← Haunted Cosmos
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- [00:03]
Ben
This episode of Haunted Cosmos is brought to you by Indigo Sundry Soap Company Design Butter New Dominion Design Company Gray Toad Tallow the Kings Ridge Elderberry Squirrely Joe's Coffee Stone Crop Wealth Advisors and our supporters@supercast.com China has identified the cause.
- [00:36]
Brian
Of the mysterious new virus. Coronavirus.
- [00:39]
Ben
Coronavirus.
- [00:46]
Brian
The death toll now has risen above that of the SARS outbreak.
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Ben
17.
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Brian
City may have to temporarily bury.
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Ben
Bodies on public land if they run.
- [01:19]
Brian
A.
- [01:32]
Ben
It was early April in the year of our Lord 1915. The Great War ravaged Europe, fanning flames of hatred that would linger like smoke for years to come. The first truly modern war, it painted the hills and meadows of France, Germany, and Belgium red with rivers of blood. Bullets flew incessantly in those days, and storms of artillery rained down like deafening tornadoes until the world itself was made new, made less and different by the force of it all. Young men died, an entire generation lost, and with their deaths, Christendom began its final hemorrhage in the West. At this time of early spring, the western borders of Belgium were being constantly pushed here and there by the Allied powers from their French stronghold and the Central Powers pouring out of the German bulwark. France, with her soldiers arrayed in the bright colors of a more gentlemanly time, was suffering. It was still early in the war, but she could already feel the cold drafts blowing in from multiple chinks in her armor. She had not even tasted the hell of Verdun or the forsaken fields of the Somme yet, but she already felt crippled. Thus it was that she called up legions of reserves from within her own country, as well as other reservists from Algeria across the Med to reinforce the line in Belgium. They arrived to the north and western town of Ypres about one week into April. From there they took a short train ride to the small village of Langemark. One can imagine how they felt as they disembarked and looked on the fullness of what one man can do to another behind the cloak of militarized vendetta, ruin upon ruin. Buildings crumbled in, roads heaved up by the machinations of war. A city in tatters. Woe to the bloody city. The men were solemn and sad. Many knew that by arriving there they arrived at the beginning of their own deaths. Yet still duty called them up to courage, and so they walked through the town to meet the trenches that would house them. They climbed down into those trenches and walked through the muddy maze towards the front line. There they waited for doom. Some two weeks later, on April 22, that doom finally came. But its scope far outpaced those few precious French souls living in the ground. The day was especially warm and sunny. If not for the existential dread facing down both sides of the world represented there, separated by a no man's land only a few hundred yards wide, it would have been the ideal day for any Belgian farming village. With the sunrise, though, came the steady stream of deafening gunfire and artillery. In two weeks, not an inch had been gained by either Allied or Central Powers. Langmarck and the larger Ypres were a stalemate, but the fighting raged on ceaselessly. Nonetheless, the sound of gunfire would occasionally be interrupted by the screams of a soldier who had poked his head above the ground, only to be horrifically injured or maimed, but not immediately killed. The day wore on like this, just as the other ones before it had until later in the afternoon. It was at that point that something changed. The wind shifted. It had been blowing south for days, but suddenly it turned and. And began blowing west from behind the German lines. With this change came a far more noticeable change. The Germans stopped firing. As this new breeze kissed the haggard faces of the newly minted French and Algerian forces, they relished the first moment of true stillness they had tasted since they arrived weeks prior. Some, especially brave among them, poked their heads up to see what had come over the Germans. They didn't see their camp burning by some act of God or nature. They didn't see their trenches inexplicably abandoned like they hoped for. They didn't see anything different at all, save the fact that they were now no longer shooting. Many minutes went by like this, minutes of unprecedented quiet. It was long enough for some of the younger Frenchmen to tempt themselves with the idea that somehow the war was over and they had won. But that dream was squashed down in a moment as they watched a new devilry rise up from the German trench. Clouds of greenish yellow and then bluish silvery smoke streamed from a trench line four miles wide. And at the very front of the German position, a new trench further forward than the French had noticed before. It coalesced into a heavy cloud that moved still silently across the field of no Man's Land, riding the wind that had refreshed the weary men only a moment before. With nowhere to go, the French waited to endure this new thing, a thing they took to be some kind of fog and nothing more. It rose up like a great wall of some ancient city before them, and each man felt some sense of threat rise up in his heart with it. Dirty faces stared upwards from the trenches eyes bleach white against their filthy skin. And they looked like worshipers, terrified before an awful God. When the wave of cloud finally hit, the coughing and choking and heaving fits began right away. Mounds of young men doubled over one another as they sought to wrench their own guts out of their mouths. Desperate coughs and desperate screams. It was no fog or smoke. These men had freely inhaled a thick plume of pure chlorine gas and now suffered the torturous pain of poison that felt like needles filling their lungs. There was no escape. And just as the wailing cries of agony reached a new crescendo, the German lines began to sing with a fresh barrage of gun and artillery fire to drown it out. It was the beginning of the Second Battle of Ypres. But it was also so much more than that. April 22, 1915, marked the first time chemical weapons were used in a field of battle on the earth. It was a turning point in the severity of man's wrath and cruelty. And it opened a Pandora's box that, as history tells us, has led to particularly heinous evil. But why is this? Why do we recoil at the thought of chemical weapons in a theater of war? Aren't all the arts and weapons of war a horror? Aren't they all meant to maim, kill, conquer and destroy? Perhaps it is the despair it inspires. What do you do if the enemy's weapon is in the very air you're forced to breathe? Maybe it calls to mind images of bloodstained men walking through cloudy killing fields and wearing masks that make them look like something less than human.
- [07:58]
Brian
Human.
- [07:59]
Ben
What more horror can be imagined than to watch such a creature find you writhing on the ground in unstoppable pain before mercilessly killing you then and there, or even more mercilessly leaving you to suffer the long death of a poison gas? How can something as natural and unassuming as chlorine or some other gas be turned and twisted and forged anew until it's an instrument of such brutal death? I imagine some ancient people asked similar questions about bronze and iron when they first witnessed the sword's terrible work. But the sword doesn't seem to measure up in the realm of horror to a gas cloud of death drifting towards you with inexorable and unstoppable finality? There's something different. What if we are so instinctively repulsed by chemical weapons and biological terror because they're so unknown and invisible, and, in most cases, entirely off limits to the average man? I would not argue that simply knowing them better would make us less wary of their danger. But I would argue that their innate mystery certainly doesn't help. They're dangerous, as unpredictable as the ocean and the weather, for they're made of the same stuff. They're wild things, treacherous things, but they are things nonetheless. Are chemicals and biological terrors not also categories in this world that man is supposed to subdue and rule over? Can it just be as simple as a lack of understanding and a bad start with their introduction in war that answers for our hatred of them? Maybe. But maybe not. What happens when a man grabs the reins of a bull he can't ride? What happens when pride quiets the disquiet in a man's heart? What happens when godless men pursue their dominion with a curiosity unfettered by truth and hope and love and faith? The opening story was an example of what happens when the use of these weapons and methods go well. Goes at least according to the design and intent of their makers. But what happens when it goes wrong? What happens when they go wrong, even according to their makers? There once was a body of water east of the Caspian named the Aral sea. In the 1960s, it was the third largest lake in the world, providing sustenance and industry to Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan. Today it is one of the world's largest and most barren deserts, with just a thin and shriveled line of water remaining on its western side. What could turn such a mass of water into a lifeless plain over the course of a few decades, you ask? Well, my friends, that is quite the story.
- [10:42]
Brian
In 1988, workers on a sandy island in the Aral Sea greeted the sunrise with a tiresome chore. They hauled dozens of monkeys, 100 various kinds in total, out onto a 10 acre field of dust. There the workers lashed them by their collars and leashes to posts that had been anchored with concrete deep in the earth. The monkeys fought hard against the rough treatment of the men and screeched their high pitched yelp over and over again. For the men, the lower level guards, it all felt too much. The freshly risen sun blinded them and heated up the air so quickly the pounding of their legs by the monkeys made them cringe, and the rising volume of their collective shouts gave them all headaches. When combined with the fiery sun, the sensory overload was real. They took out their frustrations on the monkeys, not worrying about an extra kick here and there as they finally finished tethering them all up to their stakes. Stakes like pagan pillars in the desert, promising doom to all who worship at them. Almost A mile away, a cluster of men in hazmat suits stood with clipboards in one hand and binoculars in another. After the guards cleared the field, they eagerly watched as a bright light flashed up in the sky at the end of the row of poles, the end closest to the sea. Once the light faded away, a thick cloud of jaundice yellow began to fall to the earth with a heavy slowness. It seemed almost graceful, almost pleasant. But the hazmat scientists knew better. The wind that had begun the previous night took the cloud and thinned it out, pushing it hard to the ground and drawing it quickly down the row of poles until the little monkey figures were covered in its shroud. Even from such a great distance, they could hear the shrill cries of the animals grow louder and louder in the fray. The monkeys yanked frantically at their collars and leashes. Their lungs burned with such an intense rage inside of them, many crumbled to the ground, hoping they could crunch themselves up into a tight ball that no longer needed the luxury of breathing. It was a brutal scene. Little did they know that all of them were already dead and that the worst was yet to come. Come. Once the cloud fully dispersed, the hazmat came and took the now crippled and suffering animals back to their cages in the facility. There they waited and suffered all the more as each monkey developed and subsequently died from various diseases. Q fever, brucellosis, glanders, and plague. For the monkeys, it was hell. For the guards and scientists, though, it was just another day on Vozrydinha island in the Aral Sea, the island of Soviet chemical and biological war, the island that would grow until there was no more sea. In Geneva, Switzerland, from 1969 to 1971, the proper use of biochemical weapons in war was debated by world leaders. Following the exponential losses of World Wars I and 2, this pseudo league of nations was naturally determined to develop new rules of engagement that would lessen the macabre brutality with which great wars were fought. By April 10th of 1972, the agreement reached by the Convention was ready for signature. This biological weapons Convention boasted what it and its constituent members felt to be a distinctly humanitarian commitment to reject biochemical weapons of all kinds. Specifically, by signing, the signatories committed to prohibit the production of, acquisition, stockpiling, retention and use of biochemical weapons, full stop. Each signatory vowed to enforce this commitment by law in whatever land their government presided over. Among the signatories was the state representatives from the then sovereign Soviet Union. However, even as Soviet diplomats and leaders signed the commitment, their scientists and engineers were hard at work constructing what would become the largest and most cutting edge biochemical weapons research establishment the world has ever seen. At least that we know of. In 1936, a man named Ivan Velikanov led the first ever military expedition expedition to a small island in the Aral Sea named Vozydinya. What made this expedition so exciting for the budding and soon to be Soviet Union was its sole focus on biological and chemical warfare testing. Russia had not been immune to Germany's battlefield sorcery in World War I, and so was keen to throw their own hat into the ring of airborne death and torture. Velikanov hoped to find in this small island in the middle of the sea, in the middle of nowhere, the foundations for a covert facility that would go on to leave its unmistakable mark on the world. Vosrezhdinia made perfect sense for this. It was virtually uninhabited, already boasting only the peppered docks of poor fishermen from bordering countries who did not even live there full time. It was utterly flat, dusty and nearly barren. It appeared to the early Soviets, and they were right, that all that naturally grew there was a certain species of grass. It blanketed the span of the island and housed within its tiny forest a population of lizards and creeping insects that as far as can be found, was the entire ecosystem of Vozrydini island before the weapons and testing began. By the end of that first year, the grass and the lizards would be eradicated from the island, never to return from that initial trip. Development and quick expansion of facilities on the island began. By 1948, Vozarezhdinya cemented itself as the focal point of the most secretive and high level biochemical weapons testing and manufacturing taking place in the Soviet Union and therefore the entire world. Contained in its grounds were massive stores of anthrax, plague, smallpox, brucellosis and tularemia. And with each annual testing season, more of these stores were added. The Soviet biochemical killing machine was being perfected while the rest of the world was trying to get their feet under them as regards this new technology. But with such monumental feats of research in such a volatile field, the Soviets were taking great ethical risks upon themselves. Though perhaps they as a regime, did not see that as worth consideration. In 1972, the same year the Soviet Union signed the Biochemical Weapons Convention. Two fishermen from Uzbekistan were floating along the surface of the Aral Sea on their way back to the shore. It had been a long day in the water with relatively little to show for all their efforts. They didn't understand why the fish population seemed to grow thinner and thinner each year. They understood even less why the fish, fish that did remain seemed so small and sickly. Despite this, fishing was their livelihood, and barring some act of God, it always would be. They therefore thought it best to let their minds wander elsewhere whenever these questions floated to the surface. The summer heat beating down on their backs was only lessened by a sweet wind blowing to the west. That wind continued even into the beginning of the sunset, a thing that the men looked for forward to every day for its unmatched beauty. With the wind to their backs, they rode steadily on, but looked ever westward to watch the sun paint the sky all of its myriad colors before the night fell. Suddenly, though, the wind changed dramatically. They felt their eyes begin to water as they were hit in the face now by a steady eastward breeze that kept growing in strength. Soon it too was a beating wind they had to row into to stay strong strait. But they still looked to the sunset, braving the call of wind that kept coming at them, and squinted their eyes to see the Majesty. But the Majesty was no longer there. What met their gaze now was a brown wall of cloud rushing towards them. Sandstorms were rare in the Aral Sea, though the men were near enough to Vosrezhdinja island to think that maybe a dust cloud had been whipped up there. But still they knew that the dirt on Vos Reshdinya did not look that shade of brown. They covered their faces as the cloud approached and prepared to look through densely squinted eyes until the dust passed over them. However, as it hit them with the wind, they found that it was not dust at all. They could see right through it. It didn't bite at their skin or mount any extra resistance at all. It was just differently colored air. They rode on, unfazed for a while while. But eventually the tickles in their throats were too much to bear, and the men began to cough. The cough became whooping and crazed. The cough became a choke in a desperation just as the men arrived at the shore. They did not know when, but the cloud had passed away from them while they were still some distance from the docks. A few days later, the fishermen, citizens of the Soviet Union, succumbed and died of plague. The plague, as Soviet records admit, came from Vozaryzhdinya. It had been released during a test when the wind was moving west. And though the test was stopped after the wind turned, the scientists knew that people would likely be affected. When the wind turned, nothing was done. The families were not notified of the fault of Vozaryzhdinya. The records were buried under a mountain of other reports. Either that or again, they didn't try to hide it. And it was a simple case of nobody caring. And somehow this is nowhere close to the most tragic biochemical incident suffered by the land around Vozegina. Before the deaths of those two fishermen. Sometime in the 1960s, Soviet governors from other ministries within the regime thought that the Aral Sea could be used to increase the agricultural yield of the bordering countries. These state planners had grandiose visions of rolling cotton fields all over the formerly desert soil of Uzbekistan. And all they had to do to achieve it, they thought, was reroute a portion of the AMU Darya river into man made irrigation canals. The AMU Darya was the southern inlet river to the Aral Sea. It had fed the sea and followed more or less the same course for generations before the Soviet agricultural project. Given its reputation for such constancy, nobody expected a slight deviation of its flow to completely change the geography of the river and region. But that is just what happened. After only a few years passed, the AMU Darya was completely stunted from going into the Aral Sea at all. All the changes in fluid stress on the walls of the river made it coil into a loop at its end, terminating completely at the Soviet canals well before the sea's delta. As this happened, and especially after it was complete, the the Aral Sea started to see its water levels drop dramatically. By the middle of the 60s, up to 14 cubic miles of water would be gone from the sea annually. The rate of loss increased until by the 1980s, the sea level was dropping by 3ft each year. From 1960 to 1998, the Aral Sea's surface area dropped by over 60% and its volume dropped by over 80%. This was too dramatic and quick a change to be reversed by manned sea schemes. The damage was done. By 2010, the Aral Sea was utterly unrecognizable, shrunk into a husk of its former self and leaving a new and especially arid desert in its wake. But dryness was not all the danger faced by those near the new desert. Despite the geographic crisis, the rerouting of the river did actually turn Uzbekistan from a dust bowl to a cotton boll. For a while, the soil became fertile for perhaps the first time in history, and Uzbekistan's usefulness became known worldwide as a premium supplier of cotton. But soon the soil was dried up of what little nutrients it had. The cotton yields dropped like the arrow's water level, and little profit was left. After all the effort of Making it productive. That didn't stop the Soviets though. They began to use banned agrochemical fertilizers to jumpstart the soil. These chemicals were and are incredibly toxic and carcinogenic. The local Uzbekistans, the farmers and their families who actually did the work the Soviets designed the land for, became addicted to the substances and succumbed to their ill fated side effects in massive waves of death. And that's only the downside of the irrigation project. What the Soviets also failed to consider, or again did not care about, was the residual effects of the biochemical weapons testing on the new desert landscape that formed when the Aral Sea vanished. The desert was a toxic wasteland, post apocalyptic in its ability to kill you, whose deposits of anthrax and plague run deep underground. After the many years of testing and production that took place on VOZ Razhdinia every year, as winds came down from the mountains far away and battered a land from the west, the poisoned dirt and sand gets kicked up into billowing clouds of death that roll through the villages on what used to be the coast. It's no surprise, therefore, that those villages report some of the highest cancer rate per capita in the history of the world. All this for an edge, for a profit, for a sense of safety in a changing and secretive world that fell down as if from heaven after the war. All of this brought on by a twisted counterfeit of the good dominion man is supposed to exercise over the world. It's made us wonder, are there other cautionary tales to be told in this dreadful arena? Has man twisted nature to his craven ends? Join us in this episode of Haunted Cosmos where we will walk into the labyrinth of man's imagination, seeing what other horrors he has made. In league with the darkness.
- [24:47]
Ben
Foreign. Welcome everybody, to this episode, this high energy episode of Haunted Cosmos. We're locked in. We're excited to be here talking about some of the most gruesome biochemical crimes against humanity that anyone could ever imagine. And that have actually happened. Brian. Welcome, dude.
- [25:12]
Brian
So naturally we spent the two minutes before hitting record on this introduction making ethnic jokes to. To our. What did you call them? Ethnically curious.
- [25:23]
Ben
Curious.
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Brian
Ethnically ambiguous editor.
- [25:26]
Ben
Yeah, but curious is a funnier word.
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Brian
And we were really entertaining ourselves.
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Ben
Martina McBride.
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Brian
Guys, I'm super excited for this episode. It is. It is not a pleasant one. It's another one of those, like, what are the demons up to? In league with the people.
- [25:39]
Ben
Now, look, I'm just going to stop you right there. It's bad, it's bad. We did that episode in the Season places you can't go and people that went there anyway. And we hear you. We heard your feedback, and we get it. We get it. Okay? We really do. This is not that.
- [25:54]
Brian
Hey, if you could just put it on here and enhance for a second. We get it. You hated that episode.
- [26:00]
Ben
Yeah.
- [26:01]
Brian
It was a terrible episode. We might strike it from the record, pretend like it never happened. Like, we might memory hole that episode, like teaser fauci.
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Ben
But, yes, this episode is not that this episode. It does talk about some. Some particularly gruesome incidents, just like many of our other episodes. But we are going to try to tie it into a broader topic that we'll get into shortly. But before that, I think it's worth saying first and foremost that my wife and I were talking about Martina McBride the other day. Not our Martina McBride, but the actual, like, famous. The actual country artist woman, Martina McBride. Yes. And someone out there can correct me. I am too lazy to Google this. Martina McBride, to me, in terms of a name sounds like the absolute peak of female country artists from the early 2000s. Like, it's the best country artist female name that you can imagine. I bet her kitchen was turkey themed.
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Brian
Oh, absolutely.
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Ben
You know what I mean?
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Brian
She had, like, a bathroom that was, like, a patriotically themed bathroom.
- [27:01]
Ben
Yeah. But here's the thing. I don't think she was actually that big. She had that one. She. She had a few songs that were really popular. What was one of them? Well, I always thought it was suds in the bucket and the clothes hanging, but then Martin, our martini bride. Yeah. But then he told me that that actually wasn't one of her songs. She did have some. Anyway, in the comments, if you're a big Martina McBride fan.
- [27:23]
Brian
Yeah.
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Ben
And again, the white woman version, not the Mexican editor version. Let us know if she was actually really big.
- [27:28]
Brian
Yeah, we need to know.
- [27:29]
Ben
Yeah.
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Brian
Anyway, also tell us who you like better. Do you like the famous country artist Martina McBride or the haunted Cosmos editor named Martin that we call Martina McBride on the show?
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Ben
Hey, I know my answer because I.
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Brian
Know my country art.
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Ben
I'm kidding. I'm kidding.
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Brian
Hey, say it on three. One, two, three.
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Ben
Mexican editor.
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Brian
Okay. We won.
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Ben
Yeah. Hey, Martin, I love you. He's sitting right there.
- [27:53]
Brian
Seriously, King, guys, this episode we've got, it's one of those episodes that I had. And the idea for it while walking, because I like to walk. I like to roam the neighborhoods, do a couple miles a day, and I was walking around and I realized, tell.
- [28:07]
Ben
Them what you actually like doing while you walk.
- [28:10]
Brian
Yeah.
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Ben
I listen to audiobooks, but which audio.
- [28:12]
Brian
I'm getting there.
- [28:13]
Ben
I'm getting.
- [28:14]
Brian
I listen to audiobooks. I particularly like, you know, military thrillers. So I'm reading. I'm reading. And by that I mean listening to. I cannot emphasize this enough. I listened to, like, a lot of Tom Clancy, you know, Jack Ryan series, and there's an episode in there that ties in with this theme. Great, great episode. I mean, book. There's. There's a title in that lineup. But then I was listening to the far less serious Terminal List series because Tom Clancy's like the. Like the.
- [28:43]
Ben
The what? The.
- [28:44]
Brian
He's wearing a tuxedo and he's like.
- [28:46]
Ben
Yeah, you know, it's like Winnie the Pooh. It's like the Winnie the Pooh with the tucks is Tom Clancy, which is saying a lot about Jack Carr, by the way.
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Brian
Jack Carr is like a bro with tribal tats who wrote the Barbed Wire. All the guys in the office were like, dude, terminal list, man. Like, it's terminal. You got to listen to terminal. You got to read Terminal List. So I'm reading it. They had another episode that tied in with the theme, and it was like a light bulb. And I went, wait a second. Not only is this true, it reminds me of the Ayahuasca kind of episode where people have been searching for ways to take evil dominion over the world, like twisting the materials and resources God has put in the world to evil and wicked ends. And I realized, like, this is true. The Soviet Union did it. America's done it. The Germans have done it. People have been at this for a long time trying to make chemical or biological agents that are basically like. When you look at what they really are, they are doomsday divide. Like, they are.
- [29:46]
Ben
They're weapons of massacres, the type of.
- [29:48]
Brian
Thing that could end the human civilization. Some of these biological agents in particular. So I thought, what better show to talk about this on than Haunted Cosmos? Because there are two things that are certain about this topic. Number one, people are sinning and they're up to some bad stuff. But number two, demons are definitely involved.
- [30:07]
Ben
Yeah, yeah. The world is. The cosmos is haunted by sin, man's sin, and the curse that came, you know, from that sin, and also haunted by genuinely evil entities and unclean spirits and unclean forces that are primordial, that are smart, that are in the midst of being completely annihilated by Jesus Christ and done away with, but that are also, because of that, especially desperate. There's some proverb about the caged or the tiger that's caught in a trap is the most dangerous tiger. Or something like that. I don't know if that's Chinese. I don't know if that's even a profound. Maybe I just came up with it. I almost did a Confucius accent. It would have been very offensive.
- [30:49]
Brian
YouTube commenters have two opinions about our ethnic accents. One, one funniest thing I've ever heard. You guys are so clever, so handsome. Love it.
- [30:56]
Ben
Wow. So smart.
- [30:57]
Brian
Immediately bought the book Haunted Cosmos. Doing your duty in the world. It's not just stuff. When I heard you do them. And then there's another opinion of those same accents. And they're basically like, wow, you guys are the worst people who've ever lived. You should be sent to prison. And you, you owe an apology to the entire island of Japan. To that I say, oh, no, I do not.
- [31:21]
Ben
Oh, I will apologize to absolutely nobody.
- [31:24]
Brian
And become a wolf.
- [31:25]
Ben
Anyway, I was trying to say.
- [31:28]
Brian
Go on.
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Ben
You know, the, the bear, the wolf, the tiger, whatever, that's caught in a trap is the most dangerous one. It has nothing to lose. Right. In the same way you can think of the forces of darkness like that right now, they're caught in a trap that will end in their utter demise. Christ one, he dealt the death blow on the cross and with his resurrection and ascension, and yet they're still in the world. They still are active, and so they're very desperate. And that makes them genuinely dangerous.
- [31:55]
Brian
That's really good.
- [31:56]
Ben
Yeah. And so there's a lot of forces at play here. There's a lot of big ideas that we could discuss. There's a lot of things like man's dominion being inevitable, not whether, but which. And what happens when he exercises improper dominion, and then what happens when he does that in league with demons. But I think before we dive too deep into that, there is one, at least one housekeeping.
- [32:17]
Brian
Housekeeping thing.
- [32:18]
Ben
Yeah, housekeeping thing that we do need to discuss. Let's bring that up now and then we can move on to the fun stuff.
- [32:23]
Brian
Yeah. So we, we have one of the best supporter communities of any podcast in the history of mankind. I'll just let me put it that way. Yeah. So we've, we've had a very dedicated group of patrons that have made this show possible, helped us to continue to expand it, make it better. Bring on, you know, full time guys like Martina McBride.
- [32:40]
Ben
Yeah.
- [32:41]
Brian
Country artist and legend, SL, video ed, slash Mexican editor to join our team. And we, we continue to work hard to make it the best we possibly can and so we, we have this great patron community. Every week we release a show called the Dusty Tome for our patrons exclusively that Ben does. It's kind of like a lore type show. Scripted monologues, you know, movies, music and things. It's moody, it's glorious, it's amazing. We talk about Haitian zombies, all kinds.
- [33:12]
Ben
It's a great like, you know, you draw a bath, you pour a glass of wine. Yeah. And you listen to the Dusty.
- [33:18]
Brian
That's right. You put your, your bathing cap on. You get your little like the, the brush on a, on a stick that nobody really uses except in movies when they're doing this. And then you just, you know, you.
- [33:27]
Ben
Listen to Fields and McCoy movie.
- [33:31]
Brian
You listen to like just Ben accompany you in your bath is what you just said.
- [33:36]
Ben
And let's move on. Post. Millennialists often talk about creating generational wealth. But where do you even begin to turn that vision into reality? Stonecrop Wealth Advisors is here to guide you. They'll demystify the wealth building process and equip you with the strategies needed to secure a lasting legacy for future generations. With with faith based portfolios. They help align your investments with your values. Moving your hard earned dollars away from woke companies and into businesses. Advancing God's kingdom. As fee only investment advisors, Stonecrop is unwavering in its fiduciary commitment to act in your best interest. That means no commissions, no hidden agendas, just a dedication to serving you. Get started with Stone Crop Wealth Advisors today by visiting stonecrophy advisors.com haunted cosmos or by clicking the link in the description below. Investment advisory services offered through Stonecrop Wealth Advisors LLC, a registered investment adviser with the U.S. securities and Exchange Commission.
- [34:45]
Brian
Hey Ben. I just read that our great grandparents probably experimented with butter on their dry skin as moisturizer. Is that why you look so radiant?
- [34:54]
Ben
Maybe it's Grandma's Butter recipe. Or maybe it's Gray Toad Tallow.
- [34:58]
Brian
Their tallow products are 100% organic and naturally contain the good stuff your skin craves. No mystery there.
- [35:06]
Ben
So say sayonara Sammy to kitchen experiments. And say hello to healthier skin. Gray Toe Tallow Trusted by Skin Infinite Feed by Great Grandma's Butter Recipe.
- [35:18]
Brian
For more information and to get a sample pack, check out gray toad tallow dot com. Don't forget to use the code COSMOS15. That's all caps COSMOS15 for 15% off your order. Ben, do you know what's weird? The fact that Gobekli Tepe contains advanced.
- [35:43]
Ben
Technology far beyond the time period in which it was made.
- [35:46]
Brian
Okay, Nerd. I was thinking more in the vein of health and wellness in this cold and flu season.
- [35:51]
Ben
Oh, well, were you actually thinking about how God gave us amazing small native berries called elderberries that actually carry all kinds of vitamins and minerals and antioxidants and antiviral compounds that our bodies crave?
- [36:07]
Brian
And that Trevor and Autumn at the King's Ridge grow and produce the freshest elderberries and elderberry syrup known to mankind.
- [36:15]
Ben
Okay, so I'm guessing you were talking about that, but did you also know that they're running a special for haunted cosmonauts? That's right. If you use code haunted, all capshaunted, you can get 10% off your first order@tkr farm.com.
- [36:32]
Brian
Dude, absolutely the best news I've heard today.
- [36:41]
Ben
Brian, I got bad news the other day. I was using one of the big box soap products to wash myself, and I got this weird urge to go buy a Stanley cup and fill it with iced coffee. And it started to feel a little cold in the house. I just wanted to wrap myself up in, like, a heavy wool blanket. And then also, I started googling ticket prices to Taylor Swift concerts.
- [37:03]
Brian
Ben, what are you doing? Don't you know that these big box soap companies just jam all their soaps full of hormone disrupting chemicals? They're probably turning you into a girl.
- [37:12]
Ben
Well, I know that now, but what am I supposed to do about it?
- [37:14]
Brian
Ben, you ignorant Normie, all you've needed to do is go to indigosundrysoap.com and support a great Christian family business that's making all sorts of soaps that are completely free of hormone disrupting chemicals and other nasties.
- [37:28]
Ben
Okay, I am literally going to indigo sundrysoap.com right now. Tell me what to buy.
- [37:33]
Brian
Ben, what I would recommend doing is clicking on bundles and then selecting the best one for you. You could get the men's six pack. You could get my favorite, the clay bundle.
- [37:41]
Ben
Ooh, I like the pipe and jug bundle. That seems cool. Or a men's six pack, because that'll make me feel like I have something that I actually don't.
- [37:49]
Brian
So true, King. And you know what else I heard? Because they're such good friends of the show, Indigo Sundry Soap Company is offering 10% off your order if you just use all caps, discount code, haunted cosmos, no spaces.
- [38:01]
Ben
Wait, Brian, you're going way too fast. I didn't get all that. Is that information in the show description?
- [38:06]
Brian
Ben, you ignorant Normie. It's always in the show description.
- [38:10]
Ben
Okay, so I'm gonna go to indigosundrysoap.com I'm gonna pick the men's six pack bundle and I'm gonna use code Haunted cosmos at checkout. All caps, no spaces. And if I forgot all that, it's in the description of the show.
- [38:22]
Brian
Of course, Ben. And if you just do that, then you will stop wanting to do all of those girly things and maybe you'll, I don't know, maybe want to buy a classic car to restore or something dignified.
- [38:32]
Ben
Are you a Christian struggling to find companies that align with your values and beliefs? Well, Squirrelly Joe's has you covered for at least all of your coffee needs.
- [38:42]
Brian
All of their coffee is hand selected and roasted fresh every day by a family of fellow believers. Try them out and you'll savor exceptional coffee while knowing that your investment supports a company committed to following God's teachings and upholding truth and righteousness. Ensuring your hard earned money contributes to the growth of God's kingdom.
- [39:00]
Ben
So stop giving that hard earned money to pagans who support evil. Instead, buy Christian. And right now, Squirrelly Joe's has a fantastic offer for our listeners. You get your first bag of coffee for free.
- [39:12]
Brian
What?
- [39:13]
Ben
All you have to do is cover shipping. Are you kidding?
- [39:15]
Brian
What?
- [39:16]
Ben
So head over to squirrellyjoes.com hauntedcosmos that's squirrelyjoes.com hauntedcosmos to claim your free bag of coffee. Let's flip and go link in the description below. I'm a poet. Didn't even know it.
- [39:31]
Brian
We have actually launched a brand new patron platform that we think is gonna help us better provide an even better experience for our patrons and also just long help us to continue to grow and support the show. So we'd encourage you to check that out. We've got multiple tiers of support there with different rewards. You can go to Haunted. Well, What? No, it's www.hauntedcosmos.supercast.com.
- [40:01]
Ben
The very thorough, very, very. Hey, pop quiz. Do you know what WWW stands for?
- [40:08]
Brian
It's World Wide Web.
- [40:09]
Ben
World Wide Web. Okay.
- [40:10]
Brian
Do you know what URL stands for?
- [40:12]
Ben
Um. You are a loser. No.
- [40:16]
Brian
Uniform resource locator. I think we have determined who the loser was, but I think we can.
- [40:21]
Ben
All agree that it's Brian for knowing what URL stands for. Hey, do you know what USB stands for?
- [40:27]
Brian
Actually, no. Ooh, Bus something Universal Serial bus. Okay. I knew bus was in there because we straight busing. So head haunted cosmos.supercast.com and go sign up to support the show. One, one change that. We're Rolling out with this upcoming. We're coming to the tail end of this season, season four. So true of Haunted Cosmos. And we're actually going back to our roots somewhat with season five in how we're going to release the series. So you guys know we do like 10 episodes typically, is what we've done. We do a chunk of of episodes in a season and then we will take a break for about, you know, a month and a half, two months while we continue to produce the season and release some different stuff between the seasons to get to tide you over. What we're going to do is actually we're going to be recording the entire season ahead this coming season. Season five, which is main. What we did basically was season one, we recorded more than half of it before we released any episode. And so we're gonna, we're doing that to make it even better for our patrons. And I think it's at the top two tiers out of three. So like 67 point, whatever, you know, what is that? 66.6, 667 A.D. yeah, whatever. Those top two tiers are going to be able to stream the whole season on demand from the first episode released publicly. So when season five, episode one drops into the public feeds, YouTube and all the podcast feeds, our patrons will be able to watch the whole season right there on demand. Like an episode of a TV show. If you were to buy the whole season.
- [42:01]
Ben
Yeah. Fully edited video and audio. And again, this is really just to. I mean, yes, it helps kind of us logistically, but it helps us do a better job. Yeah, that's part of the point. It helps us actually give a better product to everybody, but especially give high value to our, you know, upper level patrons because without them, we couldn't do it. Without all the patrons, we couldn't do it. And so we're also benefiting the lower tier, the conspiracy theorist tier of our patronage by ensuring that they will still get the episodes completely ad free. Yep. So they, they may not get them early, maybe like a day early or a couple days early, but they will be completely ad free. And so we want to make sure we're still providing value there.
- [42:42]
Brian
Yeah, so go, go support the show. Check it out there. And I mean the lowest tiers, like buy a latte at Starbucks and you can chip in however much you want. It helps us keep the show going and continue to hopefully make it better every season. And we really appreciate everybody who has been supporting. What I would like to do now is smoothly transition into a story of like the horrific death of many.
- [43:05]
Ben
Okay.
- [43:05]
Brian
At the hands of the Soviet Union.
- [43:07]
Ben
Can I just say, researching for this episode, I knew that the Soviet Union was very, very bad. And I had, I think a righteous disdain for it in my heart. I didn't know it was quite this bad, you know.
- [43:24]
Brian
Why didn't you read more Tom Clancy?
- [43:25]
Ben
I mean you would know, I guess. Tom Clancy vindicated. Tom Clancy is vindicated.
- [43:30]
Brian
Vintage. Like the thing about the Soviet Union and I'm, I'm not exaggerating when I say this, I don't mean this hyperbolically. The Soviet Union is demonic.
- [43:39]
Ben
Yeah. Oh yeah.
- [43:39]
Brian
Like they Communism is demonic. Communism is to me the high water mark of demonic and human sinfulness in league in the 20th century. And it's almost like an acid that ate away at the foundations of Christendom where you had the advance of the gospel in the nations for centuries and centuries in across the known world, across the world in the west and Europe and you know, going east towards Russia and like just the gospel expanding, saving people. People's being lifted up from the darkness of demon worship into some of the pinnacles of human civilization to date. And then what happens? Well, Darwinism and the asset of Darwinism and eugenics along with enlightenment rationalism and the French Revolution and then you have all of these different philosophical scientific forces that are building the foundations for an entirely alternate way of viewing the world from what Christianity had built, which was that instead of man being the image bearer of God, man is now just a highly evolved animal. Instead of there being truly transcendent meaning and purpose and value that was determined by God who created all things very good and those sin corrupted God created all things very good. Instead of that now we have this relativism of man creating his own destiny and his own purpose. And all of these things, things really come together in like almost distillate form in the communism of the Soviet Union where the state replaces God and the state replaces the priestly class and the state replaces everything. And what it brought onto mankind in promise of utopia was some of the depths of human misery.
- [45:28]
Ben
Yeah.
- [45:28]
Brian
The deepest depths of human mystery of misery in history.
- [45:31]
Ben
Yeah. And you know, I'm just thinking about this now, like these ideas that fed the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union is fascinating because it began with this kind of rote materialism, this brute materialism from Marx and I typed it into chatgpt. Karl Marx, as far as we know, never used any hallucinogenics or psychedelics. We looked, yeah, we checked. We did chat like what more, what.
- [45:58]
Brian
More can you do.
- [46:01]
Ben
But eventually this Marxism became syncretized with Leninism. And Leninism was a little bit different because it was the Bolshevik movement. It was the Bolshevik Revolution. And so what you had with the Soviet Union at the very beginning was this Marxist Leninist, this materialist, Bolshevik religious zealot, almost mysticism movement that came together and it created something extremely ugly, an enemy of nature. The Soviet Union was an enemy of God and an enemy of God's created nature. But it got me thinking. And, you know, we don't have to harp on this for too long because it's probably boring. Like is the. If man had never fallen, if Adam never fell, would there ever be a philosopher that came up with the idea of Darwinism or thought of the idea of Darwinism or materialism or rationalism, not as a thing that should be explored, but just as an idea like, oh.
- [47:05]
Brian
Someone would have thought this.
- [47:07]
Ben
Yes, that exists as an idea. I don't know. Obviously, I don't know. That's too much for me. But one thing that's worth recognizing is that when you get into the French Enlightenment and even like the secular Renaissance humanism, not the Christian humanism of the Renaissance, the secular humanism, and then you get into materialism, like, that idea in itself isn't necessarily a demonic idea, which is to say, it isn't necessarily something that was, like, implanted in Descartes or Rousseau's mind by a demon. It could have just been their own fallen nature being tempted to come up with these ideas and run with them far further than they ever should have. But when you look at the fruit of what those ideas led to, when, again, it leads to institutions that are enemies of God and nature, I think that you have to admit that somewhere along the way, genuinely, the demonic forces in the world saw what was happening and they ran with it as well.
- [48:11]
Brian
Absolutely.
- [48:12]
Ben
I mean, it's such a pernicious lie. Like, for a fallen man who's disconnected from God, who actually actively hates God in his fallenness, to have this idea that there is no God, that rationalism is the only thing, that material that you can see and touch and feel is the only thing, and that empirical knowledge is the only true knowledge. I'm just. Sorry. That idea to a fallen mind that is at enmity with God is so attractive.
- [48:43]
Brian
Yeah. The thing that I find compelling about ascribing some of these beliefs in their development to not mere human sin, but also the demonic is just the way, like, when you trace the themes of demonic activity, they're not just aiming to steal Kill and destroy, but also to deceive. I mean, they're like, they're the deceivers of the world. They're trying to deceive the nations. And so wherever you find demonic activity, it almost always develops an alternate systematic theology where it has its own doctrine of creation. You have Marxism, Leninism. Communism has its doctrine of creation, which is essentially the big bang theory, plus a doctrine of the creation of man in evolutionary biology and abiogenesis and all these different. It has its own doctrine of sin. Marx and Engel and Lenin and like these, these were men who were obsessed with an idea of sin that was essentially saying, the problem is in this group, this class of society that's oppressing another class of society. And the solution is, you know, functionally economic. We need to take away the economic power of this class and make a classless society. You know, the czars are the problem, the wealthy are the problem. It's like a doctrine of sin. They have a doctrine of salvation and sanctification that we're going to leverage the powers of the state to usher in this revolution, this communist revolution, where the people will become enlightened and awakened to the idea, to these new ideas of creation, sin, the fall and utopia. And, and then their doctrine of eschatology, that the, the, the proletariat, the classes will rise up, they will throw off their overlords and they will come together into this communal state. And in this doc. This systematic theology, you find that when we look on these things that communism did and many nations did, but that Soviet Russia did when it came to biological and chemical warfare, along with a lot of their other military and intelligence apparatus kind of activity, they were attempting to sanctify the world in accordance. Sanctify the people and save the world. That was what they thought they were doing. So when they wielded things like biological weapons, one example would be kind of an emergency story mode. In April of 1979 in a place called Sverdlovsk, which is. It sounds Russian. It is Russian. It was in the Soviet Union in April 1979. There was another chemical biological weapons research facility similar to the one at whatever the heck the thing is that we kept saying the island. And they were working with anthrax and they had some sort of safety protocol failure or intentional release. Depends on who you ask.
- [51:37]
Ben
Intentional.
- [51:37]
Brian
And it killed, they say, 66 people, so probably like 5,000 people. And they immediately, like people started finding out about it and they said, oh, it was bad meat. Oh, you know, the cows, they get.
- [51:50]
Ben
The sick and then the carnage.
- [51:52]
Brian
What. What? I sound Italian. The carne.
- [51:55]
Ben
The carnes.
- [51:56]
Brian
And they said, blamed it on bad meat, which is just a completely ridiculous theory. And they. No justice, nothing, you know, covered it up. Ultimately, in the 90s, I think it was after the fall of Soviet Union, we have American scientists who go in and look through records and confirm and say, yeah, no, this was a. This was either a botched job or it was the Soviets. They were attempting to weaponize and develop anthrax weapon weaponry, and they accidentally killed a bunch of their own people. But the point is that in their view, that is an agent of sanctification. They're trying to save and sanctify the world and bring it into alignment so that people can be saved from their Western and Christian and all these foundational ideas they'd believe that were all false and they needed to be converted to Marxism, Leninism and Communism. That to me screams people, but it also screams demons. Yes, it's the exact thing they do. They're constantly trying to deceive. The nations await. I'm like scratching my head to believe a false God.
- [52:59]
Ben
Now, you said something at the beginning of that. That was really.
- [53:01]
Brian
At the beginning of that absolute rant.
- [53:04]
Ben
No, no, no, I think that was super helpful. But you said something at the beginning of that, that Marx and Lenin saw the fundamental issue between the classes as economically. Now, here's another really pernicious lie that is a little bit tougher oftentimes for conservative Christian Americans to spot, but that is that since. Since especially like the 60s and 70s, American conservatism has bought into the same exact lie.
- [53:32]
Brian
Yeah.
- [53:33]
Ben
Who was the. What was the name of that economist? Who. He was like a contemporary of Buckley, I think, who. And he's really famous.
- [53:42]
Brian
The Mises Institute kind of guys or something different. No, it's like Keynesian.
- [53:48]
Ben
Friedman.
- [53:49]
Brian
Keynesian. Are you talking about Keynes?
- [53:51]
Ben
Hold on, is there a Friedman?
- [53:53]
Brian
There is a Friedman who wrote about, like the failure of nerve. Right? Is that.
- [53:58]
Ben
No, not that guy. Ah, shoot. That's where I was looking at my phone, trying to. Trying to find his name. I can't remember. Whatever. He was a prominent conservative writer and speaker, and he was also an economist. And this guy was like, he was a counselor to presidents and to congressmen. And I think that at one time he maybe was in Congress. I don't know that for sure. But the point is, one of the things that he said and firmly believed and pushed to many, many thousands of conservative Christian Americans was that the thing that would solve all of America's problems, all of her social problems, all of her problems that come from religious pluralism where there's conflict between different churches is free and open markets. That's what he said.
- [54:43]
Brian
Here's what we're going to do in post production. We're going to put up a picture of this man with his name.
- [54:47]
Ben
Yes.
- [54:48]
Brian
Right here.
- [54:48]
Ben
Yes. And you can go. And you can go see that this.
- [54:51]
Brian
Did happen, this gentleman.
- [54:52]
Ben
Yes.
- [54:54]
Brian
Who is named this maybe who's very.
- [54:57]
Ben
Handsome or not handsome. Yeah. Anyway, you're right.
- [55:01]
Brian
It's an opposite.
- [55:02]
Ben
Yeah.
- [55:02]
Brian
An equal and opposite error.
- [55:03]
Ben
That's the same error. Like he's saying that given enough time, man on his own, with all sorts of fundamental disagreements about the way of the world, about the God that operates at the head of the world, et cetera. If man has enough time with a free and open commerce, he will achieve basically utopia. Yeah.
- [55:23]
Brian
It's just free. All we need is now is globalist free trade.
- [55:26]
Ben
And that was actually. Yeah. And it was globalism. And that was actually the. Like a conservative ideal. It still is, but one that's hopefully dying. But that's a conservative ideal that is almost fundamentally no different than the Marxist ideal which says that the solution to the problem is an economic solution and nothing else.
- [55:47]
Brian
Yeah. So what you'll find in this episode, these are some themes I want you to notice as we continue telling you some of the stories related to this. And these are historical stories. Some of them are going to take you into the realm of conjecture where we're not. Where there's. We think this happened. This is one of those, like, conspiracy type of things. But I want you to notice that especially by the end of this episode, I hope you see that the whole conspiracy theorist kind of thing as a slur is basically, let me just put it this way, it's a CIA op to keep you from noticing the things that they're up to. So we're going to take you through some of these stories and what we want you to notice is the way in which these horrific, hellish tools of men, and I think in league with demons, are used fundamentally as agents of salvation and sanctification in their entire view of the world to try and usher in their idea of utopia or protect their idea of utopia in the world and just see the results. That what happens when man twists nature and when he violates even his own dominion mandate and takes it and makes it into a craven thing to serve false gods, These are the kinds of things that happen. Ben, I wanted to talk to you about Something. I'm concerned about you.
- [57:13]
Ben
What are you concerned about?
- [57:14]
Brian
Every time I see you, you have more and more Indigo Sundries products.
- [57:18]
Ben
I feel like you're overdraft doing it, dude. Give me one example.
- [57:22]
Brian
Dude, this is exactly what I'm talking about. Do you see? Like, where did you even get this from?
- [57:26]
Ben
What's the problem with having some soap on hand?
- [57:29]
Brian
Ben, we're at work right now. There's. There's.
- [57:32]
Ben
You don't want to smoke it at work.
- [57:33]
Brian
There's gonna be no situation where you need Indigo Sundry soap at work.
- [57:37]
Ben
Have you ever gotten sweaty in this basement, dude?
- [57:39]
Brian
Yes. Every time we're filming, I look at you and I go, he's so handsome. What?
- [57:45]
Ben
Well, then. Well, then you're gonna need some soap so that you don't smell as bad.
- [57:50]
Brian
Do you see what's happening to you? Like, how are you even. Do you have fairies that give you this?
- [57:56]
Ben
Dude, what are you talking about?
- [57:58]
Brian
Have you partnered with a Fae?
- [58:00]
Ben
No, I'm a stone cold Christian who likes soap.
- [58:04]
Brian
Dude, I feel. Wait, is that Calendul?
- [58:07]
Ben
Oh, not so mad about it now, are you?
- [58:10]
Brian
They make liquid.
- [58:11]
Ben
You didn't know that?
- [58:12]
Brian
Dude, I didn't know that. Well, they're literally. I'm not a.
- [58:15]
Ben
They're a sponsor of the show.
- [58:16]
Brian
You should know that I have duties and responsibilities. Not all of us can just be Indigo Sundry maxing all the time.
- [58:21]
Ben
Okay, well, since you didn't know that, I'm assuming you also didn't know that if you use their subscription plan, you'll get 10% off of your order.
- [58:28]
Brian
10% off? 10% off of their already great prices. I'm telling you. Are you kidding me? Hey, Ben, can you pass me the butter?
- [58:44]
Ben
Yeah, sure, man. Do you want the white Camel butter or the Golden Cow butter?
- [58:48]
Brian
No, not that butter.
- [58:50]
Ben
Well, what other butter is there?
- [58:52]
Brian
I'm talking about Design Butter. Who specialize in digital product design. Whether it's a mobile or web app, David at Design Butter can help make sure your product is best on the market. Market Design Butter helps you identify problems your users are having and makes the experience better, which results in more sales, return customers, and a level of trust that makes your brand memorable.
- [59:13]
Ben
Dang. Design Butter. I can't believe it's not actual butter. Because it's so dang smooth.
- [59:19]
Brian
Sounds like they need to head to designbutter.com for more information.
- [59:28]
Ben
Brian, do you want to know what I've been drinking more of lately?
- [59:30]
Brian
I actually woke up this morning and thought to myself, I want to know what Ben's drinking more of lately?
- [59:34]
Ben
Coffee. Can you believe that?
- [59:36]
Brian
Unbelievable. I thought you were in a tea.
- [59:37]
Ben
No, no, I'm into coffee now. And you know who makes the best coffee in the world? Who? Is it Squirrely Joe's Coffee.
- [59:43]
Brian
Oh, are that. Is that that thoroughly Christian business that doesn't hate you in everything you believe in?
- [59:48]
Ben
Yes. Not only that, but they also love their neighbor by donating many of their proceeds to a worthy cause called Operation Underground Railroad Man.
- [59:56]
Brian
Everybody should check out Squirrelly Joe's coffee@squirrellyjoes coffee.com.
- [60:00]
Ben
That'S right, squirrely Joe's Coffee. Share coffee. Serve humbly. Live faithfully.
- [60:11]
Brian
Man. Ben, I knew we were handsome, but I didn't know we were that handsome until I saw our recent Haunted Cosmos thumbnails.
- [60:18]
Ben
Yeah. Your skin looks so velvety smooth.
- [60:21]
Brian
I mean, it's unbelievable. Unbelievable. Chris at New Dominion Design Company did an absolutely fantastic job, not only on those thumbnails, but on our recent book cover as well.
- [60:30]
Ben
Yeah, exactly. And if you need some design work from Chris, you should go to newdominondesignco.com get started there, and he'll serve you right, man.
- [60:38]
Brian
He will make you look 50% as handsome as Ben, guaranteed.
- [60:47]
Ben
It was Milton Friedman. Okay, Milton Friedman.
- [60:51]
Brian
Obviously you have a Milton Friedman tattoo.
- [60:53]
Ben
Yeah, it's crazy.
- [60:54]
Brian
I don't really.
- [60:54]
Ben
Sorry, Milton Friedman. On that note, one of the big themes that we should just have you guys thinking of as we go forward. It's very similar to the MK Ultra episodes that we did in this way is man will exercise dominion over the Earth because that's what he's made to do. God actually put it into his nature to. To go out into creation and subdue and bring order and name things as he sees fit to name them. That's man's job. And even though he fell in sin, his job didn't change. He will still do that. And what you'll see is that when you get a high institutional level, institutions are made up of people. And so they will take dominion the way that those people see fit. And when an institution is made up of people, such as the Soviet Union, for example, that are all not only godless, but openly hostile to the truth of God and the true myth of Christianity, you'll see that the dominion they take, because taking dominion is inevitable, will be one of the most disgusting things that any man could imagine in the world. And so if you are a Christian, maybe one of the applications of all these stories, MK Ultra, and this together, is to take Proper dominion, like that's actually your responsibility. You have a responsibility before God to look at what he set in your purview and order it, rightly order it after the model of heaven. If you fail to do that, or if you think that that's not actually a job, the job of a Christian, that Christ did all of that and he uses no means, he only just does it himself, then you're actually being irresponsible. You're abdicating one of your responsibilities, especially as a Christian man. But women too, with their children and in the home especially. So let that be an application to you. Defy the Soviet regime, defy the would be Soviet regime that exists in the world by taking proper dominion in your life, by taking proper dominion in your home, in your workplace, in your front yard even. And in doing that, not only will you glorify God, which in and of itself is our proper end, but. But you'll also defy the forces of darkness in the world that will always, as long as they exist, will always be trying to take evil dominion that destroys.
- [63:14]
Brian
And one thing that you'll find as you do this is that you will not find yourself doing weird things with ticks. And with that said, dude, so true, Ben is now going to take us into one of the craziest stories that I've ever heard.
- [63:30]
Ben
It's going to make you itch.
- [63:31]
Brian
It's going to make you itch.
- [63:32]
Ben
Yeah.
- [63:33]
Brian
With that said, let's go to that story.
- [63:48]
Ben
Old Lyme, Connecticut, is a charming coastal town sitting in the corner between the delta of the Connecticut river river and its outlet in the Atlantic Ocean. It's one of those postcard towns where roads line the marine sound and household sailboats can be seen drifting on the waves at any given time of day. In the warmer months of the year, and before it gets to the very cold months, Old Lyme boasts one of the most vibrant and attractive autumns on this hemisphere, the type of place we all imagined as school children when we heard the story of the first Thanksgiving between pilgrims In Mamoset in 1975, Old Lyme was in its golden hour. The whirlwind of the world wars had given way to a flourishing economy and a boom of the nuclear family. In the quiet neighborhoods of Old Lyme, the worries of the Cold War with Russia were more whispers that fathers thought of occasionally and that mothers and children couldn't help but forget. It was here, in the middle of a humid summer in 1975, that two children were living out their greatest adolescent days in the Yards of their other neighborhood friends. The kids, of course, cared nothing for the heat. It was as though they didn't even notice it. But the mothers were a different story. They tried to balance their obligation to watch their kids play and make sure they stayed safe with an overwhelming urge to somehow escape the heavy sun. Therefore, Pauli Murray and Judith Minch, the moms of the two after aforementioned kids, spent their days nursing iced lemonade on whatever front porch their kids played near. Many July and August days passed with this wonderful routine of mom and child walking together to the same house after breakfast, where they'd spend the rest of the day, each with their own respective friends. But as the days wore on in early August, Polly and Judith started to notice something off about their kids. They seemed like lethargic, oddly lethargic, as if they weren't all mentally there all the time. This realization came slow, as it seemed to the mothers that the symptoms came on slowly and imperceptibly until it was fully wrought. They took them home, thinking and hoping that a little heat exhaustion was to blame for the odd behavior, and found other symptoms that raised more alarm. Intense skin rashes, swollen and painful joints, and serious headaches that were refused to go away even with a few cool glasses of water. The mothers asked around and discovered that other kids in the neighborhood were showing the same symptoms. They wondered if it could be some kind of outbreak or something. 39 children and 12 adults all came together to call upon the Connecticut Department of Health to help them get to the bottom of their issue. In response, the department issued a doctor from Yale to investigate the patients and diagnose them. Strangely, his discovery was that all the patients were suffering from some kind of early onset and fast acting arthritis. The doctor, having never seen such a phenomenon in so many people at once, dubbed the disease the Lyme arthritis. After the town wherein the incident originated. Treatment plans were developed and treatment was begun. But nobody improved at all. Even the children, who were expected to respond especially well to treatment, only worsened at a very fast pace. The doctor's confusion grew and grew until he finally had to admit that he had no idea what was happening and he had no idea how to fix it. For you see, he had missed something. Everyone had missed something. A small but very important thing. Tick bites. Each affected individual had evidence somewhere on their body of being bitten by a very small spot species of tick named a deer tick. The deer tick is a nasty creature. It's no bigger than a period at the end of a sentence when thirsty, but it can gorge on blood until it's 100 times its original size. As it drinks the blood of its usually unwitting victim, it vomits blood back up and back into the victim's wound. And the vomit carries with it a host of toxins. Now, normally, these toxins, toxins are easily dealt with by the human body, but not always. And during that summer, those people were infected with something their bodies were completely unprepared for. Something unprecedented and unlooked for by all lay people in the world. Something that would come to be called simply Lyme disease. A new infection, one without a cure or treatment in those days. But the question is, where did the tick get the Lyme disease from? And even before that, where did the Lyme disease come from in the first place? At the end of World War II, in an example of spoils going to the victors, the United States secretly embarked upon a program to acquire Nazi expertise in certain fields, fields of study that they deemed would be important in the modern world. This program was called Operation Paperclip. And it saw the forced migration on the US Government's dime of key upper level Nazi scientists to the States so that they could work to improve government departments. Specifically, the US Was interested in getting Nazis to build up its fields of rocketry and aerospace medicine and weapons development. That last one, weapons development, included biochemical weapons development. For this task, the US had its sights on one man, Dr. Erich Traub. Before and during the war, Traub had been a closely trusted associate of Hitler's Third Reich. He had served as an army captain in Anatolia and had, at the request of an officer named Heinrich Himmler, journeyed himself to the far reaches of the Black Sea in order to find a lethal strain of the rinderpost virus that Himmler could use in what he foresaw as a major upcoming conflict. To call Traub a true believer in the Nazi cause would be exactly accurate. To call him a pivotal tool in the hand of the Third Reich during the war would actually be an understatement. With Traub's help, Germany pushed the boundaries of biochemical war to the absolute limit. Limit. And allowed it to gain itself a genuine advantage in that field. After the war, when Traub's efforts alone proved not enough, he was headhunted by America to do the exact same thing here. And that he did. From his headquarters at the freshly minted disease center on the infamous Plum island in New York, Traub carried out hypersensitive experimental tests and production on some of the most dangerous substances, substances in the world. He infected hordes of animals with hand foot mouth disease, helped the US increase its holding of anthrax, and carried out tests with a very rare strain of virus called Borrelia burgdorferi, the strain that gave rise to the mysterious outbreak in Old Lyme, Connecticut, nearly 20 years after Traub's tenure on Plum Island. Now to cut to the chase, the connection between borders, Plum Island, Eric Traub and the initial outbreak of Lyme disease among those poor souls in Connecticut is a hotly contested one. Many in the world disagree with Plum island and Operation Paperclip being to blame for Lyme disease. And they deny that the US infected its own citizens with terrible illnesses, accidentally or not. However, it's worth noting the nearly perfect coincidence of the timing. Traubon was known to infect his enemies with viruses he had weaponized. He did it to Anatolia and Siberia, both during the war and soon thereafter. His name also appears as the doctor in charge on documents outlining the aerial spreading of various diseases on plant and animal life in the land surrounding Plum Island. At the very least, he and his facility is to blame for the deaths of countless killers cattle and other domesticated animals in New York and Connecticut coasts. Additionally, Plum island is no stranger to its fair share of well documented and public mishaps. In September of 1978, an outbreak of hand foot mouth disease occurred on the island that required the same day slaughtering of thousands of cows, horses, sheep, goats and pigs. But all of these things don't hold a candle to what is the greatest piece of evidence. Something that all but confirms the blame for Lyme disease must be placed entirely on the US Government and her use of Eric Traub. It is a communique stating that the scientist of Plum island performed a test at an artillery range on the coast of Connecticut in the 1950s, which included the wanton dumping of virus infested ticks all over the surrounding land. Perhaps those 39 children and 12 parents in Connecticut who suffered from the mysterious disease were victims of this very test.
- [72:50]
Brian
If I could just go ahead and take a moment here to directly address the leaders of the free world, I'd like to do that and just make a humble request from one of your citizens here, Brian Sauvey. And can I just say on behalf of all of us, we would like you to stop experimenting with horrific civilization and humanity ending biological agents like nobody actually wants you to be biologically engineering viruses that could potentially wipe out the entirety of human of mankind. This is not something we requested. It's not something I Don't recall ever putting in that work order. And so I'd like to just say on behalf of all of us, please.
- [73:31]
Ben
Stop and hey, we'll make it worth your while. I will personally send you a bunch of bugs that you can eat because I know that you're all lizard people.
- [73:40]
Brian
You love it.
- [73:40]
Ben
Yeah. Grasshoppers, cicadas do the good stuff.
- [73:44]
Brian
The good stuff. We'll send you a free copy of.
- [73:46]
Ben
Our book due to a lizard person. A cicada is like a filet mignon.
- [73:50]
Brian
Like a wagon, like a wagyu. Exactly, Exactly.
- [73:53]
Ben
So true.
- [73:54]
Brian
This stuff is crazy because it's not like there are conspiratorial elements to it that you have to put together. And. And you can't say, like 100% in a court of law. I could prove X, Y and Z, but there's so much publicly available data that we know that they're up to this kind of thing.
- [74:09]
Ben
Yeah.
- [74:09]
Brian
And so when you hear reports of like, oh, the US government is dropping weaponized ticks on its own citizens, maybe on accident, maybe on purpose, we don't really know.
- [74:20]
Ben
Yeah.
- [74:20]
Brian
Long story short, a bunch of ticks are out there. We did some stuff to them.
- [74:24]
Ben
They're filled with a virus that, like, no one knows the cure to. Just check yourself for tick bites. And if you have one, God help.
- [74:31]
Brian
You, because we can. Because we didn't actually figure out a way to fix it. We just.
- [74:37]
Ben
One of the things that we didn't talk about, but that is actually way more publicly available as just a thing that definitely happened than what we did discuss in that story, is that Plum island did most emphatically send disease laden ticks and they sprayed them all over farms in Cuba without the knowledge of the Cuban government at some point.
- [75:01]
Brian
Cold War, you know, Cold War stuff.
- [75:03]
Ben
You know, classic Cuban Missile crisis. More like Cuban Tick crisis. Am I right?
- [75:07]
Brian
Tick. More like Cuban tickle crisis. People. This is actually people dying horrific deaths.
- [75:13]
Ben
All right, so to the few of you that are left, the. And. And it caused like a famine. Like there was a legitimate. Because all the cattle started dying.
- [75:21]
Brian
It killed a bunch of.
- [75:22]
Ben
Yeah.
- [75:22]
Brian
So things needed to sustain life.
- [75:25]
Ben
Plum Island. Batting a thousand on being shady and terrible.
- [75:28]
Brian
This is not the only. You know, we. We also know that governments around the world. The Soviets did this. The Chinese. When I say did in the past tense, I'm. I should just say are doing. Still, like, the Chinese do this. We know the US has done this, but it's all plausibly deniable. They'll. They'll Put I think there was like a 1975 Committee on Biological and warfare and that kind of thing in the Senate. And so they do this kind of thing. But these are some of the blackest of black budget type of operations for governments around the world. Because many of many of these governments, most of them are on record with that treaty saying we won't do this.
- [76:06]
Ben
Yeah, okay.
- [76:07]
Brian
We won't develop, hold test, deploy biological or chemical weapons.
- [76:12]
Ben
And we'll talk about this more. But it was the Biological Weapons Convention. That's the thing that they signed. It was signed by like 138 countries and territories. The Soviet Union signed it and then Russia re ratified it when it disbanded. The US signed it. China signed it.
- [76:30]
Brian
Yeah. And then we're all like, oops, the.
- [76:33]
Ben
Three big players on doing terrible biochemistry.
- [76:36]
Brian
All this things like we'll talk about the. Some sheep that got it from, from like hey, we're picking not just on the Soviets, if any Soviets are mad. Like we obviously this is us, the tick stuff.
- [76:47]
Ben
There's more stories in this episode about.
- [76:49]
Brian
The U.S. but some of this, it brings in a question. We've talked about it a little bit, but as an example, like one of the biological agents that I know that I'm, that they're doing this with would be hemorrhagic fevers like Ebola. Because these are some of the most deadly diseases known to man. Hemorrhagic fevers. Some of them have, you know, basically fatality rates in the 50, 80, 90 range. They will kill everybody. The, the downside of hemorrhagic fevers? Well, it's really an upside, but on the, from the perspective of the hemorrhagic fever, it's a downside. It's like its weakness is that it, it doesn't do well in a lot of climates. A lot of like non jungle type climates.
- [77:31]
Ben
Ah.
- [77:32]
Brian
So. And, and many of them can only be transmitted via infected fluids. They haven't spread via aerosol transmission like Covid does or you know, like respiratory viruses do. If they did and if they were able to survive in the open, then they could and spread like the flu does. It could conceivably kill 90% of the world's population type of situation.
- [77:58]
Ben
It'd be like the stand.
- [77:59]
Brian
Yeah, it would be like the stand. And the conceit of the stand is that that's what the government did, except it like changed so you couldn't develop any kind of defense against it. But we know that there are scientists who are doing this is called like gain of function research. Or basically it's virology research where they're trying to add by splicing in like cancer genes or different things into these viruses, the ability for them to say now they can last in a UV environment like the sun for much longer or now they can spread via aerosol transmission. And now. So that they're in. We know that scientists and virologists are actively working.
- [78:42]
Ben
Yeah.
- [78:43]
Brian
In some of these black budget global projects to try and develop essentially not only pathogens that can get out and. And do damage to an enemy, but they're uncontainable.
- [78:54]
Ben
Yeah. So maybe some foreshadowing. The gain of function research thing is going to be important later on. And I want to make clear now what it actually is. And it's right there in the name you have a virus or some kind of pathogen that over time, whether it's the adaptation of the human body or development of medicine and things like that, loses function. As in it loses its potency. It doesn't make people sick anymore. And so this is gain of function research is human scientists taking that pathogen that has lost its function and intentionally engineering it to make it gain new function. So they're trying. They are like, dude, talk about like building a trap for yourself to fall.
- [79:40]
Brian
It'd be like, let's say you were in a fight with a polar bear.
- [79:43]
Ben
Yeah.
- [79:43]
Brian
And you had in a polar bear is already like, it can pretty much kill you. And then you thought, but what if we gave it two heads?
- [79:50]
Ben
Yeah.
- [79:50]
Brian
What if we gave it another arm?
- [79:52]
Ben
Or it's like someone breaks into your house and they're going to. And they're there to kill you and your whole family. And you're like, I could use this gun or I could give my gun to the intruder to give them more function. That's what gain of function research is. How arrogant do we have to be? I'm sorry.
- [80:12]
Brian
Stop it. Get some help.
- [80:14]
Ben
Please stop doing this.
- [80:15]
Brian
We don't. We want you to. In fact, like in it. Especially like when you're sending dollars to, I don't know, China to go do this in, I don't know China where they're literal, I don't know. Communists.
- [80:27]
Ben
Yes.
- [80:27]
Brian
And saying like, oops.
- [80:30]
Ben
I thought they'd be chill about this. Oh, no one who does gain of function research is chill.
- [80:35]
Brian
They're like, no, we be very careful. Stop it. Stop it.
- [80:38]
Ben
We go back to sweets and sour.
- [80:39]
Brian
We don't want you to do this.
- [80:42]
Ben
So they like gain of function research. This is. It's well documented that countries are doing this. They do it like. Like what Brian said with Ebola type viruses that are more of a blood infection, but they also do it with respiratory viruses is as well. It's genuinely frightening.
- [80:58]
Brian
And a lot of them, they're like, oh, we're going to figure out. They are cloaked under the guise of. This is medical research. We're going to figure out how to treat these illnesses by understanding them better. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Like, yes, there is a place for people investigating diseases and illnesses to try and cure them. And so that's a good Christian endeavor. Christians have been engaged in that for a long time.
- [81:17]
Ben
But this is like the winter soldier of illnesses. They're like, got the. They got this thing in a lab and they were like, how can we make it? The dance.
- [81:25]
Brian
Make it.
- [81:26]
Ben
And then we just let it go.
- [81:27]
Brian
What if. What if, like, if you want to cure it, like, you got to figure out how to make it, how to beat it. But what if we like, figure out how to make it like, even worse? And then from that we figure out like. Like if we could beat the even worse one, then of course we could be weaker, you know, like, it really is.
- [81:44]
Ben
I mean, it all. It just like most things, it all goes back to Jurassic park, man.
- [81:50]
Brian
It really does. Like, Jeffrey too busy.
- [81:52]
Ben
Like Jeff Goldblum was. I don't know who wrote that line. It wasn't Jeff Goldblum, but they were right.
- [81:58]
Brian
Crichton. Michael Crichton.
- [81:59]
Ben
I don't.
- [82:00]
Brian
Also. Don't you know who wrote Jurassic Park?
- [82:02]
Ben
No, I don't.
- [82:03]
Brian
You've never read Michael Crichton?
- [82:04]
Ben
No, I've never read.
- [82:05]
Brian
What is wrong with you? They're great books. They're like the Tom Clancy.
- [82:08]
Ben
No, no, I'm talking about the script of the movie.
- [82:10]
Brian
I know, but that's from the book.
- [82:13]
Ben
The book was first. Or was it? No way, dude. I guarantee you it was one of those. Like, they did the film and then they wrote the book.
- [82:19]
Brian
Crichton wrote the Congo, he wrote Jurassic Park. He wrote a bunch. Some of the best novels you'll ever. In fact, I put it right there with Dostoevsky. Go read it.
- [82:27]
Ben
Okay, I'm not going to do that. Anyway, your scientists were so consumed with whether or not they could, they didn't ask to think if they should. Yeah, yeah, that actually is a really good question.
- [82:36]
Brian
So, speaking of. And I think this can take us into our next story here from. This is an American one. And it is that some of the things that these people have been up to Again, they are so potent that they can kill the entire population of the world many times over.
- [82:54]
Ben
Yes.
- [82:55]
Brian
So in this next story, this is not going to be biological, but on the chemical side, it's the same kind of thing. Agents that, if misused, could literally kill. They're potent enough to kill the entire population of the earth multiple times.
- [83:09]
Ben
Multiple times, yes. And with that, let's talk about the Dugway Sheep incident.
- [83:15]
Brian
One leg of lamb you don't want.
- [83:17]
Ben
To eat, even if you're Barney Fife or Andy Griffith.
- [83:34]
Brian
On a cold March morning in 1968, a sheriff named Fay Gillette, and yes, that is his real name, climbed into his county issued square body and started down the rural streets outside of Tooele, Utah, towards the far more rural dirt byways of Skull Valley. A farmer friend of his had woken him up in the morning with a frantic call, something about sheep and snow and some other stuff Gillette didn't quite catch. Now he knew his friend wasn't one for unnecessary drama or overreaction. So despite not knowing what he was going to see, he knew he needed to go see it for his friend's sake. Snowbanks were rolled up on the road's shoulder like frozen waves from the ongoing winter. Living on the edge of Tooele and so close to the Stansbury Mountains lining Skull Valley, of course, guaranteed hefty snowfall. Back then, the Great Salt Lake was still very great, and its effect on winter weather was nothing to be ignored. The road itself, however, was clear, at least until Gillette pulled off of it and onto the bumpy gravel tracks that would take him up into the little canyon his friend had mentioned he knew the canyon well. He used to take his wife there when they were dating in high school for stargazing or picnicking. There were few places in Utah that offered such a clear panoramic view of the salt flats of Skull Valley than that place. Gillette therefore thought pleasantly of his day as he reminisced on those simpler times and bobbed up and down the unkempt road. His tires lost their bite a few times in the snow, but it was nothing dangerous or too much for a native like Gillette to handle. Before long, he was parked at the gate marking the edge of his friend's ranch and then was walking up the little trail into the canyon. He still had rose colored glasses overlaying his mind with nostalgia. He even wore an involuntary grin. But then he gained the first ridge and everything changed. He stood there looking down into a gully with the winter sun on his face and the slight smile immediately faded away into a look of confusion and then disgust. He could see his friend scrambling around with his farm hands below, not yet noticing the sheriff. But it wasn't his frantic friend that gave him pause anymore. It was what his friend was so clearly frantic about. The entire gully was covered and piled high with the bodies of dead sheep. Hundreds, thousands of sheep corpses lay strewn all along the hillside, all dead together, and all the victim of some unseen and overwhelmingly powerful predator. But what such thing exists? In 1942, a new army facility was founded in central Utah. Built up on the southern tip of Tooele county and about 85 miles west of Salt Lake City, the Dugway Proving Ground would be the perfect asset to allow army investigation into the front lines of what was fast becoming postmodern warfare. Given the date of its founding and the context of America's military complex at the time, it won't surprise you to know that those front lines of war were entirely made up of biochemical weapons. Dugway Proving Ground was one of America's leading facilities for the study, production, storage, and field testing of the deadliest biochemical weapons available in the world. And it was right there in the middle of the little rural county of Tooele. Rural, but by no means empty. From its inception, Dugway has led the charge in America for the trail of airborne nerve agent testing, dirty bomb testing, anthrax usage and storage, and other biochemical weapons of mass destruction. And for over 20 years after its inception, it not only still led this charge, but had also gained a reputation for somehow doing all of these things safely. By the 1960s, the small communities around Dugway had nearly forgotten the unease they felt when it first opened and adopted a kind of appreciation for the facility. After all, without it, the government would probably never know any of them existed. Perhaps it would have been better for them if it had stayed that way, though, because when it comes to work like this, one mistake can ruin generations of otherwise valuable work. On March 13, 1968, two days before Gillette saw the grisly mass grave of Sheep, an F4 Phantom fighter jet took off from Dugway Proving Ground and did some low passes over a cliff in the midmost of the proving ground. Each time the jet passed by the cliff, canisters attached to its munition attachments on the the wings opened up and sprayed out an aerated substance. That substance was the highly toxic nerve agent known as vx. The pilot was not spraying the agent at any living thing. The only target was the side of the cliff that could absorb the nerve agent in A couple of days and make it entirely inert. But the fact remains, the F4 sprayed almost 3,000 pounds of VX over Dugway that day in order to test the efficacy of the canisters and their ability to disperse the substance at high speeds. One wonders why they did not use a stand in substance that was not a nerve agent. But I suppose there's nothing quite like the real thing. After the testing was complete, the fighter jet took off on a high altitude, ending to the mission that took it all the way to the Utah test range, 13 miles north. But unbeknownst to the pilot of the craft, there was a problem. One of the canisters containing the VX failed to properly close after the final flyby at the cliff. As the jet climbed higher and higher, that canister steadily let more and more of the nerve agent out into the air to be carried by the winds much further away than any of the scientists intended. The lethal weapon, so lethal that a pin sized drop of the stuff can quickly kill a full grown man, formed into a sheer cloth cloud that was taken by the wind away south towards Skull Valley. As the cloud arrived there, undetected by all, it settled upon a herd of sheep about 6,000 strong that was grazing on the foothills of the Stansbury Mountains. It left none of the sheep alive within days. Days that saw men like Gillette and his farmer friends scrambling for answers. The grounds on the edge of Skull Valley were piled high with the dead and decomposed composing bodies of all 6,000 sheep. Thus it was that the Dugway Sheep incident occurred. And the full truth of that test facility slowly came to light. Dugway Proving Ground never admitted fault for the deaths of the sheep, and never admitted to actually using nerve agent VX on that faded flight of the F4. But it did pay over $1 million in restitution to the farmer who had lost his livelihood. What's more, it came out more recently that Dugway Proving Ground used a total of nearly half a million pounds of deadly nerve agents in open air testing over the course of 10 years in the 60s. Now that amount of nerve agent is enough to kill the entire population of the world nearly 500 times. In other words, it was enough toxin to kill three and a half trillion people. Of course, the army has assured the people of its county and country in the state of Utah that those toxins were all contained within its borders. But the sheep incident pokes a big bright hole in that promise and proves it false. What other incidents could have happened that we never found out about? What Other terrible effects might we still reap from the biochemical seeds improperly sown by our own government. So they, they drop enough nerve agent to potentially kill three and a half trillion people. And this, it got even worse because later testing proved that there was only one thing big enough to absorb all of that chemical safely.
- [91:31]
Ben
Dude. What?
- [91:32]
Brian
It was your mom.
- [91:33]
Ben
No way.
- [91:36]
Brian
You know, we made it like an hour and a half into the episode.
- [91:40]
Ben
You know, I want it. You know what? I'm gonna break the fourth wall here. Okay. Brian said that joke before we pressed record.
- [91:50]
Brian
And I was like, it was so good then.
- [91:52]
Ben
And only he in the room was laughing. There's four people in this room. Okay.
- [91:56]
Brian
It was hilarious.
- [91:57]
Ben
There's me, Brian, Martina McBride. And then there's a mystery fourth guest that I'm not going to name yet.
- [92:01]
Brian
Everyone was distracted doing their job so they didn't hear how funny it was.
- [92:06]
Ben
And Brian just on his own said.
- [92:09]
Brian
This joke was like, this is going to.
- [92:11]
Ben
And started belly.
- [92:12]
Brian
This is going to make it.
- [92:13]
Ben
It is true though, dude, like your mom. The. The immense fat reserves allow her to absorb poison.
- [92:22]
Brian
Oh, wow. I'm so sorry, mom.
- [92:26]
Ben
And stow the mom.
- [92:27]
Brian
I don't know if my mom listens to this. I know my dad does, so. Dad, I'm so sorry.
- [92:30]
Ben
I hope my mom.
- [92:31]
Brian
I'm sorry that Ben just did that to you in our family.
- [92:34]
Ben
Dwayne.
- [92:35]
Brian
Unbelievable.
- [92:36]
Ben
Great, massive response.
- [92:37]
Brian
Unbelievable. My mom again, is very trim.
- [92:40]
Ben
I hope my mom doesn't. My mom is also. Really.
- [92:43]
Brian
Both of our moms are in great shape.
- [92:45]
Ben
I hope she doesn't listen because she's such a delicate, like, she's such a sweet soul.
- [92:50]
Brian
Yeah, she's so nice.
- [92:50]
Ben
I don't want her to actually be offended.
- [92:52]
Brian
No, she's so nice.
- [92:53]
Ben
Honor your father and mother, kids.
- [92:55]
Brian
Here's the thing.
- [92:56]
Ben
Like we do.
- [92:56]
Brian
Here's the thing. I just can't believe that someone like some general was, was, was like looking at the, this facility and they were looking at the like approving it or what? Because it's a mill. It's like the biggest bureaucracy, like approving everything. They're like, yeah, we're going to, we're going to like fund some new F30 fives over here. Yeah, we're going to make sure we get a training regimen. We're going to dump enough nerve agent in the open air to kill three and a trillion people. Yeah, that's cool.
- [93:20]
Ben
Sounds good.
- [93:21]
Brian
Sounds good. We're also gonna be like, make sure that we hire enough like pink haired feminists. Over here for our DEI department.
- [93:27]
Ben
So like the little guy.
- [93:29]
Brian
Same guy made all those.
- [93:30]
Ben
The little guy, I want all of his sheep dead. And then I. I like to imagine the pilot as like some sort of nemesis of the farmer. He's like, I want his.
- [93:40]
Brian
I want sheep dead.
- [93:42]
Ben
I want the sheep.
- [93:43]
Brian
They hate those sheep.
- [93:44]
Ben
He stole my girlfriend and I. Cool.
- [93:46]
Brian
Now if. If I could just directly, for a moment address Pete Hegseth. I would like to say, Pete, I feel. I feel like I can call you Pete, right? If you could go ahead and just investigate to see if they're still doing this. You know, anything that could kill trillions of people literally about a hundred miles from where I currently live. If you could just go ahead and stop them from doing that, Pete, that'd be really good. That was.
- [94:07]
Ben
But this is.
- [94:08]
Brian
Appreciate it.
- [94:08]
Ben
This is an example of how entrenched in this, like, totally twisted dominion, I mean, demonic ideals that our government has been operating under for so many decades that we say things like this. And part of why you can joke about them is because to an extent, it's not surprising. It's like when you learn about the MK Ultra stuff, you start to look into JFK and MLK and Ruby Ridge and Waco. And these are kind of smaller. I mean, they're. They're terrible. But there's smaller incidents.
- [94:42]
Brian
Yeah. Like sheep. Well, you mean those ones?
- [94:46]
Ben
No, I mean like one family in, you know, Ruby Ridge, one family is murdered by. By the atf. And you're like, wow, that's. That's like really, really terrible. In Waco, you know, one commune of weird people are like wiped out for no reason.
- [95:01]
Brian
Yeah.
- [95:02]
Ben
And you're like, wow, that's really terrible. And then you're like, oh, one. One group of 6,000 sheep are killed. And then it's like, oh, a bunch like thousands of Turkmen in Turkmenistan now have cancer. And you can. Part of why you can make light of it. And it's obviously very tragic, but it's because you're like, yeah, that's par for the course.
- [95:28]
Brian
It's so.
- [95:29]
Ben
And it's so messed up that we're there that we're at that point and we've just like. I mean, as a people, we are culpable to some extent. We've just kind of let it happen because we've lost the will to even be Westerners anymore. Like, what founding father would. Would have stood for income tax, let alone using that. The testing of nerve agents that could kill the world times over.
- [95:53]
Brian
Nerve agent and then be like, you know where we should drop it on our own country.
- [95:58]
Ben
It would be one thing to drop it on a. On an opposing country, even. That would be very morally.
- [96:05]
Brian
Dude, we got to do something with all these ticks, like, getting out of control in there.
- [96:09]
Ben
Hey, I know. We enlist them, we make them worse, and then we send them back out to infect our own people. Yeah.
- [96:17]
Brian
And this is one of those things where I hope that it helps us all develop an instinct of mistrust when we hear, like, the official narrative of some of these incidents and stories that happen. Like, you should have a healthy skepticism.
- [96:32]
Ben
Yeah.
- [96:32]
Brian
Of the. Your. Your own government, but especially like, the globalist, like this whole cabal of nations that is attempting to basically usher in their. Their view of utopia. It's just.
- [96:43]
Ben
That's a really good point, actually. Like, a lot of the plausible deniability that governments have is that many of these things are done in league with. With other nations and, and as part of the globalist agenda. You can look at the World Economic Forum, the atrocities that have come as a product of the World Economic Forum. NATO, the United nations, before that, the League of Nations. These things were not good things. And it gave even the highest world leader in each nation the ability to say, oh, I have no idea what you're talking about, because they actually don't.
- [97:17]
Brian
Yeah, they really don't, because they aren't.
- [97:18]
Ben
Calling the globalist shots.
- [97:20]
Brian
One of the cases in point, like, one of the. The greatest example of this sort of thing that's been going on is from very recent memory, and you were probably all wondering, like, are they going to go there at the end of this episode? And it's like, guys, I want you to know, Trump was elected. You don't have to be scared anymore. You don't have to be scared. Like, Zuckerberg is taking TRT and he's fighting people and he's letting us spread disinformation on Facebook.
- [97:43]
Ben
Again, RFK is screaming, literally about, how about. About, you know, how Zen is really great.
- [97:50]
Brian
He's learning popping sins and canceling nicotine and canceling Red 40, you know. But when I say disinformation, again, they call. This is the kind of thing, the apparatus of these nations, they call it disinformation. When we just notice, guys, it seems like you released enough nerve agent to kill three and a half trillion people over here. And it seems like you fend. You sent a tiny, dishonest midget scientist to China to develop a virus that was then leaked to the entire world.
- [98:20]
Ben
Who, by the way, said scientist kind of looks like Stuart Little.
- [98:25]
Brian
He really does. I think with that, it's time for Ben to take us into our final story, which hits close to home. We are still as a nation reeling from the effects of this final story and the truth of it. Now you're going to have to be the judge of whether this was intentional or just incompetence. You guys are going to have to be the judge of that. But I do want to say thank you for listening to this episode of Haunted Cosmos. Make sure that you check out our new supporter channel athaunted cosmos supercast.com One cool feature of the the new platform that we haven't told you about yet is that once you're a supporter, you're going to be able to add all of our premium like ad free main show as well as the Dusty Tome directly to your podcast platform of choice to listen to it natively on Spotify and Apple, a feed only our patrons can access. So you'll be able to access our content on a premium level, even at a more convenient way.
- [99:20]
Ben
Yeah, because it'll each be its own channel. You'll have a Hana Cosmos channel and a Dusty Tome channel so it's easier to navigate through them.
- [99:27]
Brian
So with that said, guys, prepare to be angered by our final story and we'll catch you next time on han Cosmos.
- [99:47]
Ben
On April 10, 1972, the United States and China both signed the Biological Weapons Convention mentioned in the cold open of this episode, giving their official promises to refrain from the manufacturing, storage, sale and testing of all biochemical weaponry. Do you think that either country has kept their promise? On November 16, 2002, locals toiled about another day in the Guangdong Province in China, a coastal province at the southern and eastern tip of the country. Fishing operations of all scales were hitting the water at full steam in the early morning. The smaller fishing charters would soon be done with their day's start and would embark upon the really hard work of the day selling their halls in the markets in the big cities. You see, most of Guangdong is traced through and through by massive tributaries off the Great Pearl river, which finds its end at the eastern beach. Since this is the case, most of the metropolitan areas in the province are focused on riverbanks and smaller river deltas. This makes the job of the fishermen at least a little bit easier, since there is seldom far to travel before one finds an open market slot in a fish market. But the fact remains, the closer you get to the heart of the Pearl's delta, the better the markets become for both buyers and Sellers. And at the very center of the delta's labyrinth, there sits the capital of the province and additionally the largest urban development in the entire world, the city of Fatima. The morning was cool, with a constant breeze weaving through the city, which was as fast paced as always. Mothers haggled and bought with fishermen who few remembered, had already been awake for hours on end. The chaotic mass of sounds and smells would have sent an unexperienced tourist into a state of vertigo. But that same whirlwind for the senses was the norm, even a complacent norm for the people there that fateful day in November. But what exactly made it fateful? Well, into the fray, there rose a growing sound of coughing. It wasn't just one or two or a handful of people. It was hundreds of people coughing all at the same time. The cough was constant and extremely aggressive, and the number of those who had succumbed to it continued to increase until it drowned out the normal operations of that section of the market. After a while, a mass exodus began to occur all through Fat Chan of people rushing home to rest and take medicine for this terrible cough that seemed both totally spontaneous and nearly ubiquitous. Over the course of days, the Chinese government intervened to investigate the cause of the illness, for that is what it was, and the tally of its victims was increasing exponentially. Months went by with little news of this predicament making it into the world outside of China. But it was later discovered that in that time, the strange disease spread to other provinces until the government was not confident in their ability to contain it anymore. Thus, In February of 2003, China released public statements regarding the likely spread of a new respiratory virus out of their country's borders and into the rest of the world. The World Health Organization immediately, immediately stepped in to help get things under control and slow the spread. By May of 2004, the virus had run its course. It had claimed 774 lives over a footprint of 30 different countries or territories. It had gone down in history as the SARS outbreak, for SARS was the name given by the WHO to the strain of respiratory coronavirus that caused this panic. Once the virus had been contained and more or less conquered by the who, the upper level doctors in China realized that they were now faced with an incredible opportunity. They now had the chance to study and get ahead of a new strain of respiratory illness. It was work that could possibly save countless lives in the future. If new strains of this virus ever tried to come back, something changed China was confident would eventually happen. They built new facilities and began to engage in a progressive type of research called gain of function, A research methodology that intentionally sought to mutate viruses into new strains to try and predict which future iterations may exist. For a short time, China thought it was doing this research without the knowledge of outside intelligence. But it was mistaken. The United States intelligence Ms. Machine knew of China's intention to do this before the first facilities opened and was somehow up to date on all the research as the scientists were performing it. China soon Learned of the US's knowledge and what they were doing, and instead of letting it create any animosity, invited top scientists in the US to join them in this cutting edge research. Thus began a sort of golden age of viral study using gain of function methods in labs peppered around the important provinces of China. But it didn't come without costs. Gain of function research has always been viewed with an air of suspicion because of the intrinsic risk involved. If you're intentionally putting viruses through mutations in order to see what could stick in the future, you might succeed. And then what do you do? What do you do if you create a virus that's entirely new and that doesn't have any developed treatments? Do you destroy it? Do you keep it secret? But still alive? As early as 2015, researchers in the lab located in Wuhan, China, were publishing studies on their successful engineering of a new and very dangerous strain of the SARS coronavirus. A similar report was published by Dr. Ralph Baric and Dr. Shi Zhang Li in the widely respected article Nature Medicine. It stirred up a lot of excitement, both positive and negative, but nothing more came of it at the time. And then for a few years, the news coming out of China's gain of function labs went quiet. That was until 2019. In August of 2019, reports surfaced, reports that were then swiftly silenced by the Chinese government, which hinted at a biosafety breach occurring in one of the labs. No further details were given before the hush order came down from the upper reaches of the government and maybe some other institutions as well. But this seldom remembered report would prove to be the first throes of confusion in a fast approaching time of unprecedented chaos in the hyper modern world. Of course, we all know what I'm referring to. COVID 19 came out of the Wuhan lab in in China. And in a highly upscaled version of the SARS outbreak in 2003, this new coronavirus immediately started sending the world into a spiral of madness. Entire countries were shut down. Streets that are otherwise known for their hustle and bustle were empty and still and quiet. Schools were Closed work was moved to people's living rooms or basements. Jobs deemed essential were left to deal with. With the influx of panicked people running to them thinking they were about to die. And many of those essential workers only reinforced the delusion. Vaccines were made and then rushed to the public. People were held hostage by their jobs or even their own families, forced to choose between taking a medicine they objected to or being able to feed their wives and kids. It was all apocalyptic and draconian. It was all terrible. But was there something more sinister lurking beneath the whole thing? In addition to the biosafety breach that was reported in Wuhan in the late summer of 2019, other circumstances lined up to paint the entire Covid episode with a light of great suspicion. People began to wonder if the world had been targeted by some biochemical conspiracy. And these people, it turns out, weren't crazy to wonder about this. In October 2019, a pandemic simulation called Event 201 was held in New York. It was hosted by Johns Hopkins University, the World Economic Forum, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The pandemic scenario it ran and predicted as likely to occur was one of a global novel coronavirus outbreak. Just two months later, a doctor named Li Wenlang began to warn his colleagues about a dangerous respiratory SARS virus that was leaked from a lab in Wuhan. He was silenced by Chinese authorities via methods unknown. In early 2020, Chinese authorities shut down nearly all public information sharing about the virus and its origins. In February 2020, an Indian preprint report, one that was later removed from the final print, was released, which included the claim that COVID 19 was artificially engineered. In May of that year, Nobel laureate Dr. Luc Montanare publicly claimed that the virus was engineered as part of a bioweapons program in China. This line of thinking culminated in June of 2020, when Dr. Li Ming Yan went on Fox News News to claim that the virus was not only intentionally made, but also intentionally released as a kind of biochemical attack. To this day, her remarks remain extremely controversial. This was not all, though. In early 2021, the US State Department released a notice outlining their concern that the Wuhan lab included Chinese military involvement. Then, in 2020, the U.S. department of Energy completed their Covid investigation and determined that the virus originated via a lab leak. Whether intentional or accidental, they didn't say. As a final factor for consideration, it's worth noting that the face and mouthpiece of COVID 19's dystopian shutdowns, Dr. Anthony Fauci, has been repeatedly linked to funding gain of function research in China. Whether these links are true or not remains to be seen but the picture being painted is one of mass deception and malice from top to bottom and somehow between both China and the U.S. of course countless more words could be written and are being written about the conspiracy of COVID 19. What we want to do is leave you with this brief overview, this fact sheet if you will, to give you a solid foundation from where you might ask yourself the following Would you really be surprised at a government that we know is evil participating in things that are evil? And when you look at the fruit of COVID 19, the broken businesses, the familial conflict, the tragic death that really did occur and the death that could have been avoided, the increased control that government exercised over their citizenry, the money and power that a precious few gained, do you wonder at all if the whole thing wasn't a bit more than an accident? It.