, or, you know, kind of like a Warsaw Pact. And like, they always got to the brink of nuclear war really quickly. And if they had nuclear, like missile, if they had missile defense systems, like, you know, an Iron Dome, whatever, they became even more genocidally, like, maniacal, basically instantly.

• 2:32:58Liam McAnderson?

  That sounds about right.

• 2:32:59Speaker 00

  So that explained ninety percent of the world we live in, basically instantly for me. Um, so no, I don't think that's good. And I think, you know?

• 2:33:06Liam McAnderson?

  No, it was the Atlas missile, uh, it was the Cold War, leave me alone. And then RCA servicing in, which is in Moorestown. They say Cherry Hill, but it's in fucking Moorestown. Dickheads. Yes, moving on swiftly.

• 2:33:20Justin Roczniak?

  So, what did we learn?

• 2:33:23Liam McAnderson?

  Uh, honestly, if you're gonna be gay, go the whole way. Just to fucking, just really, just smash uglies in the, in the turret, and then, I don't know, do a mutiny. I have no idea.

• 2:33:35Speaker 00

  I bet fuck it on top of it.

• 2:33:36Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah, you might as well be fucking on top of the missiles, right?

• 2:33:39Justin Roczniak?

  I, I, I guess, yeah, they, you, you may as well just be gay, because even if you're not, they're just gonna say you are.

• 2:33:46Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah.

• 2:33:47Speaker 00

  I do think.

• 2:33:48Liam McAnderson?

  Might as well, might as well be fucking.

• 2:33:49Speaker 00

  So the, the thing that's really interesting about this to me, that I would like to actually, you know, is my takeaway from all of this is like, obviously, the Navy is a hot topic once again in America. Uh, and specifically how dogshit we treat sailors. And like, there was that story pretty recently about the enlisted guy who tried to kill himself. He jumped off the ship in the middle of nowhere, right? He's like trying to swim to land. He's trying to drown.

• 2:34:11Liam McAnderson?

  Are you talking about the Abraham Lincoln?

• 2:34:13Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:34:13Liam McAnderson?

  And that's happened more than once, right?

• 2:34:15Speaker 00

  Well, there was the one that really made headlines very recently, um, during this obscenely long ridiculous deployment, because they're way overextended, because we've opened up as many fronts as we possibly can, because.

• 2:34:26Liam McAnderson?

  Famously, a thing that works.

• 2:34:27Speaker 00

  Pedophile Nazi state, et cetera. Um, but like, and, you know, the thing is, is like, you know, everybody on board is like, morale is in the toilet. They're not getting mail. They're not getting, like, resupplies. The food is like barely edible. The toilets don't work. The showers are failed. Like, it's as bad as it can possibly be at sea. This guy tries to kill himself, because he's pushed to his limit. And they're charging him, right? Like, they're gonna try to charge him and, you know, give him a dishonorable discharge, strip away all of his benefits, make all of the sacrifice of his life worth basically nothing to him long term. He's not gonna get any of the benefits of having served. Um, and it just, you know, it kind of opened a discourse about how like, this administration doesn't respect the troops. And it's, we use them as disposable. And what, if

• 2:35:09Speaker 00

  you take one thing away from this episode, it's that America has always fucking done this.

• 2:35:13Liam McAnderson?

  Yep, yep.

• 2:35:14Speaker 00

  It's not, this is not an aberration. This is continuation of policy.

• 2:35:18Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah.

• 2:35:18Speaker 00

  Donald Trump is a logical, like, endpoint of a, of a art that began two hundred fifty fucking years ago.

• 2:35:26Liam McAnderson?

  Pedophilia Nazi bullshit. Yeah.

• 2:35:28Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:35:29Liam McAnderson?

  Hail Satan, I guess, is what I'm saying.

• 2:35:31Speaker 00

  Yeah, basically.

• 2:35:32Justin Roczniak?

  What I'm, what I'm, what I'm imagining here is that meme of the thing going over the guy's head. Watching that Gilbert and Sullivan operetta, you know, and you're like, oh, funny music. And what's going over his head is the Navy is fucked up.

• 2:35:51Speaker 00

  The definitive version of that for me is like, somebody playing Fallout New Vegas. It's like, war never changes, like, is the thing that he's seeing. And the thing going over his head is, California sucks, actually.

• 2:36:04Speaker 00

  Also, I'd like to take this chance to remind everybody that I am here in an unofficial capacity, and my bosses do know that I podcast, and you can't get me in trouble for saying I don't like America.

• 2:36:16Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah, same. Don't worry about it.

• 2:36:18Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:36:20Liam McAnderson?

  Also, my boss is Rod, so.

• 2:36:22Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 2:36:22Speaker 00

  Well, I meant my boss and my real job.

• 2:36:25Liam McAnderson?

  No, I, no, we, we talked about this, the circular firing squad.

• 2:36:28Speaker 00

  Yeah, but I meant my other jo, I meant the real job, well, that I did the advertisement for when you got up to go pee.

• 2:36:33Liam McAnderson?

  I pooped.

• 2:36:34Speaker 00

  Oh.

• 2:36:34Justin Roczniak?

  Oh, right, yeah. Yeah, so, hold on. So I'm your boss.

• 2:36:39Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah.

• 2:36:39Justin Roczniak?

  Which means Nova is my boss.

• 2:36:41Liam McAnderson?

  And I'm Nova's boss, yeah.

• 2:36:42Justin Roczniak?

  Okay, yeah, that makes sense to me. All right.

• 2:36:47Speaker 00

  I actually report to all three of you. My management structure is fucking nightmare.

• 2:36:50Liam McAnderson?

  Real bad.

• 2:36:53Speaker 00

  My, my inbox and Slack messages are just a complete disaster.

• 2:36:58Liam McAnderson?

  I do like the, uh, we got a fucking email from some Spanish audio editing company the other day. That was just like, hey, do you want an editor? And I was like, we have, damn it. Like, they're pretty good. Leave us alone.

• 2:37:10Speaker 00

  They, they don't kill you for dropping four hour episodes where somebody called in from a World War II field telephone.

• 2:37:17Liam McAnderson?

  R I P, Dan McQuaid. I love you, big dog.

• 2:37:20Speaker 00

  I think that you're not gonna do better than them.

• 2:37:22Justin Roczniak?

  Well, we have a segment on this podcast called Safety Third.

• 2:37:32Justin Roczniak?

  Yellow. I am here to relay a Safety Third story from my girlfriend, who knows for sure the answer to the question, the man or the bear?

• 2:37:44Liam McAnderson?

  Oh, no. Oh, this is about a literal bear. All right, we're good. We're good. We're good.

• 2:37:48Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. For those who are uninitiated, I just learned this today. There's a viral question on social media. Um, if you are a woman, would you rather be stranded alone in the woods with a man or with a bear?

• 2:38:03Liam McAnderson?

  A bear. It's a bear. It's a bear.

• 2:38:05Speaker 00

  It depends on the bear.

• 2:38:06Liam McAnderson?

  It does actually.

• 2:38:07Justin Roczniak?

  What kind of bear? Yeah.

• 2:38:08Liam McAnderson?

  I guess we can safely assume, because we all, well, no, Victoria lives in the Pacific Northwest, so for her, it might be a fucking grizzly, right?

• 2:38:14Justin Roczniak?

  That'd be, that'd be a bad bear.

• 2:38:15Liam McAnderson?

  For you and me, it's a black bear.

• 2:38:18Justin Roczniak?

  With the black bear.

• 2:38:19Liam McAnderson?

  They just supposed to eat your trash.

• 2:38:21Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 2:38:21Speaker 00

  Yeah, grizzlies are kind of like, I don't know. I mean, if the question is, would I rather be murdered or raped? I suppose that's also kind of.

• 2:38:28Liam McAnderson?

  Okay, thank you.

• 2:38:29Speaker 00

  I'm just saying.

• 2:38:30Liam McAnderson?

  No, I know.

• 2:38:30Speaker 00

  That seems to be the nature of the question.

• 2:38:32Justin Roczniak?

  Said the, said the quiet part loud and the loud part quiet.

• 2:38:35Speaker 00

  Yeah, sorry. I'm too autistic for tax, Jesus.

• 2:38:41Liam McAnderson?

  It's just, it's just depressing.

• 2:38:45Justin Roczniak?

  This runs a little bit long, and I apologize for that, but it has lovely illustrations from my lovely girlfriend.

• 2:38:51Liam McAnderson?

  Remember how we said one goddamn page, you assholes?

• 2:38:54Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah. About fifteen years ago, when she was a college student, she had a part-time job as a guide in a large zoo complex. It had animals typical for a zoo in the northern region of Russia. Goats, raccoon dogs, lynxes, wolves, foxes, various raptors, and of course, bears. Not many people know, but bears are incredibly intelligent, persistent, and patient animals, capable of plotting something for days, and playing chill and calm until the moment of opportunity. And if a bear has set its mind to something, it will eventually do it. I blame

• 2:39:37Justin Roczniak?

  the stereotype of bears being these big goofy animals that are only sometimes scary to cartoons like Masha and the Bear. I don't know that one.

• 2:39:46Speaker 00

  Is that like Russian yogi?

• 2:39:47Justin Roczniak?

  That must be like, dude, Russian yogi.

• 2:39:52Liam McAnderson?

  Why the hell not?

• 2:39:55Justin Roczniak?

  Hey boo boo, we're gonna steal a samovar?

• 2:40:02Justin Roczniak?

  And the fact that bears, bears.

• 2:40:11Justin Roczniak?

  Yogi, I don't know if that's a good idea. That's Grushav, that's Grushav's samovar.

• 2:40:20Justin Roczniak?

  And the fact that bears show no emotions on their faces interpretable by humans. But when a bear is suddenly right next to you, you got to experience all emotions. As my girlfriend says, so in this particular zoo, there were several bears. Some of them seem to be fine to exist in their enclosures. But one or two individuals had made up their mind. They wanted out and I've said if a bear has set up its bare mind to do something, it will do it. And in a zoo where enclosures were basically a plot of land circled by a two meter high mesh wire fence. Without an overhead roof, these bears sure fucking did what they planned to do.

• 2:41:06Justin Roczniak?

  One time a bear dug under the fence. Another time a bear climbed onto a tree within the enclosure and somehow made a five meter long jump over the fence. Sometimes the bear just shook and rattled the fence or door until it broke. So what do you do as a hypothetical owner of the zoo? What do you do when you have a loose bear in your zoo? Well, naturally.

• 2:41:29Liam McAnderson?

  Let it out. I don't care.

• 2:41:31Justin Roczniak?

  You hop into your UAZ and drive to the city.

• 2:41:35Liam McAnderson?

  The UAZ you just have?

• 2:41:38Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, cuz it's Russia.

• 2:41:40Liam McAnderson?

  Oh yeah, that's true.

• 2:41:41Speaker 00

  I wanna know if it was like, was it one of the bread box vans?

• 2:41:47Speaker 00

  They make the little bread box vans. I love them.

• 2:41:50Justin Roczniak?

  Oh, that'd probably be fun. Yeah.

• 2:41:52Speaker 00

  Oh, I would kill for one of these things.

• 2:41:54Liam McAnderson?

  Like a four fifty or something? Yeah.

• 2:41:56Justin Roczniak?

  Then you drive to the city 70 kilometers away from the zoo complex to gather volunteers to help you persuade the bear to return.

• 2:42:05Liam McAnderson?

  They don't speak English while you're in Russia, I guess. So of course.

• 2:42:08Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, yeah, no, everyone speaks Russian. I don't know if bears speak Russian or not.

• 2:42:14Liam McAnderson?

  Bears speak, I don't know.

• 2:42:15Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, I think they speak bear. So you can't get this help from the nearby village because you, the hypothetical zoo owner, had previously employed villagers from there. And they're mad as fuck at you because you thought that a mug and a single orange is a good idea for bonus pay for their work that occasionally involves catching loose bears. Now unfortunately, my girlfriend does not know the methods of bear persuasion and cannot relay them to the listeners. But I can't fault her that for that because she, as a part time guide staying in the zoo over weekends, had another role in the bear catching scenario.

• 2:42:57Justin Roczniak?

  She was to stay overnight in the zoo complex on the second floor of a tourist house. These, these Russian zoos are kinda weird. I'm, I'm not picturing this, but I guess you can stay overnight in the zoo there. She couldn't stay in the employee house because it only had one floor and the bears could climb into it if they set their mind to it.

• 2:43:19Speaker 00

  I do love the illustration of the girlfriend staying in the, in the tourist house.

• 2:43:23Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 2:43:24Speaker 00

  It's cold as fuck outside and there's a confused bear out your window.

• 2:43:28Liam McAnderson?

  Hey, you guys have snacks?

• 2:43:32Justin Roczniak?

  They probably could set their mind to get to the tourist house as well and all the locked doors and second floors wouldn't stop them. But luckily for my girlfriend and me, the escapee bear just wandered around the complex while she was trying to calm down her anxiety by reading some books on the second floor. See picture one, the bear was persuaded via unknown methods. Next day she survived. The rest of her job was perhaps more arduous than persuading the bear to return to his enclosure because it involved persuading idiot tourists to stop trying to get maimed by the animals while visiting the zoo. One would make Russia, one would make jokes about Russians yearning for the void

• 2:44:15Justin Roczniak?

  with some dumb fuck from Novocheskosk throws his sunglasses into a bear enclosure and attempts to get over the fence and fetch them back real quick. See picture two.

• 2:44:28Liam McAnderson?

  Why? Just let it go, dude.

• 2:44:31Justin Roczniak?

  Or some idiot mother, this is the shit that they killed Harambe for.

• 2:44:35Liam McAnderson?

  They should have killed that kid. They should have killed the kid.

• 2:44:38Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, they should have let, they should have let, yeah, they should have let Harambe, I don't think Harambe would have killed the kid.

• 2:44:44Liam McAnderson?

  No, that's not what I'm saying. Hey, that's what I'm saying. I'm saying that instead of shooting Harambe, they should have shot the kid. It's a warning.

• 2:44:52Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah.

• 2:44:54Liam McAnderson?

  They should have killed that kid. I don't give a fuck.

• 2:44:56Speaker 00

  Teach those six year olds.

• 2:44:59Liam McAnderson?

  And then mount his head on the wall like a moose.

• 2:45:03Justin Roczniak?

  Or some idiot mother unwittingly tries to sacrifice her least favorite child to some very confused wolves.

• 2:45:10Liam McAnderson?

  Been there.

• 2:45:11Justin Roczniak?

  But idiot tourists not understanding the dangers of wildlife is a universal human experience. And I trust that the dear hosts of this podcast have already made jokes like this on their own.

• 2:45:24Liam McAnderson?

  I'm, I'm advocating to kill kids. Yeah.

• 2:45:26Justin Roczniak?

  I, I worked at the zoo briefly.

• 2:45:28Liam McAnderson?

  Yes, you did. Yes, you did.

• 2:45:32Justin Roczniak?

  Now on to the man in question, the bear or the man? As a zoology faculty student, my future girlfriend had field practice hours during which she and her classmates were sent out to a village. The girls in the course were to live in an empty house on the very edge of the village. And we're told to lock the doors and be on high alert at night in case drunk village youth will come to visit the girls. Because we live in a society, the warnings weren't just words. The girls were wide awake with knives in hands, listening to the drunken morons trying to get into the house for several nights.

• 2:46:14Justin Roczniak?

  One morning they discovered that the frustrated lads had stolen all their boots. And another morning they found the outdoors, the outdoors hand washer broken. In response to this egregious behavior from the locals, the college, of course, reprimanded the female students for not keeping their property intact. So my girlfriend's answer to the question, the bear or the man is simple. It depends.

• 2:46:39Speaker 00

  Vindication.

• 2:46:40Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 2:46:41Speaker 00

  There we go. I mean, to be fair, it sounds like the bear was better about the limits of the house.

• 2:46:46Justin Roczniak?

  More polite, yeah.

• 2:46:47Speaker 00

  Yeah, which is generally what I would expect.

• 2:46:50Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, I've, I've generally found bears to be very polite in my limited experience with them. Again, apologies if it's too long. Thank you for helping me keep my sanity in this messed up geopolitical reality. I hope we all live to see our respective empires fall and meet the dawn of better times. Also fuck turfs from redacted.

• 2:47:11Speaker 00

  Big, big, enormous, like predator style handshake. Hell yeah. I hope those guys died.

• 2:47:18Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah, me too.

• 2:47:19Speaker 00

  I hope they were killed.

• 2:47:21Justin Roczniak?

  Oh yeah, probably, probably in one of those stuff videos.

• 2:47:25Speaker 00

  I hope they were inside the Russian submarine and they managed to crash into the bottom of a lake during a testing exercise or whatever.

• 2:47:34Justin Roczniak?

  They all got sent to, uh, they all got sent to the, the Ukrainian front and they were, each individual one was in one of those drone snuff videos.

• 2:47:44Speaker 00

  Yeah, I was, I was working on my transgender Smokey and the Bandit, uh, post apocalyptic, you know, futuristic novella. And I was like, I should learn about like drone warfare. And I took last about 10 minutes before I was like, nope.

• 2:47:58Justin Roczniak?

  Oh, I don't wanna, I don't wanna know about this stuff.

• 2:48:00Speaker 00

  But this is, yeah, this is not good.

• 2:48:01Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 2:48:03Speaker 00

  Future sucks. Don't like it.

• 2:48:05Justin Roczniak?

  It's pretty bad, pretty bad.

• 2:48:06Speaker 00

  Also bad.

• 2:48:08Liam McAnderson?

  The present also bad.

• 2:48:10Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, we gotta find, gotta find that ideal, what, there was like one year where warfare was really great. You know, everything else was really bad. I don't know what, what that year was.

• 2:48:20Speaker 00

  Yeah, uh, I was gonna say like 1946 cuz everybody was too tired, but I remembered I'm Greek, so that's not.

• 2:48:27Justin Roczniak?

  All right, yeah, 1848.

• 2:48:30Liam McAnderson?

  Oh, the year of revolution.

• 2:48:31Speaker 00

  Pretty sure that sucks too.

• 2:48:32Justin Roczniak?

  No, that was probably pretty bad.

• 2:48:35Speaker 00

  Shocking. I can't believe you would endorse slavery, Roz.

• 2:48:38Justin Roczniak?

  I thought 1840, 1848 was, uh, was, uh.

• 2:48:42Liam McAnderson?

  Roz, when do you think the civil war was?

• 2:48:45Justin Roczniak?

  No, no, that, that, they're talking about revolutions in Europe.

• 2:48:49Liam McAnderson?

  Answer the question. Answer the question. Answer the question. When do you think the civil war was?

• 2:48:53Justin Roczniak?

  War happened sometime between like 1855 and 1870.

• 2:48:57Liam McAnderson?

  Good enough.

• 2:48:58Speaker 00

  That is true.

• 2:49:01Justin Roczniak?

  I could never remember the exact.

• 2:49:03Liam McAnderson?

  61 to 65. Yeah, I'll take it.

• 2:49:05Justin Roczniak?

  61 to 65. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. You know, at that stage, I send a long letter back home. My darling Masha, I cannot even remember what year it is.

• 2:49:16Liam McAnderson?

  Don't fuck nobody while I'm gone.

• 2:49:19Speaker 00

  My favorite is still Napoleon's letter to his wife. He was like, I'll be home in three days. Don't wash.

• 2:49:29Liam McAnderson?

  Stank.

• 2:49:30Justin Roczniak?

  Wow.

• 2:49:32Liam McAnderson?

  Where's I go with that? I was talking about ringing the clit like a doorbell and then, um,

• 2:49:38Liam McAnderson?

  noise was that?

• 2:49:42Liam McAnderson?

  Let's add this.

• 2:49:44Justin Roczniak?

  Well.

• 2:49:45Speaker 00

  It's been three hours and five minutes. I think that's a short, normal episode.

• 2:49:48Justin Roczniak?

  That was safety third. Our next episode will be on Chernobyl. So anyone have any commercials before we go?

• 2:49:56Speaker 00

  I did my commercial in the middle of the episode, but yeah, if you want help, uh, in the US, you reach out of traction if you're a trans person trying to get out of your shitty state that doesn't like you. Um, and if you wanna volunteer with us, you should. And if you wanna give us money, you definitely should. And also everything I say about podcasts is that's a separate thing. I just, I just genuinely believe in what we do. I was already volunteering here for the entire year before I started working here. So.

• 2:50:20Liam McAnderson?

  Uh, I do wanna, I was, oh, sorry. That didn't mean to cut you off. I'm so sorry.

• 2:50:23Speaker 00

  Oh yeah. And listen to Train Girlismo.

• 2:50:25Liam McAnderson?

  Please do. I, I have, I guess an ad for this show, which is that, uh, we will be recording a bonus hopefully next week, um, assuming everyone's around. Uh, I am going to be doing it on the Pennsylvania State Universe. So that is this month's bonus.

• 2:50:42Speaker 00

  Oh my God, that's gonna be dark.

• 2:50:43Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah, it's, it's real bad.

• 2:50:45Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, damn.

• 2:50:46Speaker 00

  Oh, also like, uh, just I guess a brief moment of extreme thank you to the wonderful, there's your problem audience for all of your support while I was unemployed. And for like both your support and Nova's obviously, even though she's not here for like, you know, helping me until I can get back on my feet. I appreciate it, but you won't see me anymore. So I'm sorry. Bye. I'm dead now. I've died.

• 2:51:09Justin Roczniak?

  I'm, I'm here to say, uh, listen to my other podcast, Trains Atlantic. Exciting new episode coming out soon where I explained to Gareth why I don't like trains anymore.

• 2:51:21Liam McAnderson?

  I got those texts. I don't blame you.

• 2:51:23Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, yeah, that was, that was, that was an experience. That was, uh, I have to go to, I have to go see the therapist on Monday. I'm gonna have to, uh, talk to her about, yeah, that was probably top five worst experience of my life.

• 2:51:35Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah.

• 2:51:36Justin Roczniak?

  Anyway, you know, but that's, that's, that's a different story.

• 2:51:39Liam McAnderson?

  Song for another time. Yeah. All right. Uh, we're good?

• 2:51:42Justin Roczniak?

  I think so. That was a podcast.

• 2:51:44Liam McAnderson?

  Bye, everybody.

• 2:51:44Justin Roczniak?

  Right. Bye, everyone.

• 2:51:45Speaker 00

  Bye.