The bat bomb was one of the most unusual ideas to emerge from the World War II era. It mixed wildlife, explosive science, and creative military strategy. This unusual weapon did not gain fame, yet it reveals how far nations will go during war. Today, we can look back and learn from its wild history. A Military Idea Born in … Read More
The Atom Bomb Saved Thousands of Bats
Episode Transcription
00:00 Hey man, what's up? What's going on? Hey, it's our 300th episode person baptized. That's what this is about. Three at church. We baptized 300 people this year. You sowed a seed on Patreon to make that happen. Thanks for happening. Yeah, no, it's our 300th episode. We did it. We've been doing this for a while. It's our 300th. Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. We're finally going to do it. 00:29 but we're not going to tell you what it is. I'll tell you what it is. We're finally going to do it. We're going to We're going to kiss. here. Come here. Come here. Come here. 00:44 This week sponsor is fantastic ever. What is so crazy is that they were testing these in the same desert in New Mexico. Oh yes, they're out there and they're like like okay, it's really hard to do the calculations for this bat bomb when all those big gigantic never heard before booms are happening over there. 01:06 Things I learned last night. 01:16 I don't want to talk about that. I don't want to talk about what just happened. 01:25 ah were a sloppy wet pod. Oh no unforeseen. was unforeseen. That sloppy wet is both 01:34 three hundred more. Hey, when we do our four hundred episode, we'll do it shirtless. I tried to convince Tim before we started this. I said hey, don't you remember us making that joke a long time ago that if we ever got a three hundred episodes, we would do it shirtless and he was like no, no, I don't remember doing that vitamin D and doing that vitamin, so his memory is not as bad. Yeah, yeah, but neck right now I'm saying when we get to four hundred 02:03 all right, whatever we got to get fit. We got two years to get fit. I don't need two years. I'll do it now. I'm on a was I'm fit now. I was. I was a little. was somewhat almost sort of fit. Do remember the moment on the line our fitness journey? Yes, yeah, very clearly. That was one of the worst moments. I it was. It was. It was a yeah. That was brutal. Alex, you know which moment sparked our fitness journey 02:31 it was when we got paid to go to Google Play and then they put us in cycling outfits and like the most revealing. I felt they were so tight. It was like skin tight spandex and I thought I was like decently in decent shape and then I looked at myself in that. I don't know why they made us do that yeah and so then the next year we came back and we were in pretty good shape prepare. We were ready for preparing for crazy cost you the whole. They didn't give us any crazy costumes. We the whole year like guys like 02:59 I have abs. I told my guys, I'm kind of hot yeah and you purposely like I think they expected us to still like not have good bodies and I was like oh they're hot now. Oh bummer and that's why they haven't got us. I've been trying to put on more weight when I canceled the we've been trying to get out of shape. So we get booked again for Google play Izzy. If you see this we're fat again. 03:28 I'll be fat for you anyway. What topic you got today? Is it a good one? Yeah. Have you ever heard of the bat bomb, the bat bomb, the bat bomb? No. Oh, well, do I have a show for you? I think we need to start this story by talking about this guy, dr lie. I don't know how to say this name. L Y T L E little 03:57 that's first why T I E L Y T L E Doctor Little S Adams. It might be little or Lytle that's so this is what the eighteen hundreds. This was probably the early nineteen hundred early nineteen hundreds. Yeah, that was like their way of being like little little. Oh, so you're saying he was like little John. That's little bow. Wow! 04:21 the nineteen hundred he's just the nineteen hundreds of verses of low is for audio listener. It's a like a professor looking guy in the nineteen hundreds and he's wearing a bow tie and a suit and he's got a piece of paper that he's at everything and he looks very professional, but he also goes by little little Adams, Doctor Little Adams. Oh yeah, I'm little Adams, Doctor Adam. Oh, I like I'm looking for. I'm trying to figure out how to blow up some bat 04:52 So Doctor Little Adams is an interesting. He's got a pretty high forehead. I'm worried that I'm going to be balding up here soon, and so I'm trying to figure out like if my hair looked like that, I'd be fine. I think right yeah yeah. I mean like my hair doesn't look like that. Does it no no okay? I mean I can't say his he didn't lose it all like there he's got back, but it's pretty high up. It's pretty high and look he's messing with bats yeah. You're giving it away. 05:20 Well, obviously the name of the episode is bat. He's going to blow that bad up. So he's got something to do with bats and I think I just broke my toenail anyways. uh So he no keep going. Yeah, keep going. Don't doctor little any context or idea of how that could have happened. I know. I push through. I to pinch the nerve in my tone. I don't know. My toenail hurts really bad and I you want to do you want to check it out? It looks fine. It hurts. 05:49 that yeah, they don't say stuff out loud in the don't be like I think I just cut my toe off. 05:56 I don't know. hurts well doctor little he's got bats. I think I just cut my toe off and he's been where you can't just say that and then try to move on. I can't. What do think this is? I put my socks and shoes back on okay, so doctor little ass Adams. He was a dentist in Pennsylvania and it's a pretty run of the mill dentist. He was born in the late eighteen hundreds eighteen eighties to be exact. 06:21 practice dentistry did everything that dentists normally do right. Okay, extracting teeth, cleaning teeth, looking at teeth. I don't think he x ray teeth. I don't think they had that yet touching the touch and teeth. You got good teeth, uh but he also was an inventor. If I was a dentist, I think I would call myself a tooth teller 06:44 Oh, I'm a tooth. I'm a sorry. I'm a tooth teller. Yeah, I like that. I like that's pretty cool. What do you do? Oh, I'm a and my billboards all over town would say I you can't handle the tooth. You know, saying my my ads on TV would be maybe like you can't handle the two. You know, my radio ads would be me going. Hey, come on down to my dentist office. 07:12 I'm Jaren Myers, a dentist. See, it's always a subverting expectation. That's like comedy is I'm very good at this. So little little was a dentist by day. He was an enter. He was the better at night dentist by day. Yeah, it's my new threads bio dentist by day, but a night he invented stuff. 07:41 It was a serial inventor. had a lot of patents. Only a handful of them actually took off. One of them, I'm to be honest with you, I'm going to show you a diagram of this in a second so we can try to figure out how this works. Sure. But one of them that actually took off, he was also an amateur pilot, so he liked to fly around big fan. And one of his inventions was he noticed that there were rural communities in the United States that just did not have consistent mail service from the US Postal Service because they were just so far remote. And so he 08:10 invented this airmail system um where it was called the continuous airmail system. And essentially it was a series of cables and catapults that would allow a plane to fly over and just catch the mail. I don't understand how it works, but here's a diagram and let's see if we can figure it out. This the continuous airmail system. ah And so you'll see there's the mail plane flying over. 08:37 there's a catapult involved. Yeah, it's got a contact cable at the end of the contact cable. There is like a little steel ball. I do know that. I don't know if it shows it in the diagram, but it has a mail bag attached to it, and so that mail bag comes through okay, and when it hits that mail bag is released and falls into the shoot, so all the incoming mail and then it triggers a catapult and there's the outgoing mail bag on there and I guess the catapult 09:05 just shoots up to the airplane and the guy's was a no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Okay, so, so, so you can see how you see how the slot guides contact cable from wide entrance, right? So the cable comes in and then hitting that, like where it's in this thing releases the bag that it has, which then opens the latch for it to collect a new bag as it's coming up this, this side of the collection bin as you will, right? 09:34 that catapult is not catapulting in the air. It's literally like here's the side of the thing. This cable is going to run up the side of this. It's literally just connecting it here, just hitting the case, connecting it boom to the cable. So that way when it hits here, you can see in the corner, that's where it's not catapulting it up to the plane. It's catapulting it to the catapult is probably not the best word there, but it just like like a nutcracker closing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, you know, brings the chin up to the mouth. 10:03 so it's it's similar to those the sign planes that yes, same latch that's doing the yeah, the picking up a sign mail bags. Yes, and then I guess what happens from here is it flies to a local post office drops off that bag picks up a new one and then flies over to some other remote probably lands at some point. I don't think it lands. It's the same thing that they had with Operation Chrome Dome where this was just airborne airborne twenty four seven 10:32 so so that is interesting. I mean you know in San Francisco, we were in San Francisco um every day at noon. There's one of those planes that flies around the banner that it says high noon the the seltzer yeah and every day at noon it's flying around high noon interesting and so good marketing that's expensive, but also that's how we knew what time it was. We were walking around San Francisco and we'd see him. go. Oh, it's lunch time. It's seltzer hour. It's noon. It's time for seltzer 11:02 and I would. mean it would be like eleven fifty five. We're like wow okay. They really got their right on. That's crazy. That's crazy that that's your job like to just every day and if you forget you're like you're late yeah. I'm running late for my noon. I've got a very serious important important appointment. I can't this is why I'm We're hundred episodes in he still drives me. I appreciate that. I respect nobody. Nobody will know what time it is if it were for me. 11:29 this guy doesn't know that nobody has clocks. He thinks he's the only way anyone knows stop looking at the clock. He's looking for the plate. He can't see the point. He doesn't know what time it is. We're inside exactly twelve minutes. That's why they put skylights in buildings. You see how he just goes. What are you doing? Tell the story. Why are you like that's why they put skylights in and really what is a skylight but a hole in the ceiling 11:59 So he also, you don't stop Tim, he will not stop. 12:09 very fun to watch anyways, uh so he invented that and that actually got adopted like there was some brought to you by blue apron by the way. 12:20 I just said that three. I know I'm just hoping to sponsor by this time comes out and I'll be like all right. Hey, this is brought to you by blue apron. We just dropped our podcast network. I'll talk some crap. uh We sent an email and I was like and we were like, Tim sent the email. He's very nice and professional and he goes, Hey, we went out ah and they responded like, we'd us set up call to know, you know, more about what we could do to help better the relationship. 12:46 and then ten meals back in ten emails back. He's like here's some times and then that guy in the back was like oh, it looks like it was all full. So anyway, back and forth for three weeks, they weren't selecting any times. Finally, I sent an email this week that said ah that said no need for a call. We asked to be released weeks ago. Please start transfer by Friday and you know what happened within hours. Yeah, we got the transfer. We got the email and they were like okay, we'll pass you order Chris so he can transfer you 13:10 Yeah, I've decided that I'm not being nice to people anymore and that podcast network was your mom's house studio with old Tommy Segura and Christina P yeah yeah it wasn't. It wasn't. It was evergreen cast network who wasn't bringing us ads and since we've left we've acquired blue apron square space 13:35 we're just we're just say and the Bible lap is the cool thing about podcast ads is you could just make it up and then go tell them to pay. That's the day odd job. That's sentiment in for our job. Hats owes me so much freaking money right now. We'll be invoicing you yeah use my promo code. We should give someone else's promo code what's like, but then they get the revenue yeah, but like what's P Holmes problem? 14:05 I join square space with promo code. You made it weird. That's pizza podcast. Yeah, all right anyways, ah so little he invented this thing and it got picked up. I eat house and Pete has skylights that I was looking through and I was like what are skylights but holes in the roof? 14:26 Wow. Did previous skylights, they didn't put, they didn't think to put glass over it because they, know, they just didn't have that. I just didn't have that. And back then the plane would reach through with its claw. It would try to grab mail, but then it would grab babies and drop the kids off at different places. And that's how the myth of the stork started. You see how male your bits are. The male plates were taking baby. 14:52 the female planes were making them and the male planes were tanking. 15:02 so his little continuous mail bag delivery system got adopted by a handful of places. Oh did it for real yeah a bunch of post offices throughout the country. We had pictures of what those like because they would still have those in like a museum right. I mean it wasn't widely used. It was I know but that contraption would probably still exist. I would think so but like I this was the only diagram I was able to find of it. The continuous mail bag delivery system or whatever so it wasn't like 15:29 it wasn't something that we have like a uh okay good large record of sure. He also invented this pellet air seeding system, which think of it kind of like uh like fly over crop dusting, but with actual like seeds and so you fly over okay from the sky. He invented that. I think what lot of stuff he was just trying to figure out how to use plain yeah he's like he's like the plane's cool. He's like this has got it. got to I got to figure out how to make money like uh 15:58 That's a hundred. That is the FAA wouldn't let him fly and so he's like he's like I got to figure out a different way and so he was inventing a bunch of stuff is really the point. Okay, he's always inventing always inventing coming up with new ideas. Most of his inventions went nowhere except for these three, so I we've hit two of them and then on early December, 1941 he goes to New Mexico for vacation and while I and this trip to New Mexico, he goes to let me get you the name of them. 16:28 I mean here's the thing he picked New Mexico for his vacation. Not a lot of things to do in New Mexico. Yeah, and so he goes to Carl's bad caverns. Think of fantastic caverns without the fantastic and I don't know that is. Did you ever go to fantasy caverns? Yeah, yeah, fantastic caverns. If you don't know north of Springfield, there are these caverns that have a of slight that's in slag. Let me do it. This week sponsor is fantastic caverns. 16:57 a cave system just north of Springfield, Missouri. Hey, if they can afford all those billboards, they can afford us for sure. Yeah, they got billboards, but it's a is it America? Is it America's first or America's only ride through cave? It's the only only ride through cave where you have little jeeps. Yep. Little jeeps that are that are electric and you sit in this long tram and they drive you through this cave. It's very cool. It's actually really, really cool. And there's one part where you have to like lay down in the Jeep because the ceiling solo it's pretty sweet. ah 17:26 But yeah, stalactites, stalagmites, the whole thing. uh He goes through one of these, not a drive-through cave, not very fantastic, honestly. um Probably a while, I guess this is just after the prohibition. So maybe there's the remnants of the, because they have a speakeas, they had a speakeas, Fantastic Caverns, right? Yeah. So yeah, okay. And so anyways, goes through the whole thing. While he's there, he sees all these bats and he's like, man, bats are cool, aren't they? 17:53 like and so he's thinking about bats all day and but he's in the game. That's yeah. My wife saw me smiling on my phone the other day. I was cheating on her or looking at blue room comedy club downfall and I was like now I'm just looking at pictures of bats. I'm just thinking about the bad just thinking about bad. Excuse me, just thinking about that. Honestly, that's worse. I'm just thinking about that. What are you doing over there? 18:27 I don't understand this bit. What are you doing? What is it? I'm just thinking about that. Okay, I don't. I genuinely can't figure out this. I was trying to get upside down. oh 18:43 with the Queen. Oh yeah, I forgot the Queen sleeps like that. Oh yeah. Why my voice do that? uh Yeah, I did a drive through tour of the Queen's Palace Skylights. She had a light everywhere, so he's thinking about baths. He's in New Mexico with his family, his famous man. It's a great time for us to connect and really get to know each other and he's a bat. Yeah and so 19:12 they see Carl's bad, whatever the whole thing happens and they start their drive home. It was a road trip and listening to AM radio coming across the news of Pearl Harbor because that's when they were there. And so he hears this thing and he has this like overwhelming sense of like patriotism and he's like, I've got to come up with some way that I can help help with the war. Like we're obviously going to war. Okay. Fight. 19:40 fight back with his can't go un- responded to. And so he's thinking about bats, he's thinking about Pearl Harbor, thinking about war. What can we do? 19:56 and so he says you know what? What do you smile about over there? I think about Pearl Harbor. What excuse me and so he gets back home and he's like you know what? I think the world is a is it. This is important information that I've got and I know about what about bats, about bats. 20:20 So he has a theory. Here's here's where he gets he's like I have a theory that if we create a bomb that was essentially we took out all the insides of a bomb and we filled it with twenty thousand bats. That's what I thought about. I was going to be. I'm glad that this is what I thought about bomb was going to be. I was like there's no way this yeah. You know what? There is a way that this guy is probably going to try to drop a bunch of bats in one place. 20:49 Hey, join us on Patreon if you want this to be ad free and also there's a bunch of other perks you get to all episodes are ad free. You get next week's episode right now and you get to do monthly hangouts with me and Tim. Like we really look it's like a virtual just hangout room and we play games together. We talk we have show and tell sometimes we've made a lot of good friends through this and so it's a really good time to do that. So either way please share the episode tell somebody about it. These are all those ways to help us grow the show because we love doing it. We want to keep doing it. So thanks for being here. 21:22 and like of course, a stupid person would go. What have we just filled a gigantic bowl full of bats like twenty thousand? That's well, here's the thing is the thing and like of course half of them are going to die in transit. It wasn't just it was not just that we're going to put a bunch of bats in the bomb because here's what the here's the thing while he was on the tour. They talked about the bats in the cave and the tour guide was like, here's the thing about bats. Bats are are very, very little creatures, but they can 21:50 being less than 14 grams, they can carry up to 18 grams at a time. And so they're very strong creatures. Right. And so, uh, so he was like, we can strap explosives to these bats. And then when we dropped the bat bomb, they'll scatter, fly around and then below 22:14 Oh no, no, no, I'm glad that we've thought it more out because the idea that I thought was right. But then you explain it further and I was like, Oh, is dumb. But then you say that they're going to blow up. Oh, but here's where it gets better. He's like, he's like, but if we could time the explosives where they were on a timer, then what bats do, they roost before dawn every day. So they're going to fly around the city and they're going to find places in addicts and on ceilings and under awnings and they're going to roost. 22:44 in structures all over the city and then they're going to blow up. Yeah. And then it takes it one step further and he says, well, actually he says bombs are one thing, but what if they're incendiary devices? Because Tokyo is famously a city built out of wood, every structure there is a wooden structure. And so if we have them all be fire bombs, then we're going to cause a lot more damage more quickly. And he says, 23:12 probably more humane because there's gonna be less loss of life. Except for the bats. Okay. 23:22 and so he begins. He begins kind of putting together this this idea yeah of ah how to use bats for bombs for terrorism. Oh yeah 23:38 Okay, yeah and so he he here's the thing. Here's the thing we need to. I hear there's we need to just run out the front right. uh He he wrote a letter and I'll tell you who he wrote this letter to in a second FDR. He wrote this letter and in this letter he he knew that some people were going to think that there was like hey you're going to kill a bunch of animals with this bomb. That's not that's not a good thing no, but he said in this letter he said the bat is the lowest form of animal 24:07 animal life and up until now, that's not true. That's not true by the way lowest form of animal life is let's say together on three one two three the Chupac 24:25 What were you gonna say? I was gonna say your lizard that you have at your house. 24:32 He was, said that the bats are the lowest form of animal life and that up until now reasons for its creation have remained unexplained. And then he went on to like espouse this grand narrative about the lowest. No, I've got it. I've got the lowest form of animal life. We'll say it together on three. Ready? One, two, three realtors. 24:59 great. We got a bunch of realtors mad at us last time and I'll tell you what I couldn't care less. I would love to put twenty thousand real terms gigantic ball because here's the thing about realtors. Here's what they do. 25:11 right is that they get into a community and they start to infuse themselves and I roost and they find like twelve people to annoy that and so what we could do is we could plant them in a little communities and then we could just get them to be like, Hey, do you need a home? Do you need a home? Do you get home and then they'll do all the stuff that we wanted to do and they're super strong. I don't know if you know this realtor's are realters 25:39 they're strong. They could carry like four pounds more than what they weigh. So okay continuous. Who do you write this letter to? I read the letter first, so then so he goes on this grand narrative about the creation of bats and then he closes about how the okay start over from the top of like how they're the lowest form. Yeah, so bad to the lowest form of animal that up until now, the reasons for his creation have remained unexplained. 26:00 and then he goes and oh God made them for this. He goes to this grand narrative about the creation of bats and how they're useless. They've been useless throughout history and nobody likes them and then and then he says uh that they were created by God to await for this hour to play their part in the scheme of free human existence and to frustrate any attempt of those who dare desecrate our way of life. He wrote this to the New York Times to be brought to be printed in newspaper didn't he's like he's like bats exist for us to bomb 26:30 the Japanese. No, he wrote that to his good friend Eleanor Roosevelt. I was literally I was literally going to make a joke that he would send it to Eleanor instead of Franklin. Yeah, yeah, so he was good friends with Eleanor Roosevelt. They go way back and so he wrote this letter. We're talk about her pet raccoons. Didn't she have pet raccoons? She did have pet raccoons. I don't know a lot about that. I do know she had pet raccoons though yeah, which is tough pretty cool. 26:59 I mean that no right, uh so she so he sends us thank you. It's in this letter to Eleanor detailing the idea of bomb, a bomb made of bats uh and then why just want to learn more about FDR and Eleanor's relationship. You know yeah, so so curious, so he sends that letter and she reads it and she's like. This is convincing. This is pretty. He makes a good point 27:29 bats do suck. That's the central premise is you kind of have to start with bats or bad suck with yeah. You start with yeah. We hate that. You know yeah I yes yes I can yeah I've yes ah so she reads the letter and then she sits down at the dinner table and she says Frankie I got this letter today Frank. Do you think she called him that? I mean I would be surprised if she called him Franklin. I think she called him 27:57 Mr. President, think it was Delador, Delador, Elador, no yeah. She called the Mr. President, so she said Mr. Pres, I'll tell you right now. If I got into office, I'd make my wife call me Mr. President. She'd be like yeah, but Jaren, excuse me, I don't know who that is. Who do you think you are? Who do you think you are? I am 28:27 I am the one who knocks. I'm just quoting this quoting crazy, crazy things to her. So yeah, so she says, she says, Hey, she's a president. I got a letter from an old friend today and he says, uh, why thing he was smiling like that and she says, I think it'll help us with the war and what's about the bats and he goes, I hate the bats. 28:50 that's a good. She goes that's perfect. You can actually skip the page exactly. Well, first two pages are just about how bad bat and now you know that you know that all pormen to the fire. He's doing a fireside chat to the fire. She's like okay, here's the page three is page three and so I think I need the bottom of page two for context. the part of it. 29:20 this says this is page one gosh. This is bad are and then there's some stuff that's a little burnt good. I disagree. Okay, no, so it outlines the whole plan of how this is possible. What you're going to do. He's got schematics that he made of like how the back could work and so she shows us that the is the this is the male guy yeah. She shows this FTR FTR knows him too, but that gets more like 29:45 this is a friend of my wife, so he at him. He knows a friend of my wife yeah. This is more a friend of my wife. 29:57 and so he reads it yeah. Sometimes I hate when I got to hang out my I like most of my wife's friends, but she's got a couple of them. They're like one of them won't shut up about bats. Every time he's over for dinner, he's like yeah, but you know so after he reads a letter and he's like dang. I this is pretty convincing, so he 30:18 he know I idolize this guy. I like him. He said he sends the letter with to William J Donovan, who's the director of the OSS, which is basically the CIA of the time yeah, and he puts a cover letter on it the cover letter is like basically practicing the letter and in the letter he says listen. The man is not a nut. This is a direct quote. The man is not a nut. It sounds like a perfectly wild idea, but it's worth your time looking into bats B A T S 30:46 bombs and terrorism stuff. It's a B dot, you know, 30:54 So long as they're short because FDR signed off on this. The OSS was like all right. We'll look into it. And so they put together a strategic whatever you say boss within the army to begin investigating if this is going to be possible. Yeah. So they get a group of engineers together. Coincidentally they're working in New Mexico just outside of uh the cave of the cave in Carlsbad. Their military base there and so they start working on 31:24 and how how involved is Doctor Little Adams? Oh, so it's very interesting. They call him and they were like hey, you can come lead the project. Why don't you come down in New Mexico lead this project? I was hoping I was hoping I was yeah, so they took him. would hate for the government to take my idea yeah, you know yeah yeah. You send it to them and they just start doing it without you. That's pretty brutal, but yeah they put together. They put together this crazy group of people, so Eleanor 31:53 TV. Eleanor, they're doing, they're doing bat bombs. 32:02 Get in here! They're doing bad! 32:08 stole my idea. That's a deep call that bombs.nz.com 32:20 so they put together this a bomb. Oh dude, someone's trying to, someone's trying to buy a relaxing night for his life. Someone's like, someone's like what if what am I going to bath bomb for my wife? Right? She's to be able to put it in there. Just relax. I'm going to take the kids will leave the house right now and he actually goes to bat bombs dot com and then he gets it. He didn't realize and she puts it in the tub and they freaking you know they do a bad stew. 32:49 and he's out with the kids and she frantically calls and she's like there's bats in the house. He's like don't let them roost. They're going to blow up. You know yeah, so they tell Adams they say okay, you put together your group of people who are going to work on this project will give you whatever resources you need to be able to build these bombs and test them here in New Mexico and so Adams assembles his group and because somebody has to individually put these little bombs on the little bomb backpacks on these bats right. 33:18 Yeah, there's like an assembly line of like 33:28 and they all look like they're going off to bat school. They got a little bat, a little bomb backpacks. Yeah, I like that, uh so he puts together a group. He gets a mammologist named Jack von Blocher. Okay, he gets a former hotel manager, a former gangster, strange, um a scientist and then a whole group of self described bat lovers, which I don't think they actually love bass because they're trying to blow him up, but that's a different point. Do they know that when they sign up for this though? Oh totally and then actor Tim Holt 33:58 for some reason. I think it was just like I'd love to have that actor on our team. We all know Tim Holt and he was like a Western. He was an actor in the Westerns. This is the yeah, the early forties and so okay, uh he just was like I like that actor. Let's get him on the team and the government was like we can do whatever we want where the go war and so war time. It's war time. Everybody's got to be involved and so it was very clear that we can do anything as long you don't tell the people that FDR is in a wheelchair. Yeah, 34:32 as long as you keep that secret, but yeah. So they start working on this project and I'd love this quote from this point in the project there by uh other name, Jack Kofor, who wrote the book on bat bonds and this quote is hilarious. He says it seemed that none of them had considered the morality or the ecological consequences of sacrificing a few million bats, a few million yeah. So yeah, none of them thought if we take these out of these of this ecosystem, what's that going to do? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, because I mean I 35:02 Yeah, I don't know how far we were in like biological sciences at that point. If we recognize like the impact of that was going to make on right ecosystem to remove that many, right, uh but anyways, they started working on this project sure right about the same time that this project kicked off. We discovered napalm and so we started using napalm and weaponry heck yeah and so he was like that is perfect. We need napalm, napalm attached to the bats wolf uh so 35:31 there's a handful of things that they had to figure out is one. How are we to get all these bats? How are we to catch all these bats? So they had to put together a program of there was people you're looking at your enemies in war. Hey, you're a real sorry. You're going to real sorry. Once I get all these bats for five, one, two, just angrily picking bats. Yeah. 36:00 there was legitimately a decent sized group of uh army soldiers who enlisted for the war effort in World War Two who got shipped to New Mexico. Yeah, the war really I saw bloodshed on the front lines. I was at sea battleship versus battleship when I watched those there's no movies dedicated to my platoon. 36:28 which was in the caves of New Mexico picking bats. 36:37 Hey, if you love the show, a great way to serve support is by getting some merch. We got lots of great stuff. I'm going to showcase some of it right now. This is like our little Tillen QVC. You can get a it's not a call. It's a podcast sweatshirt. Very sweet. The nice thing about this is no one knows what podcast you're talking about. So you wear it in public and you can tell them about your Lord and Savior to a podcast. We also got the this is one of my favorite things we've ever made. The fiddle off fest hoodie. It's got uh the devil. m 37:07 playing a fiddle. It's not really the devil's a skeleton. And then all of the bands on the back of it like it's a festival. But spoiler alert, these aren't bands. These are jokes from episodes. So worth checking out. And this is one of my favorite things we've ever done. This is for the real fans. This is an old one. We've got a Tim Stones get well quick trick shirt. And it's very cool. We've got some really good designs. Darren is good at designing stuff. So support his dream. No one will hire him as a designer, but you can by buying his merch. 37:35 It's our merch, but it's his designs. so leave a comment, say, Jared, you're good at this. um We like your art. He really needs it. He needs your support so bad. Please make him feel better about it and buy some merch. It helps make this show keep happening. You can tell people about how much you love this show with it. So. 37:58 Did you hear it? Did you hear what I said? Yeah, you're to do a two minute merch ad. wasn't a two minute merch ad. Oh, Jaren's a good designer. Give him a high five. Make him feel good about his art. 38:13 and then you're to make them listen to two minutes of ads. We got to do all that and then it's going to be like back to school this fall like 38:23 I don't want to be. I hate skippable ads. They're not skip. They are skippable. Yeah. YouTube premium leave all this in that. 38:37 So they picked the Mexican free tailed bat species. They sent a bunch of army men. They got permission from the National Park Service. I crazy they they're like hey, we need to take a bunch of bats off of your land and they were like, it's not like we can say no, is it? And they're like, I mean, no. And so all the soldiers came in and they just started picking up the bats and they took them back to the military base and they realized now, okay, now we got to figure out how we're going to transport these. 39:04 and they realized pretty quickly, like if we can't just leave them loose in these bombs, because if they're inside there, they get loose, they start moving around. There's a possibility that they accidentally detonate trigger it. Yeah. And then there's a catastrophic chain reaction and we don't want that. So they started, uh, they decided, what if we have a series of basically ice cube trays and we stick them in the ice cubes and then we freeze them and then, yeah. And so 39:31 Oh, the same with the, with the flies. Yeah. We force them into hibernation. And then when we let them out, they'll wake up on the fall, like they'll unfurl the thaw and the wake up on the fall and they'll be fine. Uh, so they did a, they did a test of this. They best did not wake up, a bunch of bats in the ice, dropped a bunch of frozen bats. They flew them over the desert. I I know what the same field where we tested the atomic bombs. We flew over the desert with this bat bomb. 39:53 and we dropped this by they didn't have a napalm attached to it at this point. No. Yeah. It was just a, it was just a test to see it was just to drop a couple hundred thousand dead bats. They dropped it. The bomb opened up and the bats fell out and they just fell all the way to the ground and it was just was raining bats and none of them woke up. They were all dead because they froze them to death. The government spent your hard money on spent your grandparents hard earned money on that. 40:22 and so they had to figure out a different way to force them into hibernation. They ended up figuring out a different cooling method that will put them out of uh sleep, hibernate, go to bed, comply, comply, ha ha 40:43 Oh my gosh, devil. Do we have we talked about how this is making us bald? Not make an os ball. What are you talking about? Why would you say that one of our patrons said that this stuff is making us bald? Yeah, okay. Here's my thing. Here's the thing. The science doesn't support that. There's actually been a lot of peer reviewed studies conducted by people not associated with Celsius at all that have said that there is no link. 41:08 Yeah, and actually I'll tell you what this study that was not funded by Celsius told me that this was the main reason that girls liked me. Yeah, it's actually saying that it makes me hairier. I literally said that it said you're hairier because of this. This week sponsor bang energy drinks, bang, bang, baby, just Photoshop something over this. No, there was someone sent that in our discord like oh Celsius is causing hair loss. Here's the thing you got to think about the people who are and I said this earlier 41:37 Yeah, you got to think about the people who are choosing to drink Celsius. They're doing it because you know it's an energy supplement of like oh, I need more energy. That means you don't have a stable level of energy or enough to carry through the day, which could be multiple factors like lack of sleep, overworking out diets, not dialed in. I do it I like the little boost, but but there's multiple factors that could lead to that. 42:03 that, so you would have to get people who are identical in their sleep diet workout patterns now that also drink Celsius to see if this is causing us to lose our hair. Yeah, I don't think it is though, and the main reason is I don't like that. 42:20 so you have studies and research, but I have no bomber. I have no nothing can beat my no. So they this is causing you to lose your hair though for me. Something's doing it for you. You're not bothering, but for me, I don't want to be balding. Yeah, I don't think you 42:45 So so they come up with a different plan to cool the to cool the the bats to a lower degree, like not not freeze them, but to get them cool enough where they hybrid hibernate and then take off and go drop them. And then they pared down these bombs. They took they repurposed bombshells. And so they were actual uh shells and bombs that they repurposed. They put a bunch of 43:10 air holes in so that they could breathe. Sure. And then they put circular disks all the way across this that could hold a total of a thousand bats. They pared it down to thousand bats and each disk would hold a handful of it was like a 30 inch wide. Yeah. And so each disk would hold a handful of them. And the concept was simple. The bomb, the bomber would fly over, drop this bomb. This bomb would fall to about four thousand feet. A parachute would then trigger and the parachute would lower the bomb to Earth safely. 43:39 As it was lowering, the side panels of this would open up and release the bats who are now awake because they fell to a warmer altitude. Okay. Then they would wake up and they disperse throughout wherever you dropped the bomb. And then with those incendiary bombs, there was a timer on it. So then it would give them enough time to go roost somewhere, get into buildings, get inside places. And then the fires would erupt and it would burn everything. And the idea is you're dropping hundreds of these at a time. So you're flying over, just dropping hundreds of these bombs. And then you've got. 44:09 hundreds mass chaos that's yeah and so something to the effect of this, but imagine all those are explosive uh sure uh and so then of course they had to figure out the backpack thing and so they put together a system where these literally just like satchel to their back and this looks like they put a battery like a big yeah. It looks like this probably want to be able to fly, but it could fly just fine with them and so 44:39 They did a bunch of test drops with these bats into uh the same wilderness where we tested the nuclear bombs. And after they were able to be like, okay, these are dropping and getting out safely. Now it's time to blow some up. They strapped a bunch of these and they dropped them. ah when they dropped them, they dispersed and they flew into the base and they set the base on fire. 45:10 so anyway guys, this works really well. So yeah, two hangers caught on fire. That is car raise a couple barracks caught on fire. Here's the thing. This was a top secret project project, so no one on base knew about it, knew what was going on and so and also they couldn't tell them they couldn't tell us of a bad thing. All of a sudden half the base catches on fire and there's like bat carcasses there and they're like what's going on and no one was able to know that's crazy that it worked. Yeah, yeah, it worked. Also 45:39 what idiots to be like. Let's drop this near. I mean like it's going to burrow into buildings. What's proper near ours? Yeah, let's drop it near ours. Yeah, yeah, definitely true. The plan was this and so yeah, they let that happen crazy. Wow. So after this, the army was like, hey, don't love that. And they were like, but this is where we had a breakthrough. It works. It's working. And the army was like, let's transfer this project to the Navy. 46:08 and they were like okay, the navy took it and the navy didn't have any like issues with it like this. This is now nineteen forty three. By the way, we're deep into the war. Sure, ah the navy didn't have any major issues like this, but they pretty quickly the people officers, the navy were like we think you should go to the marines. We think this would be better served with seems like some dumb people and so later that december it ends up with marines ah and they had over and over started putting together 46:37 plans of how they were going to start to utilize these bombs. And one of the main ideas with this was that if you use these incendiary bombs, it causes catastrophic damage, but it causes catastrophic damage slowly. And so they wouldn't lead to a large cost loss of human life, but you could destroy civilian centers in the process. And so it would be a large strategic blow without killing a bunch of people. 47:06 ah But the government said, we don't like that. We're using the atom bombs instead. uh Yeah, yeah. So uh but they they went through this whole process. They got the National Defense Research Community to look into the bombs. And what they found from the bombs is that uh they did I say they renamed this project Xray Xray. No. OK, so they really needed a project Xray and they found that Xray was an effective. 47:36 weapon and they said that regular bombs would probably give somewhere in the ballpark of 167 to 400 fires per bomb load where we predict that a single x-ray bomb would give 3,625 to 4,748 fires and so this would be a strong weapon to use. And so more tests ended up being scheduled in mid-1944 and the program was then expected to be something that was deployed in Japan. 48:04 we are already at this point fire bombing Tokyo right, and so it's like we're going to use the bats now. It's going to be a cool fire bomb send in the bats send in the bats, but something interesting happens and I don't know if they understood the whole picture because they don't know the atom bomb is being developed right right. They think they're developing the super bomb that's going to end the war, which is hilarious. Where's their movie? So they think they're working on this bad heimer 48:34 and it's just a slow motion of him looking up and realizing what he's done. I've destroyed Japan, what is but also the cave ecosystem of New Mexico. What is so crazy is that they weren't testing these in the same desert in New Mexico. Oh yes, they're out there and they're like like okay, I'm it's really hard to do the calculations for this bat bomb when all those big gigantic never heard before booms are happening over there. 49:03 Also, to be fair, one team did destroy half the base and the other team didn't other team didn't do that seems yeah. Yeah, that is very true. uh So the government basically comes down and says, hey, we think that this is too expensive. Yeah, these bombs, it's a whole thing. We've got to gather all the bats. We've got to learn to transport them. We got it's a whole 49:28 I got to put them to sleep this. We just got to split an out. Boom, I it's so much easier to split the atom of a molecule to get a bunch of bats and it's bad horrific even ah alters the course of humanity for the rest of humanity. Yeah, but 49:47 easier yeah, but easier. Well, here's the crazy thing and so they can't it. The reason they can't it and I just I don't believe the cover story. I think the car. think what really happened is they're like we got a better bomb cancel this project yeah, but the cover story is that they cancel it because of the cost because it had burned at this point. Get ready for this. The total cost of this project was two million dollars and they said that's too much. We spent too much money on this project. How much did the atom bomb cost way more than that? 50:17 way more than that. ah How much Adam BAM cost biceps? See the Adam BAM development cost was it cost two billion dollars. I cost literally a thousand times more yeah. 50:37 So it's funny because if you're just in for inflation, the bat bomb cost thirty four million dollars in twenty, twenty four. Yeah, if you just for inflation, the atom bomb cost thirty four billion dollars in twenty, twenty four to develop that. We said the bat bombs too expensive too much. The bats, the bats are too expensive. It's kind of more Eleanor's thing and now that Truman's in charge. Yeah, I think I genuinely think what happened at he wants to drop the bomb. I genuinely think what happened is Truman came into power 51:06 Truman found out about the atomic bomb was like cancel the bad bomb thing. That's crazy. We have this, but we also have bats and FDR. After I was like hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, that's my wife's friend. You got a lot of down easy. Okay, like we did that just because but didn't Truman come to power because FDR died. 51:26 this is your scenario. He's still there. He's go. You're like you're like he's still there. hey, hey, hey, you're going to be visiting my three ghosts tonight about why the bads are the better solution of the atomic bomb in the clock strikes high noon. I don't think I don't think you're written. Oh, it's high. I forgot. Okay, okay, yeah. So what do you mean? We are I don't FDR wouldn't have left 51:55 Yeah, you're right. You're right mid war. FDR was like well got this thing started time to go you guys later. So yeah, FTR FTR comes to true. is like that's why I've seen you can't let you can't let that stop. You got a big like you're not here anymore and so she did. He decides to let a little down little Adams down easy and says hey sorry man, the money spence it. We can't keep doing that buck stops here. Yeah. Yeah, we the bad we have no more bucks to put towards this 52:25 And so it ends up not being ever used in service, but it was developed, it was tested, and there was multiple versions of this. And it was deemed by research in the military that this was an effective weapon to be used in warfare. And genuinely, I think that there's an alternate universe where the atom bomb doesn't get developed in time and we use this instead. 52:46 because this was seen as a much more effective weapon than the weapons that we were using. Do you think we'd have the nuclear trees that we have now? Had we not dropped those bombs 52:58 I'm saying the atomic bombs, but I think I think seeing what that I mean a people of was a turning point for yes, the entire world, but I think I think you still see that in tests. I think if I think if people I don't think you see it to the magnitude of like lie like you see a field destroyed. Of course yeah, that's not as Tano 53:22 Yeah, maybe, maybe true. I don't know. How do we drop the bat bomb? That's what I'm saying is I think it would have taken someone else dropping the atomic or us dropping it somewhere other time yeah for it to have reached the level of peace that we did yeah after that yeah because it does. I mean after that everyone was kind of like 53:41 well, we can't really do war anymore because this is this will be the end. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's a good point. I don't know. I would think I would think that it would still be a thing just because of the 53:59 even if it's not used on anyone, you know the power of those things. You see it yeah, but I think a but I think but I but I'm saying is I think it's the thing where Truman, I think Truman said this later. I was like he regretted dropping the bombs yeah because like that's what that's what I'm saying though is that you knew the destruction was going to cause in theory. That's all theory yeah, but until it happens well to be fair. I think then the whole world agrees the whole world comes together. It was like ah, so we're never doing that again. 54:28 Well, I think I think part of that was Truman had some bad Intel. He I don't think he of course that to be as much civilian damage as was caused of oh yeah. Of course, of course, as far as like drop sites. Yeah, yeah, but still damage. Yeah, you know, yeah, I just might be something. There might be something there. I don't know. I don't know. I wonder how that would have changed history had the bat bomb had the bat bomb been the first, you know, been used. I don't know. Maybe we could live to see the bat bomb used. Yeah, maybe we can revive it. What I can say for sure is that 54:57 doctor little was not a good person to put on a top secret mission because immediately he goes back to his practice and every patient he's sitting over them. He's like you know I spent the last couple of years dropping dead bats and the uh new Mexico desert, New Mexico desert. Yeah, yeah, we blew him up though. uh I hate when they talk to you. Yeah, yeah, yeah, 55:21 I came to Mexico, you're gonna this time here. I I... I think better than this atomic bomb. You I've always said that I don't understand why bats exist. Why did God make those things? The rats of the sky! I think God made them for such a time as this. God designed these to carry tiny terrorist backpacks. 55:45 And so he talks so much about him that it was like the subject line of the inventor is dead uh and so he they have also. didn't say this yet, but this is very important. He's born in paint lick Kentucky. That's the name of the town paint lick two words paint lick crazy uh and then yeah. They talk about his inventions and one of them is the bat bomb and in his uh in his obituary. He also it's on his grave. 56:13 mentor the air mail pick up system bat warfare project in aerial pellet seating. Wow, because you know, I mean it was a great a great idea. Even if it didn't really get used very much, I vent her liked it. Wow, what's going to be on your tombstone? Definitely nothing about bats. I mean, I don't know. That's the crazy thing. I was thinking about this in the last last week's episode about Xi Jinping. He did so much stuff before he came the de facto ruler of China. 56:43 like you know. I think that's that's the thing I think about a lot lately. Like we still just have so much time left like unless we screw ourselves up and we die early like cut all this. Maybe maybe we just cut all this our life. Maybe a better life. Other stuff could happen. Just cut it all out. Just you know though. You know the the most common age of homeless people are homeless men in the United States. Yeah, so still time to screw your life up. That's the takeaway 57:12 Or make it better, I don't know, but probably not. 57:16 Oh, lads, talking. You let him go long enough. He either starts talking about skylights or he makes it really sad. Wow, wow, good way. You sure the balloon I got you another balloon. It's all the way over there. Oh no, yeah, but says get well soon. Does it? It doesn't, but you'll never know. 57:40 I am happy to be here. I loved it. I hope that my tombstone says a podcaster. He was happy to be here happy to happy to be here. That's crazy. I'm happy to be here on my tombstone. That's crazy. Now yours will say fiddle off. There you go. Yeah, 58:04 you're gonna die before me for sure. Hey, if you like that episode, please share it with somebody. Tell somebody about this podcast. We've done three hundred of these things now and we've got plenty more. I that means you have three hundred to choose from to go back and listen to one of them. You can go back and listen or watch his chrome dome where we used to just fly planes all over the world with nuclear bombs just in case you know, it's just kind of like a middle drop one today and all the accidental drop bomb droppings that happened with that story as well. So 58:29 really the whole thing is a please share this show. Please help us keep growing it. If you want to help us grow it even faster, you can join us on patreon. You're not missing out on a whole lot. You just get next week's episode for free or included an ad free and you get to be part of our discord. So like if you'd love to be part of that, that'd be great. It's a way to financially support the show anyway. We're just happy that you're here. Thanks to Alex for sitting through all this stuff for two hundred something episodes. He joined pretty late 58:55 and but he's been here for now to a hundred and ninety something episode. The first ten. I don't think he was really part of but for two hundred ninety episodes he's been here. So thanks to him there's a we've done three hundred of these and we're going to do five thousand more. Oh my gosh, we're never going to stop doing this show. I promise genuinely from bottom my heart. We're never going to stop. Yeah, you're not allowed to stop. I know I'm not the one who's here against my will.