Thinking Sideways: Crash of South African Airlines flight 295

by the way, spelled with an eye. And I know I think from now I know whenever you see your name should be answer me Devin with an eye. What about the silent you? Ye? That that always throws people off to the silent pls. Yeah, there's that part. Yeah. I just don't like people to know how how to spell my name. Uh well, once again we have a mystery for you. This was, of course a listener suggestion that this was sent in by Ash Way way long ago. Oh I hope Ash from England is still listening. She's

still listening. Yell hey Ash, if you're still listening, to send us an email or something. We're all through your suggestions. That's what we're gonna talk about today, is what caused the crash of South African Airways flight. I thought the answer to that gravity, I guess in a way that's true. Yeah, he does have a really good all right, So if you want to find our links, it's just like fifty

minutes of silence after this. Yeah, you're welcome. Really should for April Fools, But no, I found this one on the list. It's been a long time since we done an airplane mystery, so I decided we should do one that's not true airplane mystery last week? What do we do last week? You're right, you know what I did realize also, is I'm an idiot. As you two know.

I went on vacation and I did all of my research for this prior to going on vacation, which required me to be on an airplane for oh, I don't know, fifteen hours round trip. So while you're on that airplane, were you thinking about fires? And I was ignoring thing? Yeah, I had to. I finally I really got it through my head. I was like, wait, this is the same thing you do when you swim in the ocean. There are sharks in the ocean. There's just aren't any sharks

there at the moment, so you're fine. Who was on an airplane after having done some research for this episode, and um, I was sitting in the window seat and I turned to my boyfriend and I said, does it make you nervous that there's something in between those window panes? Because there was like a piece of junk in there. I was like, how did it get in there? Then

it makes me nervous. Yeah, you know. I was doing a little research for this and various random googles to try to find stuff out, and I found all these advisories out there from like the f A and stuff like that. It's like, oh, you know, you gotta go like this particular one. I was like, I was looking into oxygen generators and it's like, oh, you've gotta go visually inspect every oxygen generator and every seven forty seven

and the entire fleet, you know, visually inspected. And we know that doesn't actually happen, we have probably not, but apparently, yeah, apparently defective ones out there. So it's like, and you know, something like the seven forty seven is such a huge, complex machine, so many things to go wrong. Yeah, that I just don't think about it as we're going to talk about. Yes, just one second, we are. So let's let's get back to s A A flight, to this flight,

as we've already sort of given away, went down. It went down, and it killed all passengers and nineteen crew members. And then, of course, because it's a international event when an airplane goes down, there was a giant investigation which spawned. There was a whole bunch of theories that spawned out before the investigation was even started, and even more that came out after that. That sounds vaguely familiar, yes, really does.

But let's first let's talk about the plane itself. South African Airways flight was a Boeing seven four seven DASH two four four B comby. Uh. The name of the plane was the Helderberg, which, yeah, I didn't know. I don't know that every airline names its airplanes. I don't think they do, but apparently Essay does. Yeah. I found out it's actually kind of a common thing, which was surprising to me. So that was the actual name of

the plane. Yes, that's what they named the plane. Why did they name it Fifi because that's just not cool enough. Maybe the other ones were was already taken. Okay. The registration for the plane was z S dash S a S serial number two to one one. So we are going to start our story on the November. The aircraft is in shang Kai check International Airport, which is in Taipei, Taiwan. The flight was scheduled to go from Taipei to Johannesburg.

Johannesburg and Johannesburg. I've heard it both ways. I share Johannesburg. So this is a long flight over a long stretch of water. It was expected to make one stop and that was gonna be on the island of Mauritius, which is in the Indian Ocean. It's five hundred miles away from Madagascar, which is eight hundred kilometers. So it's everything seems normal. The planes delayed, they can't take off on schedule. They're delayed an hour and a half because of thunderstorms.

While they're held on the tarmac, the local customs decides to run a surprise inspection check out the cargo. Now do you know, was that something they just decided to do a lot on that day or was this an isolated incident. I never found anything that said other than it was just pay you're here, we might as well

check you out just because we can. Yeah. I think that probably was it, since especially since they were just sort of sitting around for an extra hour and a half, so why not do a little surprise and specially so I just but I was just wondering if they were you know, presumably there were other planes that were also delayed for a while. Yeah, I think this is just luck of the draw. It could be luck of the drug.

It could actually be because they were South Africa, and then because there was an embargo, they said, you know, these guys have a motive to smuggle stuff. That's true, yea, So maybe that was it too. It is it is in uhn apartheid, it's still a thing, still not a very popular country South Africa. So they get checked and lo and behold, everything that's on the manifest is accounted for. There's nothing out of place. So they're hunky dory and they go ahead and tell them that when they're able

to leave, they're welcome to leave. We should stop here, though, because there is an important bit of this, which is when I described the plane, I had mentioned that it was a seven four seven to four four b Colmby. Ye that it's for combination. Oh, it doesn't, It really doesn't. It's something that some airlines do that can work in

their favor, especially in this situation. What it is, so you've got the main deck of a plane, and usually it's full of seats, except that if you're running a route that doesn't normally book an entire plane, this is a great plane to have because it doesn't have seats in the rear portion of the plane, and you can remove or add back seats as you need them, and the bulkhead and the galley move forward and back to

screen that off from your passengers. So the comby this particular one could hold anywhere from six to twelve pallets, and at this time the back in the back Okay, yeah, so you know we're normally the bathrooms are in the back of the plane. That area it had at this time it had six pallets back there, so smaller configuration, but it's a yeah, it's a pretty handy idea. Actually, Bowing made a similar version of the seven Also, it was convertible. You could pull out the seats and have

cargo instead. It's are fully adjustable. If you've been on an airplane recently, and you look down where your seat attaches. It attaches to a track. Seats are completely movable, because that's how they've eliminated the knee room. They just have to fight them up. They just push them all back to back and then pull them about an inch exactly, and they're like, that's fine, that's fine, you're comfortable. Have

you have you seen some of the new seating. There was a proposed seating arrangement that came out not too long ago, like six months ago. I think we posted this. That's the one where you're sitting. You're sitting and then there's a guy that's like half a level up from you, facing you, and your sort of faces in his cross You talk about, yeah, yeah, we get back even where people on the planes, Yeah, you have to upgrade to

the area. They's got two more inches. So you can't just go ahead and say I'll sit on the emergency aisle because I'm a good guy. You know, you have to pay for that, because the emergency gets more roo. Yeah. Actually they on the flight I was just on um simultaneously. It was like five times as much to reserve the seats for the emergency row, which is kind of like, why would you do that? Why would you want? You know? Okay,

really and then um, the trade tables. My phone is actually bigger than the like actually like like I put my phone on it and it was too Yeah, it was too deep for the That's the state of the airline travel in America everywhere. But I guess it's benefit you're since I kind of flap. The last was still Los Angeles, and I was I would seated on the emergency island and they didn't charge me extra and they do now. But anyway, we're off track. Let's get back

to the Combi. Okay. So here's the thing is that we're talking about the fact that it's got that area in the rear that they put they can put cargo, and you know, that's advantageous for slow roots. This route was and a lot of roots actually for South African airways were kind of bad at the time because, as we said, it was apartheid. Everybody hated them, well, a lot of countries hated them. There was embargoes and one of the things that countries would do is they would say, hey,

you can't fly through our airspace. Yeah, so let's give an example. Let's say, you're gonna go from what is it, it's Cape Cape Town, and you're gonna go to London. Now the simple answer is to fly in a straight line essentially London, but you can't do that. They had to fly over the ocean around the entire continent and then go to England. So it was a huge damper

on business. So good if you wanted to fly from Cape Town to Jerusalem, you had to fly out a circle and then then then like say go to maybe Paris, maybe Athens and then on Israel, that kind of thing. But yeah, it was definitely long way around. Yeah, no, so it was. It was not a good thing. And they actually had two of these planes, so this was

one of the two that they had at Combies. So they had it in that configuration where there was less seating and there was you said, there were twelve palates in the back. Six to twelve is what it was capable of carrying. This flight had six flight takes off. Everything appears normal, really, everything went fine for about the first night and a half hours. Really it was I think it was supposed to take eleven hours to get to get to Mauritius and then they were going to

bounce on from there, So it's a long, long flight. Yeah. The thing that I didn't realized, and I don't know that a lot of people realize, is that planes are constantly checking in at way points. And as they were doing their flight, and they were checking in at every way point, everything is fine, um, right up until about the nine and a half hour mark. At eight pm UTC, which is Universal Time Coordinated, which equates to from Uritius.

It was three am in the morning local time. The flight contacted the control tower and they said that they had smoke on board and that they were descending per their guidelines to four thousand feet. We know this because of the voice data recorder that was on the plane and that was eventually found, Yes, and also we have the tapes from the control tower that they were speaking

to UM. In the conversation, the flight requests and is granted full emergency landing status, which means where do you want to land, pick your runway, we'll give it to you. And so they did that. Then they asked where they were.

And this is a weird thing is that there's a bit of a mix up in the communication because the signal wasn't all that great the audio was pretty poor, but the flight when ass said that they were sixty five miles now the tower, well the tower took that to me, and they were sixty five miles out from the tower instead. It turns out what the what the guys on the plane were saying is that they were

sixty five miles away from a way point. And that way point is I'm just gonna spell it because I can't even pronounce it X A G A L. Maybe so they had so they had passed that way point sixty five miles ago was what it was, or they were sixty five miles away from even hitting that way point. Do you know? I don't. I'm never quite sure, because I can if it's worded this way there it made it,

you don't. I don't know. All I know is that it turns out they were actually hud miles away from the actual airport, so they were way farther out to see than anybody expected them to be, which complicated the search and rescue a little bit. So, like I said, they were granted full emergency status. There's a brief communication and then communication goes silent thirty six minutes after the last word. The last word you know it. It wasn't

anything mysterious. It was they were having their conversation and then it just kind of petered off. I thought it was that, you know, the tower had said, okay, so where do you want to land? No, they confirmed where they wanted to land. I remember that they conferred which runway they wanted and then after that it just kind of dropped. And it didn't when I read the transcript, it didn't seem as if it cut off in the

middle of anything. It just kind of stopped. You got a fire on board that I'm gonna go deal with this other I'm gonna go deal with this thing. I'll be back. Well, you know, you read these things. They got to have the sign stamps. I've read other transcripts of these things, and you know, it's it's not like they're constantly talking. There's that they're long pauses while they're going about doing things like flying the plane, going to the bathroom, getting a fresh beer, you know, and uh

and so yeah, that wasn't They weren't chopped off. But there was an interesting thing that the pilot said though, which was close the bloody door, and that was that was because somebody came into the cockpit. I that's what I was assuming. At first, I thought, well, as you're talking about the door between the passenger compartments and the hold, and I realized, now, that's way far back. It can't possibly be that. So it's not an expression of alarm. I wouldn't. No, I would think it would. I mean,

correct me if I'm wrong. But it's my impression that the passenger compartment and the pilot area cockpit, that's the word I'm looking for, that they're totally sat once you close and secure that door. It's like totally separate, isn't it like the air systems everything. No. Not, At the time, it wasn't. It wasn't an airtight super confort pretty airtight, right,

I mean it had to steal around it. It may not have been totally type, but like a door with the gaps, oxygen and gases would come into the cockpits still, so it wasn't completely sealed off. But mostly it was to stop the smoke. I'm pretty sure from coming in. Open the door, a bunch of black smoke rolls in.

Shut the freaking door, you're I can't, I can't see that. Yeah, the I think they had the one difference between the main passenger compartment and the cockpit is that you've got your little oxygen masks, the one that drops down over head, which is good for about twelve minutes. And then those guys have the full on apparatus so they can go for a long time, which is important. Oh yeah, obviously

they should have they should have the better one. Yes, they don't need they don't need the one that where you gotta straighten the tube that you see the Steward of Steward is doing. You know, they need something much better. Yeah, um, so back to our story here though. Thirty six minutes after their last contact, the tower alerts, well the world, They tell everybody, hey disappeared, lost them. Every country that

had ships or aircraft in the area go looking. But of course they they're looking, right, So that's it takes twelve hours before the first bits of debris are found, and that debris is oil slicks. There's semi buoyant things like I'm guessing seats or vests and seat cushions that can be used for flotation devices. And there was a life after two. And also you know those inflatable slides come down the un One of those I think, yeah,

and eight bodies. And as soon as they found the bodies and they examine them, based on the extent of damage that was done to the bodies, they knew that the plane had gone down and it was catastrophic and all hands were lost. Well, I mean, it wasn't an apparent before that. I'm sure that it was, but you know how these things, but this is our final we we can't. We can't hold out hope anymore, we know.

But it's also weird, right because if you find the like the security what, oh my god, cockpit no, no, no, the flotation rap things, if you find those out right, you you can maybe think, well, maybe some people survived and deployed that, or maybe it was so catastrophic that bounced out, or are just automatically the slides, for example, automatically. So that would be the question, right, is Like, based on examining the bodies, you could say, oh, yeah, everybody

died on impact. I'm guessing the extent of damage made it quite odd. That would be my guess. Yeah, But that'd bey there would be a question, right is that it could be? Yeah. Now, of course, with any accident of this magnitude, there is a huge formal investigation takes a while because of course, first order of business is to find the wreckage. They eventually do. In that record, that wreckage is found to be five thousand meters down or sixteen thousand feet kind of far down there. That's

really far deeper than the Titanic. Yeah, yeah, way down there. Um. And it's the only way they got there was with a r o V the little remote operated vehicles, a little submersibles. It's the only way. The Jackson Peter Jackson, George Lucas, which is the one talking about, um, who did Titanic. No, it doesn't matter, okay, James Cameron, Yeah,

the one of the other three. Yeah. Yeah, So this isn't And this is an object of contention because I have read incredible sources that were there were two debris fields instead of three. Yeah, because I've read three. Most play say, is that I've read about it. Yeah, I've read I've read another places that there were only two

debris fields. Well, what we're talking about here, for everybody who hasn't done the reading on it is the debris fields are where most of the stuff from plane settles on the bottom, and there were debris fields whether it's two or three and they were anywhere from one and a half to two and a half kilometers apart. Is that a typical as far as we know? I mean, things that hit the water at great speed tend to break up, and then those individual chunks tend to separate

and drift away from each other. But not so much because tides and stuff, right, I mean, well there's currents and whatnot. I mean two thousand thousand meters, it's not actually all that far when you think about how far it had to say, Yeah, I just wasn't sure if it was like a typical that it would be, you know, three or two, or if that mattered, if that never mattered or were I don't think it really, I don't

think it was. It was bringing it up for fun. No, yeah, I don't think there was any significance to Some people believe that it might have meant that the plane broke up in mid air before it hit, but you know, it's maybe I can see, I can see how you would take it that way. Doesn't necessarily mean that that's what happened, because I'm sorry, if you think about an airplane coming down at an angle and tumbling when it hits the water, that thing's gonna fly into a bunch

of big chunks. Yeah, and also you know it's going to get spread up because something's weigh a lot more than other things. Something's he's going to sink. He's gonna stop faster than say, broken off wings. Yea, it took a while, but as we had talked about, eventually they did get the cockpit voice recorder that was found. Um though the flight data recorders were never found. And if anybody's interested on how flight data recorders work stuff, you should know did a great episode on it and it

took them an hour to explain it. Also, we're not going to go into this. You know. The thing about the about the data recorders is is why haven't they invented a self ejecting one, one that senses a crash is about to occur and just pops itself out of the plane, Because that's always it's always such an ordeal to find that thing. I just don't know why they don't make them more floaty. Yeah, they should, like you know, they should. It is the technical term. Yeah, I learned

that on the cruise ship. Everybody can take a drink just trying to get drinks in for our drinking friends. I'm pretty sure that's one on the drinking game. I think. I think just just like like tape them to the outside of the plane so they come off in the crash and they float up to the surface. Yeah, duct tape every you know, three flights or whatever. Yeah, with the when you're examining all of the oxygen things. Yeah, okay, So they send the r o vs down. The r

o v s recover parts of the plane. The things that they think are going to be important to examine. They can't get at all because the seas, I mean, hey, it's so far down in be the siege just are not cooperating. So they took what they could. They took all the debris about back to South Africa, where the official investigation started. Sorry, I'm might have missed it because I was like busy reading ahead or something. Did we say what where what ocean? And where they were found?

Eventually where or so away? That's where they actually and that's where they were found. Yes, which is which it's which ocean is that that's the it's actually the debris was found right about where. Everybody thinks that that right in that neighborhood and little Yeah, course that's helpful. Actually, yeah, I was just sorry, No, no, no, it totally makes sense. Where was they? Oh so the investment, official investigation, it starts.

What they find is they find that something had caught fire in the cargo area on that main deck, special cargo area, the on the main deck where seat passenger seating would be. Yes, not the baggage in the combined area, Yes, the calmby area of the bomb, if you will. They find that it's specifically, it's on the right front palette, which is referred to as PR, which I'm gonna guess

means palette right. So the pallet, the right palette closest to Okay, So, if you're sitting on the plane, or let's say you're at the back of the plane and you're looking forward to the cockpit, on your right hand side, there's gonna be three palelettes, and on your left hand side there's gonna be three palets because you were in two rows, the very farthest one forward, so one the most to the right, not the most aft, the most front. Yeah,

the most front front, right right pallet. I think, yeah, I think I know what I'm talking about and I think you're talking about the same thing, but are making me nervous with how much you're explaining it. So, if I'm the last row on the right side, it's directly behind me in passenger seating, it would be behind the galley wall on the right hand side. Yes, you probably a fire, but no, So that's that's where it was.

And that's where they said they figured out a fire was at Yeah, because they looked at the piece of the fuselage that came from there and there was like evidence of intense intense heat, intense heat there right, So that would have been the fuselage above PR. And so what they what nobody sure of though, is where the fire was. I mean, it could have been PR the palette that was sitting in that location was on fire and burning, or was it something up high that was burning.

Like they never really knew what was causing it. Well, they could tell is that it did a ton of damage and they sorry. And they also could tell this is a question um, that it wasn't something that was of lower flammability somewhere else that caught onto something on that palette that was higher volatility. We don't know if the fire jumped from one place to another and then scorched the seat. But that was where the most intense. That's where the fire that they could tell based on

the metal. It burned hot enough that it pitted the metal and there was slag thrown around. That's really hot. It's really really hot. And of course they concluded that the palette itself was something and it started the fire most likely, well that's what they believed. But so that was my question is like, if something of lower volatility happened to catch fire, the whole fire jump, yeah, and that it was just that there was a lot of

vaulatal stuff on that palette. We don't know. Well, the palette, the palette itself was it was plastic wrapped in plastic. It was computer stuff and it was wrapped in what the heck was polystyrene packing. So it's plastic wrapped around hunks of plastic. Plastic burns hot, but but not that. But that was palette. Are that cargo? Yep? That was pr Yeah, it was computer computers was what it was,

which you're all, plastic was very little metalist. It seems unlikely that well, I mean, you know, it depends, it could have, but it's hard to say. So there's a whole massive, really cool vintage computers scattered about the ocean floor. Yeah, that are like partially burned and melted. Probably yeah, probably. I mean, you know, I would go for the blooms. Joe's going for melted computer parts. I'm just gonna go

for a galleon like of whatever gold. Uh. But most everything that was in the cargo hold area was polystyrene wrapped, except for there was a there was a few things that were cardboard boxes, and there was a few heavy items that were like auto parks, things that were in wooden boxes. Crates, Yeah, there were crates with hay packing stuff like that. So this is seems to be what would have been the most flammable to burn hot and hard. So it's weird that it was a palateful of computers

and it's little. Yeah, it's a little bit, uh, you know, makes you kind of wonder what's going on. Yeah, maybe it was not really that at all. Maybe not. There there are some theories that say that. But actually, before we get into theories, I do want to point out something that I have seen that I don't really like. Yeah, and this agree with you peeves me off. I agree, Yeah,

I absolutely agree. Okay, so here's what I'm talking about. There, there are several sites that say sites there shows there's things that say that the crew did not follow their fire procedure there, which would be the smoke evacuation checklist. The that that checklist would say that in the event of a fire you descend, you open the doors to depressurize the plane to suck all the smoke out. By the way, you have to do that after the fires out. You can't do it well, the fire still going. This

bad idea. But these places say that they didn't do it, but they have no way of knowing that because the flight had already said it was descending and then minutes after that we lost content. I'm sure that they were probably highly motivated to go back there and put that fire out. I'm pretty sure that this they didn't follow. The checklist thing comes from a TV show. There's a TV show called may Day or depending on which country

you're in. It's under a number of different names. There's air crash Investigations, air emergency, air disaster on the great names, which shows evidently been on for a while. They go, this sounds like the show that they're showing on the airplane in airplane probably that you probably shouldn't be laughing,

but it's okay. These goofballs though they say this and they put a negative spin on it, and it's not appropriate in my mind, because they have no way to know that from what we know, they were following what they should have been doing. Um, I would imagine they would, like I said, they were motivated. Well, and here's here's some Actually, there's some specifics that proved that they were

probably doing it. Because at twenty nine minutes and five seconds on the uh the voice recorder, the captain's heard asking the main deck cargo are asking for the main deck cargo fire checklist, so he's he's asking for this is again minutes before the transmissions lost. So it seems like they were doing what they were supposed to. The other thing that I want folks to understand is what a terrible idea it turns out the Calmby was and how terribly it it performed in the event of a fire. Well,

I mean, the comedy was a great idea. It just I just didn't have a good fire suppression system and the car and there was some there was some bad math. I would say, some bad math was done on the way things worked. And let me let me run this through. Some people know where I'm going with my kind of little uh so box. I know the size of the cargo hold in that area is nineties six hundred cubic feet. I don't know what that converts to in meters. I didn't do the math on that one, sorry, folks, but

it's uh. That area was thought that big of an area was thought that it would help keep by products of a fire a k a. Smoke from getting into the passenger cabin, based on the fact that there was a pressure difference between the two. Was the passenger cabin was at a higher pressure than the cargo hold. The seal of the little movable wall that they had wasn't air tight fit. It had a thick seal, but it wasn't completely air tight. But air would flow from high

pressure cabin to lower pressure cargo area. So it makes sense to think, well, great, that'll keep all the smoke back there. But it turns out when there's a raging hot fire, the pressure change yea yeah, and suddenly the flow reverses and it all rolls into the passenger compartment,

So that was a problem. This actually is the thing about it is is you know they might have actually been overcome by smoke in relation and if they had just deployed their oxygen masks and and I don't know if if these guys actually have like portable oxygen units to where they can go fight the fire while they're wearing a gas man the crew. Yeah, I believe they were.

I believe there is that. Yeah, So that's that's you know, I mean I think that if they had just deployed their oxygen for the passengers and themselves, that it might have turned out a little differently. That's a hard one. Having gone through firefighter training on my time on a cruise ship, um, it's it's startlingly hard to navigate an area when it's filled with smoke, even when you have

your little mask on and your breathing real oxygen. I mean, you know, they train you to like follow the wall, but in this huge cargo hold that you're not, you know, it's just filled with smoke. You don't know where it's coming from, and you probably have your tiny little fire extinguisher,

like there's no way you all bets are off. There's no way you're going to find that fire probably or find the right thing, or maybe you don't have the right extinguisher or the fire suppression was also one of the big problems with the combies, because okay, let's talk

about this. Is that in an airplane, if the cargo hold where your bage go on a passenger airline catches on fire, the guys in the cockpit get a warning light and they push your button and free on gas is blasted in there and it extinguishes the whole thing. But like we talked about, you can't do that in an area that potentially would have human being. Can't do that. Just in case anybody was wondering, you will kill you

pretty immediately. No, it's crazy, it's it's yeah. So instead, what what the what the process was is, oh, well then what we'll do is will as Devon was talking, is that will send one of our crew members with their masks and a fire extinguisher into that area. That's as they have a mask. I don't even know if they do. On I think they did. I got the

impression that they would. You would think that they would, because I mean, it makes no sense to send somebody into a smoke filled cargo hold without a breathing apparatus because he's got to he's gonna last about what thirty seconds? So the point is that they could get in there, and then they had to put out the fire before we could open the doors and vent the plane. Yeah, there was another another suppression system that I was reading about that uses CEO to the snuff out the fire,

and that didn't work out so well either. I can't remember the flight, but they had that. They Yeah, they were no is down. They were the pilot had nose down for obvious reasons. He was taking it closer to backup Joe. So everybody knows what Joe's talking about, isn't is a flight that catches on fire and they put out CEO two, which it doesn't burn, and so it

kills the fire, but then the plane noses down. C O two is heavier, so it runs downhill with the plane and fills the cockpit with CEO two and kills the flight crew and the plane goes down. It didn't work out. That's another instance where they it really would have been a smart idea for them to put on their oxygen masks. But the problem with CEO two is you don't know it's there. They had no way of knowing that it was going to the deloy. Like they knew they were doing it, but they didn't know that

it would flow in there. They it was supposed to be separated. I get that. But here's my message to the airlines that they haven't gotten already is whenever a fire breaks out, everybody in the cockpit puts on their masks. Unless it's the oxygen system is on fire, then oh yeah, yeah, that's a bad problem. The last thing that I want to point out, um in defense of the crew doing what they were supposed to be doing, is we talked about that somebody had to go back into that area

to fight the fire. Yeah, well they one of the fire extinguishers was recovered. It was a fire extinguisher from from door to our which I will be honest, I don't know exactly where that is on the plane. But what is important to note is that it had stuck to it the webbing or netting that was used in the cargo area at the door, which means the stuff was hot and it hit it and stuck to it

and you know, cooled on. So they know that somebody was taking a fire extinguisher into that area to try and combat the fire and maybe getting overcome with smoke in relation. Maybe I don't know, but um that uh, that that was, and that was one of the eleven fire extinguishers total that we're on the plane, and for all we know, more of them we're being used to because they didn't. This is the only one they recovered, So there was a bunch of them that we just

don't know where they went. Yeah, they probably could have recovered a lot more stuff, but that would be expensive. It would be very expensive, and at some point instigations are Yeah, I think I think once they recovered that piece of the fuselage that had the extensive heat damage, and then that's sort of like because the kind of

kind of sealed the deal. I mean, if they recovered more pieces, they might get more information that would lead them in a different direction maybe, But that's that's the end of the soapbox that I was standing on. In defense of the crew, I know, I think it's important.

You do see a lot of stuff out there with people saying, oh, the crew, just if they had just done better, But it's just like until you're in that situation, until you really listen to the transcripts and tell you take that step, think about the think about the passengers freaking the f out. I mean that to then try

to to work your way back through the plane. Um, it's actually believed that most of the passengers had gotten out of their seats and had moved to the front of the plane to try and escape the smoke it was coming out from the back wall. So I mean

that it's not good. It's not good. And then you know, on top of that, at the door, I mean, I think you never know as a person how you're going to react in a situation like that, and that includes people who are the crew, you know, And it's possible that it was just one or two members of the crew kind of holding it together, trying to fight back against the one hundred and forty people trying to get there. Yeah, I can't imagine what it's like if you're piloting the plane. Also,

that's why you closed the door. And but but if you're dealing with this whole situation with fire and communicating with the tower and everything where you're going at the same time, suddenly a huge amount of way that's suddenly just shifted to the front of the plane. Yeah, you've got to take care of that. I mean, that's really screw things up. I mean there's yeah, I mean there's

a lot of things that could have been done. You know, maybe perhaps of the passengers just did put perhaps that the crew had put their masks on and they might have been overcome by smoke. Again, this is there we just don't point out. This is total conjecture where we don't know if they did or did not down their mass, whether the passengers did or did not stay in their seats. These are things we just don't know. Note this is the upside of air disasters too, is that we always

learned something from them. I mean, air travel now is so much more safer. And the reason is it's because we spend a ton of money and figuring out what we're wrong. Yeah, well I guess that one. When Dallas build another. Yeah, it's like, thank god, we don't do it with the Titanic though. Yeah. Yeah, alright, Well let's let's get into theories, because there are a huge number of theories. Yeah, some very far fetched and some obscenely logical.

And we're going to start. Actually, I've only seen one that's really totally. Well I've seen too, but that's you know, it's me um. So let's start with the one of the far out ones, because I always like to start with some of the far out I like this, I like this guy's webpage. Yeah, all right, so the first

theory is at the plane with sabotage. We are going to start by talking about a guy named David Mechanic and he spells that with a K. The mechanic is actually a mechanic as opposed to a mechanic or something like that. I'm going to say he's a mechanic. Let's

call it mechanic that like a mechanic mechanic. The mechanic, by his own description, was a weapons engineer, and he said he worked for the South African government in the late eighties and according to him, he was contracted to I love this build a weapon capable of taking out Miggs out of the sky while at the same time making it look like pilot error. Well that's so easy

to do. How do you do that? Lazers? By the way, that if anybody doesn't know a MiG is a fighter jet, Yeah yeah, okay, yeah, no, let me let me keep going with this. So what's interesting is the materials that he needed for a secret weapon. That's my Yeah, this is why I love this one. Normal. He said that he did make the weapon, but he was missing one vital piece and that was plutonium to thirty nine, you know, the same stuff that Doc Brown needed to make the

Dolorean travel through time. Of course, what does the South African government do, But they want their plutonium so they can have their plane killing laser pleaser. They contact their good friends the North Koreans, who of course oblige them with this material have stockpile do and what the North Koreans do is they smuggle it to Taiwan and then it is smuggled on board s a A T nine five in the air quotes here guys of cargo, Yeah,

like computers and stuff. Yeah, I wouldn't be hard. At the same time, well, you know the South African government they also need some other stuff, so they go ahead and decide to throw a little extra fuel for their missiles on at the same time ammonium percolate. They go ahead,

and you save when you bundle things like him. Here's here's where where mechanics story goes even is where ice I say goes pretty far out there is he says, and this is completely according to him, is that somehow the United Nations and the International Monetary Fund, who of course wanted to take down this Africa South African government, figured out what was going on and deciding that well, this would be a great blow against their government and

with off him from getting this stuff. Shoot the plane out of the sky. Yes, I'm leaving the shout out of the sky. They didn't just like leave an inscendi area on board with the timing device on. Somehow they took it out, I I added, shot it out of the sky. There, this is h Well, you know, I mean number one, the U N I mean they're they're

massively incompetence, so they're and they're they're diabolical. Well there's that hugely diabolic Well, and the I AM if you don't necessarily and you know, you wonder why he included the IMF, because you don't necessarily include the IMP with this kind of conspiracy. But if you look at his website, he hates the I m F. Well, after the I m F in parentheses he has the Rothschilds in other words, in other words, it's the Jews once again. Yeah, so word, Yeah,

don't take my word for it. Check his check his website. Yeah, the rothchilds. I looked at his website after reading some of this, and I really did it from afar, like reading the computer from the other side of the room, so I couldn't read it all kind of afar. It was just kind of that. I just kept it that much of a distance. Yeah, yeah, Okay, So I think this is not credible. I think about it is too.

Is the if you're going to make rockets, and the military grade rockets are are uh, they are solid fueled and some some of them, not all of them, do use ammonium percolate. Yes, some of them do use ammonium

percolate as as one part of the fuel. But the South African has actually had plenty of that stuff available bagistically they and we're going to talk about that briefly here here shortly so which you know what, let's go ahead and move into the smuggled board section because this is where it's what got smuggled aboard and we'll just

keep talking about that because that's what's the rocket propellant. Yeah, so this is smuggled the board in the cargo or smuggled the board by a passenger smuggle board in the cargo section is where is? Where is? The way I understood the to be Joey talked about. It's you know, ammonium percolate is a rocket propellant. It's you might have heard of it before. It's the stuff that NASA really likes to use because it gives you your bang for

your buck. They used it a lot on rockets, and it is great for surface to air missiles and surface to air, air to surface and air to air. Yeah, they use them in all those things. Yeah, it's it's a it's a trifecta. Really, it's great stuff. But the thing is, like joe said, they can make it locally. Even today I was. I searched the web and there are companies in South Africa who talk about the fact that they have this stuff readily available on the list somewhere.

I'm totally on the list. So my question is, why in the hell would they bring it in from an outside source that they added domestically. That makes no sense whatsoever, especially on an airplane. I mean something like that you're gonna get in quantity and you're gonna want to bring it in by ship if you're bringing it in at all, Yeah, you're not gonna have palletts worth pallette work doesn't make

any sense. It's not even if it was an entire palette of the stuff, it's still not even even that entire cargo hold full of that stuff is like, it's like it's dumb. That's a dumb way to ship. Yeah, maybe that's not not worth it. Let's okay, So we're gonna move on to what I think is probably my favorite thing that got smuggled on board into the cargo section of Sad Mercury. Yeah. I was actually thinking we

should do an episode on Red Mercury. Yeah, it's that's it's interesting that this Red Mercury is really a thing. It's it's supposed it's not really what I mean, it's really a thing, and that a lot of people believe in it. Let me let me, let me explain. I believe it's the planet. Yeah, anybody who not the planet? Oh what are we talking about? Then? Okay, here's what we're talking about. Smuggle planet onto a cargon. I thought

it was a little on that'sies, okay. Supposedly red mercury is a super potent nuclear material that, by the way, is never quite materialized. Um, it's I'm just gonna quote the Internet on this. I'm just gonna do it. It's a hoax substance of uncertain composition purportedly used in the creation of nuclear bombs as well as a variety of

unrelent unrelated weapons systems. Yeah, so like that's what we get from the aliens, right, Yeah, yeah, I mean actually had the definition of what it can do really varies a lot. It's huge from it is nuclear grade too. It is just a great explosive, like it is all over the map. And what I really love is that the times that people have said they had it, it has been determined that, yeah, it was just reddish colored stuff dirt, food die or something like that, and it

was red powder. You know. It's from all accounts that I can get. It's not real, so, but it is something that you will hear. It was supposedly in the cargo hold of the plane. Yeah, I don't know, because you know, it's just a little too pad. I think it does exist, just kidding. Coming soon Joe's episode on Red Mercury. Well, now, did you see the Star Trek reboots, which one the first one where where they did the whole reboot and everything and Spot goes back and the

spot ship is powered by some red thing. Yeah, that that that red stuff that he's going to drop into the sun to save, to save the planet and everything, and it doesn't Maybe it was that stuff. Maybe, I don't know, probably much too much TV Joe, that's a movie. Okay, let's let's keep going. The next thing that we have on the list of what was in the cargo hold um and was smuggled on board is active carbon or chark hole like activated charcoal. Yeah, like activated or active active.

I thought it was activated well, activated charcoal like you take as a supplement to like calm your stomach. So I am guessing not that, Probably not that, but it's anyway, it's a version of it's carbon. It's a very porous substance that when it catches fire, it catches fire very well. It's a really good accelerate and it burns hot and fast. Uh.

This stuff is important. It has a little bit of credence because if it was in pr and it is this three hundred what the heck did I Oh, it's it's three grams of this stuff by the way is what they say was on there it different places on the internet, mostly probably all stemming from one location that it did not track down the initial source of this. But theory, and and this is the thing, is that something like this I think, you know, you apply a

flame to it, then yeah, it'll catch fire. Flames have to come from somewhere, absolutely right. And that's that's the thing about about the whole thing about the low volume or the high surface to volume ratio is that does make from more flammability, which is why you're not allowed to smoke cigarettes and like say grain silos, because there's so much dust in the air, you can actually causing catch the dust on fire. But there's a flame. But

there has to be a flame, yea or right. So that's that is a kind of a big red X on this one because we don't know what caught it

on fire. It's just that this theory holds that basically something caught fire, and then this stuff caught on fire because of it and because of the high surface area, burned quite hot and quite fast, and that's where everything came from from there, Why that was packed in with a bunch of computers, I have no idea why somebody was standing next to it smoking a cigarette or something, and now they're another mystery. I believe that at that time it was still legal to smoke on airplanes, But yeah,

I totally was. You would think, I mean, you'd be strategic in your packing too at that point too. Right, if you have something that's super volatile and like really slim, well you stick it below in the cargo area. You don't stick it above where a passenger might accidentally maybe possibly want er into, right, You would would you would think I couldn't just wander into the cargo hold that

crew knew how to get in there. But I'm just I'm just just because you said it could be a passenger back there smoking there, I mean they couldn't just the door. It's not just a door. There was webbing and stuff. I'm pretty sure it was locked. You couldn't just wander in there. Well, it was locked. You know, nobody can never get through a locked door. Let's never

get unlocked on accident or anything. Never. I just had this metal picture of one of the crew going back there and smoking a cigarette, and I just like flicking a cigarette off into the corner of the cargo hold and heading back after the cockpit. Oh God, that lady in three B. She keeps hitting the stewardess button. Okay, let's move on from there. We're going to move to the next thing that might have been in the cargo hold,

and that is fireworks. Okay. Fireworks, says we all know, are very combustible, and they're very They're unstable, like there's dune powder in there something, which is why you're not supposed to take them on airplanes because they can catch fire quite rapidly. It could be as simple as it was. I've seen it as places as let's say it was just sparklers. So let's say it was bundle, a bundle of sparklers together sitting in the back of a plane.

And if they're stacked, they're like logs stacked on top of each other. The vibration over hours is going to create friction, which is going to create heat, which could eventually set one of them off. Is that a real thing? Is that? Is there? Asked the same question, Is there any documented instance that has ever happened? There's not. There's not, because this is the only rational way that I can come up with that a firework could have caused it was the fire in the back of this plane. Yeah,

because I mean those things are actually pretty stable. I mean it's it's you actually have to take a flame to them. Well, but even then nine and a half hours of vibrations, it could happen. Think about it, is that sparkler should transport at all around the country and trucks and planes and everything like that, and as far as I know, they don't, they don't self ignite. They're well, I mean imagine I wish everybody could see the look I just gave Steve, because they was good. Yeah, I'm

having a hard time buying this. But you are you are you going to cover the rocket theory? Well, well go for it. Well yeah, I mean they're there are people saying that it wasn't just ammonium percolate or whatever it was like, or just rocket fuel. It was actually complete rockets like air to air missiles, air to surface missiles, because I would those still have just like randomly exploded, I mean, wouldn't been noted by the surprise inspection. Well

unless they were. I mean, imagine what you have crates of these things and then and then what you've done as you've glued computers to the outside of the crate and then wrapped it all in like plastic. I can see Joe's Joe right now is is going through his head o case. So I've used the hot glue gun and I've glued this computer to that computer to make wall like their hot glue gun together. Is that how

this goes? I mean, I'm not mocking you trying to understand, and I mean it's it's just that that that theory has been put out there is that they were completed weapons on board, that they were actually rockets on board. Again, they were smuggling again and again it makes no sense because you would want to smuggle those by ship, not by not by aircraft. And they had the ability to manufacture this stuff on their own. Yeah, they totally did.

They did manufacture that stuff. Yeah, I'm not just not just to feel, but the rockets themselves actually seven they put in service on a nifty little laser guy at the anti anti tank rocket. And so the South African has had a pretty good munitions industry that they even had nuclear capability of one points. So yeah, they had that reported. They had six devices before they gave up control of the country. They dismantled them. But yeah, but but the point is, would you fly a pallate of

missiles if you could make them yourself. Well, it's a matter of actually they were importing stuff. I mean, some of the missiles that they use they imported from France, Israel, the US at least before the embargo, probably after the embargo to stealthily, stealthily, you know, they probably could do that. But again, number one, you'd want to bring them in by different means because you don't want to import those things two or three at a time. And six yeah,

just cost yeah yeah, And and the other thing. The other thing is as if again, if it was a rocket, liquid or excuse me, solid fuel, rockets are very stable. You need to actually ignite those things. Yeah, that's why we put them on ships and float them around everywhere, because we know they're not just going to randomly go on Like we throw them in planes that are going to like be flying for lots and lots of hours.

And because as we know, they're not going to just I mean even if the vibration theory with the smart pers or whatever, I mean that they are made to go on things that vibrate for lots and lots of hours under extreme force like that should be totally normally should be stable enough to withstand that. And also, by the way, if it wants to solid fuel rocket goes off. Once it starts going, it can't be shut down. It just burns until all the fuel is gone and putting

out losses rust. And by the way, I like, from what I might understand, the temperature of the flames and these things is like between four thousand degrees fahrenheit, and so the entire every the context of the entire hold would have been on fire. Yeah, everything, all of the metal would have been, the whole thing melted into a funny there's a giant and hole in the metal decking of this play. I'm more interested in a little little hot spot on the pus. Yeah, it's so I think

we can eliminate the rockets created weapons. Okay, but you know another theory. This theory seems a little more plausible. Oh you're talking about the wire yeah, yeah, the faulty wire wing yeah, and the flammable installation. Yeah. Okay, let's let's talk about this theory. Because I actually have to to give credit to a guy. His name is Mark D. Young for putting all the pieces together for this. He broke up a pretty good article on it. Yeah, I

read that and I thought it was really compelling. It's uh yeah and completely convincing. Yeah, he really does. He really does a good job. This guy seems to actually know what he's talking about. He really does. In a nutshell. Here's how this theory works is in the seventies and eighties, there was a thin type of wiring that was being used the most passenger airlines and it was known as m I L DASH W DASH eight one three eight one,

the clever name. Yes, yeah, it's totally easy. Yeah. In the industry, it was referred to as captain k A P T O N. I'm gonna call it capta on uh. And it was thought to be extremely durable. But it turns out that after several years, the rubber plastic coating it's a polytomide, that's what it is, it was found to crack really easily. And um, okay, what's the word. It's it's frequently, isn't the word? There is? Tons and tons and tons of cracking like crazy. Yes, that's what

that's the word that I'm looking for. It would it would be coated in cracks. I don't know. I gotta be honest with you. I don't think I knew what crazing meant. So oh it's you know, like when you see porcelain and stuff like that. So all the spiderweb fine fine layers and layers of fine cracks would call prolifically well, those crap unfortunately weren't very apparent because the wires are so small. Yeah, the wire itself, you need to understand, is about as thick as several strands of

human hair. So it's a really really thin wire within the coating on top. So it's hard to tell if it's cracked. And that's a bad thing because it was discovered that when the insulation that that coating on the wire would crack and it was exposed to a damp or a human environment like say the inside of a plane after nine and a half hours with nearly a hundred and sixty people breathing moisture out um, it would, uh what is called wet arcing would happen. Although I

have to say an airplane is not it's superhuman. I don't think of it as a human environment, but it is damp. I mean, I've been on airplanes where you can see condensation on the inside of the glass on your window. Don't know what was going on back in the back in the hold. I don't know if the

hold was heated or not. Well, if it was, if it was not pressurized, it was probably cooler, so there was probably it was going It would be cooler back there because remember it's lower pressure, so it would be a lower pressure, so things would accumulate back there. Yeah, I would be. I can picture some condensation going on back there. So let me you know. Actually, I'm not good enough at the science to explain this, so I cheated and I found somebody from Harvard. This is totally

This is totally from Harvard. Joe, can you read this? Actually, you you sound like Harvard guy smart pants with the German accent. I would just like you to use your regular voice. Okay, al right, okay. Quote. Electrical wet wire art tracking is a phenomenon that has been known for many years. This can occur when leakage currents on a wet installation surface are great enough to vaporize and moisture, resulting in the formation of dry spots. These dry spots

offer a high amount of resistance to current flow. In turn and induced voltage will develop across these spots and result in the occurrence of small surface discharges. These discharges produced highly localized temperatures on the order of one thousand degrees celsius slashes fahrenheit, which is kind of hot. Yeah, okay, back to the quote. Temperatures of this magnitude will cause thermal degradation of the insulation material, the nature of which

depends on the insulation of material used. Unquote simple version. What arcing is very bad. It creates extremely hot spots when it happens, which when combined with flammable material, is a huge problem, especially when it's on an airplane. And here's something else that folks need to know is again, in the seventies and eighties, there was an insulation being used on airplanes. It was called it's metalized my lar, which really looks like fiberglass installation wrapped in tinfoil milars.

Just it's like what you see balloons. Yeah, exactly. Well, it turns out that they thought that this stuff was extremely fire resistant, and when it's exposed to an instantly obscenely hot point of contact, it's totally, totally flammable. Yeah, it's like a lower lower temperatures. Yeah, it didn't catch fire at all. Yeah, it turns out that. Yeah, you throw something that is blistering hot next to it and the thing goes up like a piece of paper something

that's centigrade. But in fairness, most things will catch fire at a thousand degrees c that's true, which is why it is hard to find, and that's why they had to find stuff that wasn't And unfortunately, for a decade or two they were packing airplanes with this stuff, thinking that it was resistant to fires, when in fact it was, well, it was resistant to most normal fire. Yeah it was, Joe said. Some idiot flicked his cigarette into the corner

and it caught the carpet on fire. The insulation probably wouldn't have burnt. And unfairness, you got it was much much better than the stuff that was made out of ammonium percolate that it replaced. Yeah, that thing. But okay, back to here, do you remember pr the palette that

is in question that the flame would supposedly have taken place. Yes, Well, according to the work that Mark Young has done, he has figured out that there was a main wiring path that ran above pr and that wiring path used this wire that the captain wiring, and it was also underneath or directly on top of insulation. So if wet arcing took place, it would have caught that insulation on fire.

That insulation would have eventually burned enough to fall on top of the palette, which would have kept the fire above the deck of the plane, which would explain you know, it's that super hot, that slag is going to happen in that super high temperature, and then the fire is going to continue to burn upwards. Right there. It really kind of nicely bundles up a bunch of the evidence we have for whearing what the fire did, particularly if

it started burning down a little bit. If it's starting to burn into those plastics, the fumes that are coming off of that. You know then you've ever thrown plastic into like a campfire or whatever, Yeah, and it gets like really really smoky and like you start so you know, if that's starting to burn like a little bit, it's going to really complicate things a lot. So yeah, that's a good put some toxic fumes into the rest of

the plane. The other thing, but the thing about the one thing I wanted to mention too, is it you look at if you look at his his website that has he his arguments on it, he has he has drawings of exactly where that wiring course was precisely corresponds to the place where all he does it does and no, nobody has officially reinvestigated it, but he makes a really

good argument. Is argument also does explain something else which is on the voice data recorder they talk about the crew talks about to the tower, the fact that they're having problems with their electronics. Well, if their main wiring path is on fire, that's going to screw up the electronics. So it totally totally makes sense. Yeah, they were. They

were like circuit breakers were popping. Yeah, then that sound got picked up on the cockpit voice recording he did, and I can just see that as as wires melted together, and you know, you got shorts and you're going to make parts and shorts and things, and circuit breakers are going to do what they're They're gonna start snapping and you can't turn them back on. It's not like your house where you blow a fuse and you just go turn it back on. It doesn't work. Like that on

the plane because the wire is gone completely gone. It makes me wonder if whether they would have you even been able to land the plane, even if the crew had survived in the plane to remain remained intact, what they've been able to get the landing year down for? Yeah, you know, that's a that's a really good question, because there is Joe. You may remember the exact wording for this,

but I can't. Is that planes would there used to be fly by wire where all the controls were done by wire and then you know, like cables, and then I can't remember what it is when it's done by electronics. But those big planes are not fly by wire. They are totally done by electrical signals turning everything on and on. Yeah, I'm not so. I think that they may not have been. The best they probably could have done was actually bellied

down on the runway. If they've been able to come in, well, I mean, felly down is better than like torpedoed into the water, that's true. I mean I'm saying to ask your question, could they even got the landing gear down? Probably not. I don't think they You know, if you're actually if you work for an airline and you're on some long haul thing and you're listening to us to your earbuds where you're too along over the Pacific to

give us a call. But I'm thinking that there has to be some sort of manual hydraulic backup, but lowering the landing gears and operating the controls. There has to be, you know, it would be insane to do anything else. As again, this always happens to us. We've all thought about this, but none of us took the time to look because it was the last minute thought. I didn't until just now. That's what I'm saying. My hand I kind of new and this is too much googling for

me to do on the fly. It's not like looking up like what's a galleon? Oh it's Harry Potter thing. Yeah it's not the thing. Yeah, I'll call Bowing tomorrow and find out. All right, green one, I believe you will. Let's move to our last theory, because we believe it or not, we're, you know, way into this, and we still got one more theory. Yeah, said this was going to be a short one. No, no, no, you saw the script. I've been writting bigger and bigger scripts. I'm

working on a book, I know. Yeah, really that we might actually come out with that thinking sideways book. Yeah no, because we get sued because it's full of copy paste, wouldn't that? Now Wikipedia is gonna sue us. Let's move on, though, to our next one, which our next theory is based on chemical oxygen generators. And we've talked about this a little bit in the very beginning. We threw it around, though we didn't explain what was going on. So let

me explain what we're talking about here. You've been on a plane, you've seen the steward or steward is. Explain how the oxygen mask drop, and then you're supposed to put your own mask on before you assist the elderly or children. Well, I foolishly, for a long long time, just presumed that there was some giant canna stir of air on the plane that piped into those little rubber tubes.

Absolutely not true, because it turns out a giant tank of air is stupidly heavy and you just can't be packing that around that That costs way too much fuel to lift up and down all the time when a plane flies. So instead, what they do is they generate oxygen in a chemical fashion. Uh, and there's a chemical way to store it, and there's a bunch of Evidently I had to read the science eight hundred times and

I'm still not positive how this works. But there's potassium chlorate and sodium chlorate are rich in oxygen, and when put under the right um circumstances or pressure situations, they will give up oxygen, much like a sponge wood that

was full of water. If you s ease it, they just give off oxygen, which is pure, which is great when you want to pump it out to people because it is in a small pellet or cylinder form, so it's something that's very small and very light, and it just takes either a chemical reaction or a friction reaction to make this stuff activate. It doesn't actually burn so much. It's more of a decomposition degradation of the material, but that's what puts out all the oxygen. But that process

does generate a bunch of heat. It's like, yeah, it's like, well, actually even burning, that's that's basically if you burn a piece of wood, that's oxidation. Yeah, And that's yeah, it's it's what it is. You're breaking this material down and one of its main by products turns out to be O two and the other byproducts lots of heat. Lots of heat. So the O two will go into your little mask and it's super lightweight and it's easy to transport and you get to breathe if your oxy your

mask comes down, Yes you Okay, not Joe. Joe didn't put on his mask because we've heard him talking me either, because I keep gabbing on but um. But the point is they're very light, but they do generate a bunch of heat. The problem with them is that they can, and they have in the past ignited things that were near them. They generate that much heat in their their degradation process. Uh, there's a there's a what is it's it's value jet flight five nine two. This was it

crashed ten minutes after takeoff. And what they figured out was that there were chemical action generators that were in were loaded on the plane. They were they were loaded in the cargo hold and improperly stowed, and they shouldn't have been there in the first place, and so they went off and they generated a boatload of heat, which caused the plane to catch on fire and go down. Almost immediately as whereas on our on our they would

have all been stowed in the correct places. It's not like they were they weren't halling a cargo of these things. But if this plane is meant to potentially have passengers in the area where the cargo is, that means there had to have been some kind of oxygen delivery system back there. It would have been, you know, in the ceiling cavity somewhere, because that's where the chemical action generator

I presume would have been stored. I may be wrong on that, but all I can think what this theory is going for is that either the oxygen generator was ignited improperly through you know, friction can ignite them. That is one of the method that's used to ignite them. Friction could have set it off which created all that heat and oh, by the way, it's spewing oxygen out onto the fire is created, which would make it burn super hot. Or the oxygen generator went off if it's

not in that ceiling area. Again, I don't know where they are on the seven four seven, but the oxygen would have been in that overhead compartment because that's where it has to drop out. Of which means that there would have been a massive amount of pure o two next to what anything that could have caught on fire that then would subsequently burn obscenely fast and hot. I'm not pictures of the insides of these holes, and I haven't seen anything that even resembles an oxygen breathing apparatus

in there. See. That was the thing, is that I know that the you know when you look at your plane, you know there's the overhead um what is the overhead thing where you put your bags? Yeah, you know where the guy with the giant wheelie bags is a huge bag that should have never been in the the You can tell we've all traveled by area. Yes, yes, I have that jack beat you know, and then try and

so those overhead bins wouldn't be there. But the if the overhead bins were to be returned for seating, there has to be somewhere that the oxygen mass setup is plugged into. Would you agree with that? So somewhere in there that system has to be, which is where this whole thing is saying that. Well, then that it's spewing that purou to, which is then feeding the fire. I don't I don't put a whole lot of creedence in this particular one. I think that it's a bit of

a stretch. I think that it's very interesting and it's really interest thing because of the fact that we do know that the chemical oxen generators caused planes to go down in the past. They have. But yeah, is it a perfect fit. No, but it kind of better than than red mercury. Oh yeah. I think the faulty wiring

is probably the culprit in this case. And I think that marketing is correct and that the the investigation should be reopened because it's time to put a lot of these rumors to rest because there's he I like his theory the best simply because it ties things together so well, yeah, it really does, and he may be wrong, but he has done the best job of making a complete package out of it. Oh yeah, it's absolutely every everything makes sense.

It makes a complete sense, which is compelling to the oxygen apparatus really still doesn't quite make sense, because you know, how did it get started? You know again we got we're back to that. Yeah, we're back to that is the That's a big question for a lot of us, is I mean, everything is how did this fire start and the only one who's who has come up with a very plausible way for the fireston. Yeah. Yeah, and

it totally makes sense. Yeah, um, I do want to that's, by the way, the end of all of our theories. But there is just one little bit I want to add at the end here. This is very simple, Devon. We're almost done. Stop googling. You're googling, right, you're not tweeting. The findings of this investigation did change a lot of things in the airline industry. Better fire suppression systems were introduced.

They became a requirement and were introduced, and that of course added weight to planes, which made the comedy completely and totally obsolete. It went the way of the Dodo. You either have people on board or you don't. That's the way it happens now, which makes the most sense. I'm most comfortable with that. Yeah, although you know, it's really interesting. I was I just found out today. Is one of the major um FedEx or not you maybe

it was UPS. I can't remember which one Brown whichever one it is, Okay, one of those and I don't remember which one it is, but one of those major companies that you know will fly packages back and forth cross the country, you know, same day air kind of stuff. There's actually a contract with the US government. All of their planes are set up to have the ability on that main deck like a regular airplane would that we would commercially fly to have seats plugged into them so

that they can turn into troop transports. But that's different. Well no, it's just but this is a very interesting site. But yeah, it is interesting that they But but the comedy, the comedy went away. Let's speaking of great adaptations and planes. By the way, did I ever tell you about the Boeing actually came up with a concept for the seven forty seven as a cruise missile launcher. No, I'm serious, really really surprising that much. Really, yeah, it shouldn't, but

it does. They did. They had they had a whole system set up, They had it all worked out. I mean, it wasn't It wasn't like they weren't ready to build

a prototype. It was basically kind of a concept thing when they had drawings and stuff, and basically on the starboard side, at the aft part of the plane, there was going to be a door, a door a report that would open the side and on the inside they would have cruise missiles stowed on basically a rack that was kind of like a carousel that would move around, so it was kind of automn it was basically automated, and then they would they would move back to that

that spot door would open. Obviously, this is this would probably usually be done at the lower altitudes where they could fly depressure out and then cruise missiles would basically be ejected out the side of the plane back there and then they would you know, light off and take off and build destroy things. And so this whole idea and that you could I don't know how many cruise missiles you could pack on with seven forty seven, but

I bet it's a hell of a lot. Yeah, yeah, I personally don't think there's many pilots who would want to fly that plane based on the fact that it's that many cruise misses in the plane. Hey, what the hell? You know? I think a lot of plot but I and I personally I think the U. S. Guvernment should have taken them up on it, because basically it would have been a real cheap alternative to a lot of the stuff that we have, and and it really probably would have done the job just fine. But it's an

honestly got true story. And if I can find the link, I will, I'll give it to book. I'll put on our Facebook so you guys can read about that little project. Awesome. Yeah, Well, since we're talking about Facebook and we're at the stand of the story, let's give everybody all of our linky links here. Our social media for Facebook, we have, of course the Facebook page and the Facebook group, so like the page, joined the group, a bunch of activity there.

We are, of course on Twitter, so we are Thinking Sideways to drop the g in the middle. We tweet semi regularly at I tweet things I find on imger. Uh that what's going on with the Twitter account? Maybe? Okay? No, we have our website. That website is Thinking Sideways podcast dot com, where of course you can stream or download this or any other episode. The links to some of our research will be on there on the website for you to to kind of review for yourself, start the

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that we've got on our website. We have a link to merch so there's merchandise that you can get if you want that there is. If you want to contribute to the show financially, you're more than welcome to and we do appreciate that. We've got the PayPal button on our website or we do use Patreon, so patreon dot com slash Thinking Sideways Patreon is more of a continual basis. Go on Patreon. We've got a video that explains it. It's totally optional. Guys. Again, we say this every week,

but we appreciate it. We love it. But we are doing it because we like it and if you want to do it, we appreciate that. That's great. I think that's all the housekeeping. You anything else do you guys want to add to this particular episode now, short circuit, that's all. I don't care. Electrical, that's not true. Yeah. I think it was conspiracy, but that's you know, that's a great thing. All right, Well, I'm going to take off. I think it was squirrels. Squirrels in the fuselage. Yeah,

they nibbled on the law I ring. Next thing. You know, it's all things called go to hell next week. So embarrassed right now,