From the Vault: Greek Fire

of war. Yeah, it's a super weapon, terror weapon, shock weapon. Uh. And it's a fascinating episode because it's it gets into the power of secrets and the danger of secrets. And this one also has a fun dramatic reading at the top by Anie Reese of Savor and Stuff. Mom, I never told you, that's right. If you haven't checked out Savor yet, that's any and Lawrence Podcast, a relaunch of the food Stuff brand. You should check that out. It's great. Yeah,

they definitely. I don't think they're gonna cover Greek Fire. They'll probably cover Greek cuisine if they haven't already, But Greek Fire that's is probably gonna remain just on this show if Greek feta is more your thing. But oh yeah, yeah, so this will be Greek fire. We hope you enjoy. Emperor Alexios ordered ships to be furnished by all the

countries under the Roman sway. He had a number built in the capital itself, and would at intervals go around and instruct the shipwrights how to make them, as he knew that the pieces were skilled in sea warfare and

dreaded a battle with them. On the power of each ship, he had a head fixed of a lion or other land animal, made in brass or iron, with the mouth open and then gilded over, so that their mere aspect was terrified, and the fire which was to be directed against the enemy through tubes he made to pass through the mouths of the beast, so that it seemed as if the lions and the other similar monsters were vomiting

the fire. Then the man called Count aim On very boldly attacked the largest vessel at the stern, but got entangled in its rudders, and as he could not free himself easily, he would have been taken had he not with great presence of mind had recourse to his machine and put fire upon the enemy very successfully. Then he quickly turned his ship round and set fire on the

spot to three more of the largest barbarian ships. At the same moment, a squall of wind suddenly struck the sea and churned it up and dashed ships together, and almost threatened to sink them. For the ways roared at the yard, arms creaked, and the sails were split. The barbarians now became thoroughly alarmed, firstly because of the fire directed upon them, for they were not accustomed to that kind of machine, nor to a fire which naturally flames upwards.

But then this case was directed in whatever direction the sender desired, often downwards are laterally. And secondly, they were very much upset by the storm, and consequently they fled. That's's what the barbarians did. Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from How Stuff Works dot com. Hey you welcome to stuff to blow your mind. My name is Robert Lamb, and I'm Joe McCormick. And those were the words of eleventh and twelfth century Byzantine Princess Anna Comnena

from her book The Alexiad. And we we only tweaked it slightly for performance purposes here and it was brought to life by Annie Reese, one of the hosts of food Stuff. Food Stuff is another podcast here in the house, Stuff Works Family. It is about all things edible and potable. That's right. I don't I don't know that they've done anything on Greek food or Byzantine food. But just if if you can can't tell from that that lovely introduction, we are going to be talking about the Byzantine Empire.

We're going to be talking about a secret weapon of the Byzantine's, a weapon so secret that we're not even really sure what it consisted of in detail. Today we're talking about Greek fire, the nuclear bomb of the Middle Ages. Yeah, I mean really, it was ahead of its time. It was like napalm in the Middle Ages. It was like a flamethrower in the Middle Ages. Right, So we want to explore all the ins and outs of this ancient secret super weapon. I don't know, does it qualify a

super weapon. It's kind of small scale, but it's in terms of power and awe at the time, you could maybe consider it a super I would think, so, I mean, it was a it was a super weapon that definitely inspired terror and was extremely effective in particular situations. As is the case with a lot of a shock and awe weaponry, you know, it can't win. It's not gonna

win a battle on its own. In the same way that you know, a tank is pretty great, but a tank needs infantry support if it's going to be effective. That's sort of thing, right. So to explore the world of Greek fire, all the science, all of the speculation about what it was, how it worked, how it came to be, we've got to first give you the setting. So what was the Byzantine Empire and where was Byzantium? All right, so we're basically talking about the region of

the southern Balkans and Asia minor modern day Turkey. Yeah, rought modern day Turkey and part of Greece. But in the middle of the sixth century, this was an empire that that stretched out all the way across the North African coastal region from the Atlantic to Egypt, along with southern parts of Spain and Italy. U Now, to give you a sort of a timeline of this of this empire, in three twenty four, Constantine, the Emperor Constantine moved the

capital of the Roman Empire itself to Byzantium. And of course we know Constantine was the first Roman emperor to claim to have converted to Christianity. Yes, so that's key. So it's you know, Roman Christian Christianity here, the Holy Roman Empire. Now this went for this is a successful empire for quite a spell. Here. It wasn't until fourteen fifty three that Constantinople, the capital, fell to the Ottoman Empire and afterwards, of course became Istanbul. Yeah, as the

of the Animaediac song, we're illustrate for us. So all in all, this is an empire with one thousand, one nine year history. Yeah, though its borders changed a lot over the centuries, and during its final years the Byzantine Empire was reduced to a relatively minor state around the Constantinople area. But it's strange to realize that in some form, the Roman Empire didn't actually end before the Middle Ages. And I usually think of when did the Roman Empire end?

I think of the western Roman Empire around the city of Roman, which of course you know fell and that that's ushers in what historians generally have thought of as the Middle ages in Europe, you know, around the middle of the first millennium. But if you consider or the eastern part of the Roman Empire, the Roman Empire, which it certainly did consider itself the Roman Empire, the Roman Empire in some form lasted until the Renaissance in Europe, which is a just a bizarre thing to consider. It

just doesn't mesh with my normal view of history. Yeah, yeah, I think that's important to note. Uh. Likewise, I often fall into the trap of sort of thinking of the Byzantine Empire and thinking of it like sort of vaguely as a much smaller and briefer affair than it actually was. Now it's worth It's also important to note here that nobody actually called it the Byzantine Empire during its time. You only called inhabitants of Constantinople or a couple of

other areas Byzantines. Now the subjects of the emperor themselves that they called themselves Romans, uh Constantine. The first, as we mentioned, was the Fruit was the first Christian ruler of the Roman Empire at least took on that mantle, uh He and he moved the capital to Constantinople, and as such they were the Christian Roman Empire and the western remnants of the Roman Empire proper they fell into

barbarians successor kingdoms. So we mentioned that the Byzantine Empire had, you know, over a thousand year history, and during this time it was pretty much constantly at war in some form or another. It was constantly challenged by its neighbors. In the east, you had first the Persian Empire and then various Islamic powers later on. And to the north there were the Slavs and the Turkish Avars. There were

the Bulgars, the Hungarians, the Serbs, and finally the Ottoman Turks. Um. I know, it seems kind of weird that you would put them with the north, but like that was sort of the shape of of of geographically of the territory at the time. So and and then likewise, in the west they were constantly engaging in these tent struggles with Greek city straight states and other Roman remnants, often with complications from papal politics. Yeah, and some of those complications

get very complicated. Like one of the things a lot of people don't real lies about some of the Crusades is that, yes, the Crusades were waged by European Christians often against Muslims and Jews, but they also sometimes fought the Byzantine Christians. Yeah, I mean, there's the whole tail during the Crusades of the essentially the sacking of Constantinople by the Christian crusaders. Yeah. For usually for complicated, petty

political reasons. But you know, they survived all this time, and one of and one of the reasons was that they were essentially still the Roman empire and spirit. They were well organized, they boasted strong fiscal and military systems, again testaments to their Roman history. And of course they had a secret weapon. There's nothing better than a secret weapon there. Really, we were talking about this earlier there. How many secret weapons can you really think of, even

in the modern age? Well, I mean you can definitely. The modern parallel that comes to mind is the race for the atom bomb during the World War two era. It's it's a thing where if you go back and read it at the time, even if you you know, don't think that the atom bomb was a good thing for humanity to have discovered, I mean we probably might.

A lot of us agree that the world would be better if nuclear weapons didn't exist, though some people might argue otherwise, some people might say that it's a really useful deterrent against more large scale conventional war, but it's a scary time. It's like trying to imagine what would the world have been like if the Nazis had gotten

the atomic bomb first, or other scenarios along those lines. Yeah, yeah, I think that the atomic bomb, along with the various biological and chemical weapons are are probably the best analogy we have. But then to think of this in the Middle Ages too, to extrapolate similar circumstances regarding state secrets and weapons systems, uh, it's it's kind of mind bockling

right now. Greek fire is certainly much smaller in applied scale than a large scale bomb like in comic weapon in the twentieth century, but it may be no less terrifying in the way that it's represented in legend. Oh yes, yeah, because we're talking about essentially when we'll get into the details here, and you already had an example from the intro.

We're talking about ships spewing liquid fire like essentially spewing napalm onto enemy vessels, onto the water itself, causing the water to burn and then of course to burn ships which are generally highly flammable, as well as the individuals aboard. You would I would think, certainly think twice about approaching one of these Byzantine vessels, especially if it had a visible,

uh you know, animal head on the front. But you can also think about it from the from the individual sailor's perspective, like the terror that would be inflicted on them, because if you so you imagine a naval battle and you are approaching a ship that is spewing fire, it is probably the case that because you're a medieval sailor, you don't know how to swim, and you might be far from shore, and so you were facing two possible fates either burning alive or jumping overboard and drowning. And

even if you could swim, the water is now on fire. Yeah, so that's it's not like you have a great option there either. Now we know there have been all kinds

of thermal and incendiary weapons used throughout history. Fire plays a big role in more fair going back to prehistoric times, uh, you know, just like burning and raising villages, Like a common way of siege tactics before siege engines were invented would be to just set fire to crops and villages surrounding a besieged castle or fortification to essentially draw them out, to say like, we're gonna torch everything you have if you don't come out to fight us. What kind of

goes back to our episode on fire. Fire is is the basic, you know, the basic aspect of human technology. So as long as we've had it, we've used it for to kill each other and to keep each other alive, right, and so it's it's quite clear and quite easy to see why it's a useful tool in war. Also, it has that kind of scary element because it's not just a directed weapon like an arrow or a sword. It

has a life of its own. You release fire into the wild and it can sort of carry on with its own business without completely unaided by your continued efforts. But I want to know when's the first time we saw this specific version of incendiary weapon reuse? What when does Greek fire itself first come on the scene. Well,

I'm glad you asked, Joe. It was the year six eight, and uh in Constantinople was in a kind of a tight spot, right, And so going forward from this point, I just want to acknowledge one of our main sources. It is a really interesting paper back from in the journal Technology and Culture by Alex Rowland called Secrecy, Technology and War, Greek Fire and the Defensive Byzantium six to twelve o four. So a lot of our information going forward is going to be coming from here, but we'll

mention a few other sources also. So at Constantinople, we're under siege. What'spenning? Okay? So the caliph Mawejia has dispatched his fleet for the fifth consecutive time, and he's taken the peninsula of sizy Couse and here just south of the Byzantine capital. Uh, the entire Arab naval forces here, they've converged with the army and they're going to march on Constantinople and besiege it. Okay, So we have the Arab forces moving in and Constantinople, how's it going to

defend itself? Well, I mean, luckily, it is a it is a very defensible city at the time they have, so they have a lot of a lot of stuff going for them. But that this is thing about being besieged is that it is a a long term affair. Usually it's about a steady strangling of the city of the nation even but being a coastal city, Constantinople has a lot of a lot of its power and resources in its ability to travel the seas. Right, So if you've got a fleet coming in to attack your ability

to travel the seas, that's no good, that's right. So they luckily Constantinople had a strong navy and pretty much had a strong imperial navy at least isolated to Constantinople for the you know, the duration of the empire. But what they needed, though, was it was a particular weapon. They needed something that would really give them a strong advantage, an advantage the likes of which we we we we heard in the intro to this episode, and that's where

a particular individual comes into play. Kalinkas. Yes, the stories tell us that Kalinkas was a Syrian architect and engineer from the town known at the time as Heliopolis of Syria, and he arrived in Constantinople as a refugee after he had been driven out of his homeland, so he'd recently escaped the Arab conquest of Syria. He brought his military ideas and inventions with him to the Byzantines, and essentially he showed up on their doorsteps and offered them the

science of napalm. Really with what it breaks down to, how do you imagine that scene breaking down? Like he knocks on the city walls and says, I have a flamethrower. Yeah, I mean, I guess you had. He had to make a case for it, like, hey, I've got some ideas. They're they're really explosive. You're gonna love them for Maybe there was a posting, hey, we have an opening for a you know, a weapons engineer, a chemical engineer to help us with our weapons systems for this upcoming siege.

What does a medieval weapons pitch meeting look like. I don't know, but I'm I guess it's you know, it's like an audience with the king or or dignitaries, and then you know he's probably showing them some plans or something. However, he ended up pitching it. It was accepted. In fact, it was even referred to as clinicals fire, as well as Roman fire, marine fire, liquid fire, artificial fire, and

of course Greek fire. Now it probably wasn't referred to as Greek fire at the time by the Byzantines because

they didn't even think of themselves as Greeks. I think that name, that appellation came late or from Western Europeans, right, like Crusaders would encounter this or something like it, and because they were going east when they saw it, they referred to it as Greek fire, right, And then the name that name, in particular Greek fire ends up being applied to various things that might not have been the same Greek fire weapons system, or might have been just

something just you know, remotely similar, like maybe it just involved flaming oils of some sort. Yeah, I've got to comment on that actually. So, according to Kelly Dvrees and Robert Douglas Smith in their book Medieval Military Technology from University of Toronto Press, in basically there were many different types of weapons referred to as Greek fire and the extant literature throughout the Middle Ages, so there were they

separated into three main categories. You've got liquid fire pumped out through a nozzle, and then a liquid incendiary weapon that's hurled in small ceramic grenades. And then you've got later solid incendiaries that used explosive so that'd be something more like gunpowder for the purposes of today's discussion, we're focusing primarily on that original Byzantine marine fire, which is what Anna Cumnina was describing. It's a liquid jet of flame that vomited out of a nozzle on the ends

of ships. And for for the purposes of simplicity, we could also call it Kalina costs fire, because that specifies that it's what was used in the eighth century by the Byzantines in their ships. These flamethrowers coming out the prow of the of the Byzantine warships. Now, in the case of this initial rollout of Greek fire, uh it turned was able to help turn the tide. According to the accounts, they're able to drive back the invaders, and the remnants of the air of fleet were then subsequently

lost in a mighty storm. And when the forces again attempted the investiture of Constantinople and seven seventeen, the Byzantines again used the Greek fire, and this time they apparently had a an improved formula, and the invaders were driven off once again. And and this is a kind of a key historic moment. By the way, some historians rank it only under Charles Martel's victories over Islamic invaders in southern France during the seven thirties is a key stop

point for Muslim expansion into Europe. So it's simply one of those moments in time where it's hard to imagine a timeline forking off in an alternate direction. Yeah. I always love those things in history, like those key moments where I've never heard of like an alternate history that explores what would have happened if things have gone the other way. But I want to read that book. Maybe it's out there, yeah, yeah, and maybe maybe HBO will

adapt it. It sounds equally problematic to to have like a modern series showing what a you know, what a predominantly Islamic at least, you know, at least Eastern Europe would have looked like, you know, it's just a it's fascinating to try and try and picture how that would have come together in an alternate timeline. But we should focus on the technology itself, because that's the core of today.

What was Greek fire? Yeah, I mean, as you might imagine with a wonder weapons such as this, it was a matter of state secret, and it's a secret that seemingly died with the death of the Byzantine Empire in the four hundreds, or maybe much earlier, or much earlier later we'll get to uh. And to this day, chemists and historians they continue to devise possible recipes for it, and thoughts not only on the the just the the liquid itself, but also the weapons system and involved here

what what what were they cooking up? How are they dishing it out? And to what degree was anyone ever able to replicate it? Fascinating questions we will explore in depth when we come back from this break. All right, we're back now, Robert. We're onto the Greek fire itself, the chemistry of the liquid substance, the liquid flame, and the delivery system for it. So what do modern scholars think about Greek fire and and what do we know about Greek fire from these medieval descriptions that we can

use to try to figure out how it worked. Yes, let's get into the main properties of Greek fire. Though before we do that, I do want to point out one point that Rowland makes in his his paper, and that's that historian Theophanes wrote that the Bysantine, the Byzantine Emperor already had a fire ship program in the works two years before the arrival of kalin Cos. So it remains a mystery exactly what the nature of the prior system weapons system was and how he improved upon it

with presumably with his formula. Yeah, that is one interpretation I've read that some modern historians look at this and say, okay, Kalina Cos if you assume he was a real person and he did show up to help with the Greek fire system, that what he actually did was not invent Greek fire or bring them Greek fire, but that he improved upon their recipe. That they already had some kind of chemical incendiary weapon that could be lit and and tossed out over enemies, but that he made it much

more powerful. And what are the key characteristics that are often reported about this powerful version of Greek fire or Colina costs fire? Okay, so they're they're basically four of these properties. First of all, we've already alluded to this. It burns in water. Some say it some say it was ignited by water, but this is almost certainly a myth. It's also said that only vinegar, sand or urine could extinguish it. Now, in the next key characteristic. It was

a liquid. It was something that was vomited forth from one of these animal heads or a siphon number three. At sea, it was shot from tubes or siphons and very rarely used on land. Okay, so it mainly came out of the prow of a ship, right, yeah, And it's something that would be you know, squirted or blasted out of um an aperture. And then finally, and this is this one is really interesting and will come into some of the theories that we're going to discuss us.

There was smoke and a booming sound as it vomited forth from the two and this is about as detailed as our understanding of the properties get. Like, most of the theories that we're looking at are going to be speculating based on these characteristics. Now, all but the use of tubes, you can find in prior incendiary weapons used by other people, such as various historical accounts of just

flaming oils being used. Fireworks existed in the region as early as the fourth century, and those could have created smoke and noise. But still there are a lot of questions regarding, you know, what, what exactly is going on here? Well, let's chase those questions. Man, all right, let's do it. Okay. So what are some potential ingredients that have been hypothesized by modern scholars that would have been constituents of the

Greek fire recipe? We know that it was probably more than just one thing, right now, One thing that has been suggested by modern scholars is the idea of quicklime. Quick Lime is the common name for calcium oxide or C A O, and this is something that can be produced from lime bearing things found in nature, such as seashells or in limestone. You can do like a heat reduction of these things to produce quicklime. So it is

something that was known to the ancient world. Now, the supporting evidence for the idea that quicklime was involved in the Greek fire recipe was that, of course, the production of calcium oxide was technologically feasible at the time it could have been done. In fact, people have been making quicklime for a long time, and it had even been used as a chemical weapon by the Romans hundreds of

years before. But if you believe the part of the story that says Greek fire ignited on contact with water, quicklime could help you get there because calcium oxide produces a strong exothermic reaction on contact with water, meaning when you get it wet, it releases heat. And you can see videos of the they're they're like demonstration videos on YouTube where someone will get a container of quicklime and they'll just pour some water on it and immediately starts

smoking and getting hot. Sometimes they'll even melt the container that it's sitting in. Now it's not flames, mind you, So that's part of the counter evidence. Of course, quicklime itself doesn't produce fire, but a heat producing chemical reaction,

so the quicklime couldn't be the only ingredient. Also some counter evidence is that Roland points out the Greek fire was reported to have burned on the decks of ships, not just in the water, and if quicklime was the ignition catalyst, it would need to be heated by coming into contact with water, so that might weigh against the

quick quicklime idea. But perhaps you could imagine a recipe in which quicklime is combined with another fuel or mixture of fuels, and when the Greek fire preparation comes into contact with water, the water reacts with the quicklime triggers the exothermic reaction. So it suddenly heat sit up, which increases the temperature of the mixture past the ignition point

of the fuel, causing it to catch fire. See this this makes a certain amount of sense because it you're you're envisioning something that's not a primitive flamethrower so much as a chemical concoction that's going to spray safely or semi safely away from the warship and then it's going to hit the water near the enemy ship and they're ignite. Right.

But as we've said, there's some complications there. One of the things is just that a lot of modern scholars think that the burns on contact with water part is a myth. I think there's more credence given to the idea that it could land on top of the water and continue burning while it's wet like, while it's in the water, But the idea that it would only ignite when it was touched by water, I think fewer people

except that part of the story. Also, as Roland points out, and as I said a minute ago, it lands on the deck of the ship and the ship's burning. So in order for that to work, if it's triggered by quicklime, if that's what's raising the temperature of the mixture to the ignition point of the fuel. That probably wouldn't happen on the deck of a ship, unless the deck of the ship is always wet, which maybe it is, I don't know. And not to get too far ahead of us.

But then that also makes me remember that there there's some allusions to the idea that one could defend against Greek fire by having like soaked items like soaked tarps and whatnot on your ship. So that would that would not seem to work if this was indeed the quicklime, right, and that would make the quicklime based version a really

devilish weapon. Like you thought you could put it out with water, or you thought you could put up some damp rags to help protect yourself, but in fact, that would just make it even hotter, I mean, And really one of the key aspects of the weapon, uh, that's actually mentioned in the opening narration here today, is that it made fire behave in a way that that people

were not expecting. Right, be it you know fire that's coming at you laterally, or if this is actually a you know, a true interpretation, then uh, you know, fire that is springing up from the water without a visible spark. Yeah, it's scary to imagine. All right, Well, okay, that's quicklime. What's what's our next potential candidate here? Okay. Roland also mentions that some scholars have debated the inclusion of calcium

phosphied in the in the Greek fire mixture. So, calcium phosphied is a chemical compound is c A three P two, and it's a salt stable in the form of a crystal powder, commonly used as an ingredient in rat poison. So how does it kill rats? Well, when calcium phosphied comes into contact with water or acids, it reacts to release phosphine gas p H three. Now we've talked about phosphine gas before we mentioned it. I think phosphine gas was one of the proposed solutions to the question of

what's caused saying will of the whist phenomenon? Yeah, So one of the reasons is that phosphine gas is highly toxic, highly flammable, and that it can spontaneously form explosive and igniting mixtures with the air. So when exposed to the air, it can just sometimes start up a flame on its own. You don't even need to ignite it. Now back to the rat poison. What happens when the rat eats it, Well, the rat eats the calcium phosphide or any other metal phosphides.

Other metal phosphides are sometimes used as rat poison, and then the act of digesting the chemical releases the killer phosphine gas inside the rodent's body. Calcium phosphide has also been used for ignition properties in things like maritime flares. Uh So, what are the what's the supporting evidence that this could have been an ingredient. Well, it reacts with

water to produce heat, kind of like quicklime. Right. So a byproduct of the reaction is phosphine gas, which is highly flammable potential fuel, and this could explain stories of Greek fire being ignited by water or burning on water, and phosphine gas can spontaneously form explosive mixtures like I just mentioned. So this could be really nasty, horrible stuff to be shooting out at a ship in a naval battle.

You'd be not only shooting out stuff that can spontaneously ignite and react with water in a way that ignites, but also it would be producing poison gas. All right, Well, that that sounds like a terrifying weapon. What's the counter evidence. Well, basically, it's that people have tried this in experiments and it

doesn't seem to match the way it's described. Roland points out in his paper that twentieth century experiments with preparations containing calcium phosphied didn't exactly match what was being described in the ancient sources. So a lot of modern scholars think it's kind of unlikely that this was one of the ingredients. All right, so we've talked about quicklime, we've talked about calcium phosphied. What's our next candidate, how about saltpeter. This is one of the big debates in the history

of kim is this is this? Is this the area of ultimate controversy in the twentieth century what was in Greek fire? But there have been debates, actually, and one of the big debates, and this is apparently was their salt Peter in it or not? And their pro Saltpeter scholars and anti saltpeter scholars. And it looks to me like in recent decades the anti Saltpeter camp has sort of one out. Well. One of the key reasons here, of course, is that is saltpeter was used in Greek fire.

This would make Greek fire arguably the first gunpowder weapon, beating the ninth century Chinese discovery of its property. So there's a really a lot of you know, cultural pride uh swept up in this. So who was the first? Who are the first people to figure out how to kill people with saltpeter? First? Well, let's explore the saltpeter

and see if we can puncture that pride. Now, saltpeter is the name for actually a group of nitrogen based compounds, primarily potassium nitrate or k n O through E. Now, potassium nitrate is again assault that has many different uses in all kinds of technological fields. It's in food preparation. It used to be used all the time as a preservative and cured meats. You can still sometimes see it used in food, but it's a little less common these days.

It's also been used for various medical purposes, including both to suppress and enhance the libido. I'm not convinced that it would actually do either one of those. I haven't seen any evidence, but you know, people thought a lot of things, did a lot of things. I can imagine is somebody like leaving a trail of gunpowder to their libido and then like setting it off. But it also salt peter was also the primary ingredient in black powder,

which was the original gunpowder. Now we have to dispecify black powder original gunpowder because modern bullet cartridges tend to use a different ignition material. But the original gunpowder it manages to shoot bullets out of guns because when you set it on fire, it burns very rapidly and creates lots of rapidly expanding gases, which, as they expand, push the projectile out the barrel of the gun very fast. So the traditional mixture for black powder was saltpeter, charcoal,

and even sulfur. Here's something you might have wondered before. If the gunpowder is packed down under a musket ball, or it's inside an enclosed rifle cartridge, how does it burn? I mean, don't fires need to be exposed to oxygen in order to burn. And that's where the saltpeter comes in. That's that's the roll of the K and O three.

The charcoal and the sulfur in the gunpowder are the fuel that burns, and the saltpeter is an oxidizer providing the oxygen atoms that allow the ignition reaction to happen without the gunpowder being exposed to open air. Now, this argument for Saltpeter's inclusion in the Greek fire formula. This was argued by French chemist Pierre Eugene Marceline or P. E. M. Bertolo,

who lived Now. Bertolo was a really interesting guy, and I'm sorry to take us on a tangent, but I'd hate it if I didn't point out this interesting idea on the technological terror and war from Bernelow's perspective. We covered him in an episode of tech Stuff that I

guest hosted with Jonathan Strickland. Tech Stuff if you don't listen as another podcast here in the House to Works Family hosted by Jonathan Strickland, and it was an episode I went on there to do with him that I've been wanting to do for a while about five ways people predicted that technology could end all wars spoiler alert.

None of them worked, but Bertolow was one of these guys, and the short story on how he predicted it was that Bertolow predicted that by the year two thousand, engineers would create synthetic materials indistinguishable from organic matter, and this would be things like meats, vegetables, alcohol, tobacco. And he basically saw the whole world as this big solvable chemistry problem.

This is wonderful because it actually ties in with, of course, the Star Trek utopian vision, where go up to a machine and you, you know, type in steak and you get your steak. Yeah, exactly. So he saw this sort of world of chemical abundance, a post scarcity world. And he also imagined that we could make food so nutritious and pure that it would alter our moral nature. In other words, like, through the power of chemical engineering, we

would make ourselves better people. And I just want to do a quick quote from an interview of his from McClure's magazine published in eighteen four uh and Bertolo says, in this interview, man should grow in sweetness and nobility because he will have done with war, with existence based upon the slaughter of beasts. Perhaps, and this is only

a dream. Remember, synthetic chemistry, or something we might call spiritual chemistry, will develop means to as profoundly alter men's moral nature as material chemistry will change the conditions of his environment. I love that. Now, that's kind of funny in the context of exploring the ancient chemical problem of how to make a mixture that best burns people in

their ships. Love. But I mean we come back down to the nature of technology again, right, fire, As soon as we learned how to master it, we used to keep ourselves warm and to cook food, but also to to terrorize each other. And in chemistry, I mean you look at especially in the advances made by German chemists. Uh, you know, at the you know, the dawn of the twentieth century. Um, you see, um, you see the sort of the butting heads of the chemistry of life and

the chemistry of death. You know, we're learning how to manipulate chemical properties to better crow crops, where we're figuring out how to treat illnesses, but we're you know, accidentally inventing M D M A uh. And at the same time we're creating horrific chemical weapons to utilize against each other. Totally, and so it's clear that Bertolo had his mind on not just chemistry at the molecule level, but chemistry at

the societal level. What chemistry meant for humankind, And so one of the things he was thinking about was chemistry in war, and so he turned his mind to this problem of what was in Greek fire, and he argued, yes,

saltpeter was an ingredient. Supporting evidence for saltpeter would be one thing is that in the descriptions, the Greek fire shoots out of the nozzles on the front of the ships as if explosively, right, Yes, and there was also reportedly a boom and a smoke, great smoking effect, so you know, so others would argue whether some sort of a hydraulic system it's responsible for this, But you could also imagine, I mean, we're told there was a booming, noise,

we're told there was smoke, So it it leads you to believe that there's some sort of explosive reaction taking place here. Yes, But on the other hand, what's the counter evidence that says no, no, no, saltpeter in the Greek fire. Well, one of the things would be, as you alluded to, you know, you might have been able to produce that that lateral trajectory if you just had

highly pressurized liquids. So if maybe the ships were constructed in such a way that they were able to build up the pressure in the storage tanks and have valves that would suddenly allow it to shoot out. You could get a lot of pressure coming out of even medieval tubes. Another piece of counter evidence, where would the saltpeter come from? I think the thinking on this now is that it's not impossible that these people could have used salt peter,

but there's no direct evidence that they had it. Also, the British chemist and historian J. R. Partington, who lived from eighteen eighty six to nineteen sixty five, argued against the theory that saltpeter was part of Greek fire. And Partington argued in a book called A History of Greek Fire and Gunpowder in nineteen sixty the Greek fire was

made from distilled and natural petroleum. Will get there in just a second, uh, For that would would have been found on the beds of the northern shores of the Black Sea. And that what it was done was what we were just describing. It's pumped at high pressure over a flame like a modern flamethrower. Alright. Now, he suggests that a primary ingredient is this distilled natural petroleum. And this is a common consensus, I would say, of scholars

who look at Greek fire today, So what's this stuff? All? Right, So there's there's a word that is used for this stuff, but I understand it's also one of these problematic terms that is kind of broadly applied, right, and that is naptha. Right. So it appears that various flammable liquids throughout the ages have been called naptha at different times and places. But in this case, we're probably talking about crude oil in

some forms, some filtered form, right, that's right. One of the books that I was looking at for this is The Fall of Constantinople by Nicole Haldon and Turnbull uh and the authors. They write that Greek fire was likely distilled petroleum, perhaps with a resin added, like some sort of tree sap, like a pine resin. Yeah, pine resin, and this would have been adding to thicketed, thicken it up and prolong it's burning on the surface of the water.

Now the author Halden, the middle one there is John Howden of Princeton University, and he's written, uh, some solo papers as well on Greek fire. You know. He he suspects that, yeah, that it was petroleum based liquid modified to increase its potency. He thinks that the create key ingredients were highly flammable light crude oil. Uh, this would be the naptha and that pine resin, which not only would have made it to burn more on the surface of the water, but it would have been sticky. It

would have made the mixture burned hotter and longer. In general. I've actually read that one of the names, one of the contemporaneous names for Greek fire was sticky fire God. You know that gets That reminds me a lot of the accounts of the use of actual flamethrowers. I think I've gone on this this tirade before on the podcast, but I feel like we we watch aliens, we watch the thing. We watch shows with flamethrowers in them, and yeah, those pretty terrifying on their own, but we don't really

have of a true picture of the horrifying nature. I'll say, a World War two air of flamethrower, We're shooting this jelly to flaming death on people, right. I mean, we see it used most often these days, I think in science fiction, where it's used against like aliens and monsters. I mean, you've got to realize that a flamethrower is a horrifying terror weapon. Yeah that it is definitely a

terror weapon. It is. Uh yeah, So if you want, if you want more than that, just look into any accounts, any testimony of its usage, say in the Pacific theater in World War two, and you will you will be totally sickened. It's a it's a devastating weapon. Alright. So we've discussed quicklime, We've discussed calcium phosphied, We've discussed saltpeter, We've discussed naptha, we've discussed pine resin. All of these have been hypothesized at various times in places as ingredients

in Greek fire. Is that it? Or is there any other hypothesized ingredients? Well, I also ran across bit human. Well, so this was the world's first petroleum product. It's a sticky, black, viscous substance and you we probably know it better as asphalt, but it was highly prized in the ancient world, and it was for the longest it was primarily a Mesopotamian monopoly. The stuff substance saw use in various endeavors, boat cocking, art, cosmetics.

Physicians in the region eventually used to treat a number of ailments U and these would have eventually these forms of treatment would eventually spread to Europe and Uh. I was reading about this, this one in particular as a candidate for Greek fire in the Journal of Mass Suspectrometry. And this was a study of a particular ancient vass from fifth century BC containing a sample of bitumen. Uh. By the way, ancient Egyptians used this as a preservative

for their mummies. And the word mummy even comes from the Persian word for for wax, mumia, which was used to describe human. Okay, so we've got all these hypothesized ingredients, So in what way is it most likely they came together? Well, we already mentioned that Roland has something to say about that.

He concludes, in agreement with the scholar he names, hr Ellis Davidson, that naptha was almost definitely the primary fuel, that pine resin was possibly used as a thickener, that quicklime may have been added to help it burn in or on water, but this is not viewed as necessary, And that saltpeter may have been added to give it explosive properties, but this is also not viewed as necessary.

I found another paper on this It was in the Biotechnology Journal from the year two thousand six by procop at All called Enzymes Fight Chemical Weapons, and the authors here say that they think the Greek fire was probably a combination of resin sulfur, naptha, quicklime, and saltpeter. And of course we have to remember that even in even in these earlier accounts uh supposedly the Greek fire itself, the formula for it improved between the first and the

second major usage. So it's possible that Kalina costs improved upon the formula, that it was tweaked by others. And as will explore in the After a Break here, there's also the nature of the secret here. What happens when you keep a secret so well that that it never leaks outside of your kingdom, it doesn't survive your empire. What does it say about the nature of the secret, how you kept it, and how that might backfire on you when you you need to retrieve that secret later.

Thank and we're back, all right, Robert. Let's say that I have captured the recipe for Greek fire. I'm I'm an opposing general of some other army, and I know exactly what chemicals to mix and what proportions to make Greek fire am now is powerful as the Byzantine fire fleet. No, you're not. And because this is interesting, you can you can if you have a perfect mixture, the identical mixture. Let's say I have a bucket of it. Yeah, you have a bucket of it. Great, What are you gonna

do with that bucket? Uh? Do you have a ship? I'm gonna maybe like throw it really hard? No, obviously system do you have any of the end you have the skill to use it? Right? So, from from the descriptions we know of ancient history, it's not just the recipe of the of the Greek fire that really matters in how it's deployed as a weapon in battle. That's right. I mean, one can cannot help but be reminded of all the various news reports going on now about North

Korea and its nuclear weapons program. We see the various steps in the thresholds that are being discussed, right, Like, It's it's one thing to be able to produce a an atomic bomb, but then can you can you miniaturize it right and then fitted into a warhead? Are you capable of aiding uh? An inconcontinental ballistic missile that can that can exit the atmosphere, re enter and hit the target.

There they are additional um systems that have to be in place to fully utilize that weapon and their skills that have to be in place to be able to use it effectively against your enemy. Yeah, when you think about developments and weapons technology, and I do want to be clear, we're not trying to glorify weapons technology today or say like, look how beautiful it is all the

destruction we can do. But as one important aspect of the development of science and technology, I think it's worth exploring. As you look at how weapons have developed in the last century or so, a lot of what has happened, with the exception of of course nuclear weapons and things like that, has not been so much changes in what you can blow up on like the incendiary or the chemical compounds there, but it's been in the delivery systems,

right and Uh. For instance, the historians Howlden and Burn have argued that that, yeah, this was going with what we've said, we definitely had a liquid uh substance here. Uh and uh it was more of a scientific victory of preheating and pressurizing the liquid below deck. They argued, So this would mean that the delivery system is as important, or if not more important, then the true Greek fire. And you know the formula for the stuff, so you know,

it's not just the Kalina cost fire. It's the Kalina cost weapon, right, the whole I mean the weapon system. And also like the tree, it's kind of like a fighter jet. Right, you can have the fighter jet, you can have like an F fourteen Tomcat, but you gotta have somebody to that's also capable of piloting that thing as well. So you have you have essentially you have the ammunition, you have the system, and then you have the skills required to use it in battle. Now, of course, uh,

this this weapon system as a technology. Uh, it was again a state secret. And this is this is actually Roland's key area of focus in his article the Keeping of this Secret and and what does it? What does it do for your technology when the technology itself is secret? Yeah.

Roland explains this via framework originally articulated by a guy named Derek De Solo Price in the nineteen seventies, where he he sets up science and technology as opposed in one very key UH aspect, which is that he calls science quote paperophiliic, meaning enjoying publishing or enjoying paper, whereas UH technology is largely paperophobic, meaning it wants to stay secret, it doesn't want to be widely published and disseminated. Science

is about sharing knowledge with all of humanity. Technology is about using science to your advantage. And for examples of that,

we can think too patents. You know, you have a patent on your technology because no one you don't want anyone else even if they figure out how to do it, You don't want them to make money off of it, or the or you want to go more historical, you can look to various guilds, trade guilds, trade secrets, and then state secrets as well, and we continue to see this play out today with everything from computing technology to

nuclear weapons. Now, Roland points out that you know, even mythical weapons of great might were typically secretive in nature and then and that in the real world, everyone from da Vinci to Samuel Colt took steps to safeguard the details of their inventions, in which you know, in Colts case, were certainly weapons and in in da Vinci's case were

sometimes weapons depending on what he was concocting. But he also does acknowledge that there's a countervailing viewpoint, for example, from the researcher Pamela Long right that says that, Okay, so, yes, Greek Fire was a great state secret, but actually it's kind of an anomaly in that right, because a lot of other weapons technology did become widely disseminated public knowledge. That Greek Fire is kind of an outlier for the Middle Ages. Yeah, this this one, And that's one of

the reasons it's so intriguing. This one example of a weapon system that was who's wrapped up in secrecy? But in what way does keeping a technology secret also undercut your ability to use it? Yes? This is This is where it's even more interesting. So for the for the for the formula, according to Rowland, they simply made and bottled the stuff and sealed up jars. Okay, yeah, I think he calls this the Coca Cola method. You just

make it at the central factory. You've got your your central arsenal, and that's where you mix up all the stuff and you jar it up and you send it out and you don't let anybody else see what you're doing, right, and you're only darring it up at a centralized location, for instance, in or around Constantinople. It's not coming in from a you know, another province or anything. What are the eleven herbs and spices? I mean they arrive pre bagged. There's no way to know. But but of course there's

more at play here than just that mere liquid. As we've we've related, so the technology entails matter, power, a tool or machine, and technique. So power plus matter via machine and a human operative utilizing the technique that will

give you the fire itself, the basic equation of technology. Right, So the formula here, the formula itself was the matter, the power was the fire, the spark, the machine and technique or largely a mystery, but you know, a lot of the theories boiled down to, you know, a system of tubes and a like a heating under underneath the deck of the ship, right, like a pressurized cauldron that would be heating the oil or the nap the head

of time and keeping it under high pressure. And then a valve that you could turn to suddenly release a jet of it which would spray over a flame. And the author points out that all the information needed to design such a pressurized weapon system. This would not have been a godsend. You don't have to imagine uh clinicos as as an alien visiting the human civilization and giving them flame covers. No, in fact, this is highly uh It's something you definitely imagine that people would have come

up with just based on Roman learning. And this is something that we we should emphasize about the state of technology and what we often refer to as the Middle Ages,

what sometimes called the Dark Ages. Now, there's been a lot of a lot of historical thought in the twentieth century that, you know, like Enlightenment historians who looked back on the medieval period and called it all the Dark Ages, they really were sort of underestimating the intellectual flourishing that went on in some places in the Middle Ages in Europe.

But at the same time, after the collapse of the Western Roman Empire throughout much of Europe, there was kind of a period in which much knowledge was lost and forgotten and fewer historical records were produced. So for for some time, for some centuries in the later millennia, the later half of the first millennium CE, you could sort of say that there was a technological Dark Age there was less progress for a while than there had been in the Roman period, and a lot of what we

used to know how to do was forgotten. So it is kind of interesting that you see this advance taking place. Then yeah, now you know, so who knows if you would be able to acquire them, But if you could, if you could get a copy of Heroes Newmatica and Vittruvius is d Architectura, you would have, according to Roland, the basic elements you'd need to figure out how to construct your own pressurized weapon system for Greek fire and he he writes the following I read a quick quote.

He says, the technique itself would have been a secret of almost as much sophistication as the formula for without pressure gauges and safety valves, it was surely a delicate task to heat and pressurize of volatile liquid in dark and cramp quarters below deck in combat without accident. God, can you imagine that? So you're you're the nap the

pumper in the belly of the of the fire ship. Yes, yeah, just this just bottled death down there and it's gonna be h hopefully you know, spit away from your ship and on to the others. So you've just got to imagine that if they were operating ships like this, they frequently would just become engulfed in flames and kill all of the people operating them. Well, you might think so, but there are actually no reports of such accidents. Now,

that doesn't mean they didn't occur. It could be a situation where, you know, especially if if you know, if if you're if Byzantines are writing about their fabulous weapon system, maybe you're not going to write about the failures. You're only going to write about the victories. But for whatever reason, we we don't have any accounts of of Greek fire

vessels blowing up of the system backfiring. Now, I will say that that there are accounts of other similar weapons systems backfiring, which gives us, uh, gives us an idea that, well, this kind of thing might have easily occurred and it just wasn't written about, or though the writings have not survived. But if we look to China, of all places, uh, there's there's actually a detailed description of a similar weapons system that was employed around nine hundred CE in China.

So there's a a ten forty four military work titled woo Jing zong Yao, and it details a brass container fitted with a horizontal pump gunpowder ignition chamber and a small diameter nozzle. And this was designed for use on the you know, the ramparts of a fortress or what it would be used against siege weapons. But they were also apparently used in naval battles, uh, particularly one naval battle on the young Z River near Nanjing in between Tang and Song forces. And here's the where it ties

into what we're discussing here. The Tige used it, but the wind changed and the fires blew back on their own ships. So who knows if this was exactly the same weapon system, if it was inspired by it, or if it was just independently produced. But I feel like what they're describing here taking place on the young Z River could easily have occurred with one of these vessels, right,

and we might not know about it. Now here's a question, did anybody ever find themselves in the scenario I described earlier where you're you're a general facing off against the Byzantines or the Romans as they would have called themselves, and you've captured some of this fire in a bottle. Uh. Did did it ever get turned against them? Um? It does not seem that it did. But we do have a case in eight fourteen, the Bullguards captured thirty six siphons and jars of Greek fire to go with them.

So they had you know, the at least I guess the hand because there were two types. So they had like the ship based siphons and then like a handheld model apparently according to some accounts, so they had the fire. They had the technology, but apparently they didn't know how to use it, because there's no evidence that they were able to capitalize on it. Uh. Likewise, Marcus the Greek published a Greek fire recipe in the twelfth century, but

you didn't see that technology spread. And also after nine hundred CE, Arab forces had similar incendiary weapons, but they weren't able to utilize it as the Byzantines had. So you can easily interpret this as being a situation where Okay, you have the h the AMMO, you have the weapon, but you just don't have the training or the you know,

the systematic approach to its use. So in other words, to steal the secret, you'd have to steal all the components and that would be difficult, or it would because one of the keys here was the people with knowledge of all the components, according to Roland, were never in the same place at the same time, right, So you had people building it was a compartmentalization of military technology where you'd have the people who are the pyromancers in there,

you know, in their secret dungeon making your Greek fire, whoever they are. But then you've also got the people who are building the pump system and the siphons into the belly of these warships, and the who are being trained in how to operate it. And you've got to have all these pieces come together for the weapon to be viable. Right. So you're gonna have I guess a key number of overseers that are going to be able

to put all of this together. But this is where we have the power of secrecy and the risk of secrecy, because it seems that there were very few people who had that information that knew how all these components came together. Uh, And we're able to put it all together now. According to legend, you had only two families that knew the full formula, the full weapon system here and and the technique for using it, and that would have been the emperor's family, the royal family itself, and also a family

referred to as the Lampros family. I've seen people speculate that the lamp Pros family is not a real historical right, Yeah. Roland spends a good amount of time discussing the ins and outs of both of these. Basically, I guess one of the key things to keep in mind here is just how the golden throne worked in in Byzantine culture. It worked by you getting murdered, basically, Well, it worked by you murdering somebody else and then you getting murdered.

Well he he compares it actually to the Chinese imperial model, where whoever the emperor is is the is divine, it's the chosen of heaven, and so there's almost no such thing as a usurper, right because once you've usurped it, you've got it and you're okay with God. That's kind of the you know, a quick version of it. But there was an hereditary nature to the throne in Byzantine culture, but once you took the throne, it was yours. So there was a lot of backstabbing, a lot of a

lot of plots and intrigue, and uh that's so. Here's here's a scenario. If you're planning to stage a series of murders and take the throne um where on your priorities list is Greek Fire, you know, is getting us. You're worried about the people in the room with you right now? Yeah, yeah, I mean you're you're plotting to to take the throne and kill who needs to be killed,

backstab or front staff, whoever needs to get it. Uh, the passing down of that of the details of that weapon system, it either might not be a priority, it might not be possible. It's very susceptible to loss because again, very few individuals, you know, in the royal family, for instance, you're going to have access to it. And if there is a periphery family that's close to the throne that also carries the secret, well they're just going to be

just as susceptible to back in front stabs. As you proceed, Roland points out one situation where it's hard to imagine how a Greek Fire protecting family, you know, a family who is known to the emperor and keeps the state secret, could have survived a series of events and that series of events was one emperor was deposed, a new emperor deposed him and came in, then the original emperor came

back and re took the throne. So you're imagining, basically, each time something like this happens, key, allies are all eliminated because you don't want anybody, you know, trying to get one over on you. So when the new emperor deposed the original one, you imagine they probably would have killed all of the original emperor's uh supporting families if the lamp Pross families somehow survived this, when the original emperor who was deposed returned to power, probably would have

killed that family for supporting the usurper. Now, of course, all of this is still theoretical, you know, as to the exact nature of the secret, but and h and how it was kept. But but Roland backs it all up with the fact that Constantinople was able to keep a governmental monopoly on silk production. Um silk production, of course, relies on the the use of the silkworm, and it's really kind of comparable in many ways because you've got

to you have to actually have the worms, uh. And but then you also have to know how to tend to them and uh and rear them and use them. So just stealing the worms alone is not the same as stealing the technology. Now, the best kind of secrets come with magical curses, don't they don't they? Because like a great tomb that you shouldn't be robbed, it'll have a curse that will lay on you if you disturbed

the tomb. And a great state secret, for a secret weapon should have a curse if you send this secret to the enemy. Yeah, I mean, treason should not only be um, you know, betrayal of of the state, It should be a betrayal of God. Right. We actually have a wonderful quote here, and this is from this from the writings of Emperor Constantine the seven he would have lived nine nine fifty nine, who, addressing his son, warned that the Greek fire was a not just a state secret,

but a holy state secret. This too was revealed and taught by God through an angel to the Great and Holy Constantine, the first Christian emperor, And concerning this he received great charges from the same Angel. As we are assured by the faithful witness of our fathers and grandfathers, that it should be manufactured among the Christians only, and in the city ruled by them, and nowhere else at all, nor should it be sent nor taught to any other

nation whatsoever. And then he goes on to insist quote a death most hateful and cruel awaits anyone who breaks this secret. Yeah, there's a wonderful, illustrated example of this given in the quote where he talks about there was a general or some some kind of major figure in the Byzantine Empire who sold the secret of how to make Greek Greek fire to some enemies of the state, and when he tried to walk into a church next, he was struck dead at the doors of the church.

There you go. I mean, it's it seems perfectly in keeping with what we've talked about concerning Byzantine culture and the rulership that, yeah, you would also just utilize myth and religion to help safeguard your secrets as well. Now, the author of our opening monologue, Anna Komnena, wrote a out this too, right, Yes she did, and she would have been in on the secret given her position within the royal family. And she also apparently provided an incomplete

formula of the fire at some point as well. Again, the nature of a well kept secret is it's susceptible to loss and uh and it was eventually lost, perhaps for centuries before it was confirmed lost in twelve oh four. And indeed subsequent accounts of Greek fire are a few far between and often doubtful. Yeah, after that story of it being used to repel the second invasion in the early seven hundreds, do we even really see it used again much? I mean, the original preparation by the Byzantines Um.

I don't think there are any strong cases for it now. According to that book The Fall of Constantinople by Nicole Haldon in Turnbell, there are there's some form of quote unquote Greek fire they used was used twice during the final siege of Constantinople in fourteen fifty three. This is again when they were conquered by the Ottoman Empire. Uh. And this is where an incoming grain ship to use it against attackers, and then another account the fire was

directed onto the siege engine. But then again, as we've established, lots of things started to be called Greek fire after the concept came into vogue. So as for how the secret was kept for that long, well we we already talked about like the hereditary nature of the secret of Greek fire. We talked about um the the often murderous ends to to various individuals and positions of power in the Byzantine Empire. We mentioned the Lampros family and how

their doubts there now. Rowland also discusses the possibility that the Lampros might have merely served for some time in an official capacity, something comparable, say to the military official who carries the nuclear football for the US president. You know, they might just to be like a designated secret keeper, guardian of the Greek fire, or something to that effect, right, And he says that this is possible, but it's difficult all to evaluate further, we just don't know enough about

Byzantine bureaucracy. We we have no idea who this theoretical firemaster would have been, you know, like we we don't have any any records of such a title, and if

they existed, they must have been called something else. There are various official positions that have been brought up that that could have, you know, arguably been secret keepers of the fire, but either the position didn't have close access to the emperor, which would be key or the powers of the office were deluded over time in a way that wouldn't seem to fit an office that was in charge of the secret weapon. And we already mentioned how allies of the emperor very often got eliminated when the

next emperor deposed him and came in. Yes, again, we do know that the weapon was lost, and it just becomes more of a question of when it was lost and how it was lost. So we know that the Byzantine Navy suffered numerous key defeats in the centuries to follow defeats which they failed to use their legendary wonder

weapon to, you know, to defend themselves. Yeah, and this is another point Roland sort of gets on, is that it may have been a problem with the secrecy that if you're so concerned about keeping the secret of how your weapon works that you are reluctant to deploy it, like if you're reluctant to hand it over to satellite allies. I mean, that's the thing that if you're running an empire,

you've got your locals who work directly under you. You're the emperor, your your local people work directly under you. But then you've got all kinds of people working for you who are farther away, and by virtue of being farther away, you don't know if you can trust them quite as much. And so say you hand over some fire breathing you know, Greek fire ships to them, how do you know that they're not going to eventually turn that technology against you? So maybe you shouldn't arm them

with your strongest weapons. Maybe you should only keep those close to home where you've got a uh, you know, a firm hand on the control of them, and you can keep the secret to yourself. But that just limits the way in which you can actually deploy this powerful weapon. And another argument here is, okay, you have your your special secret weapon. You're it's a but it's a shock weapon, it's a surprise weapon. And the thing about that that sort of weapon is that it's it's most effective when

it's first deployed. So you know what happens when you try and pull that trick again and again. Your enemies begin to learn, they begin to be able to they begin to take precautions. Maybe they you know, there are some accounts of being able to drape the ship in in like wet cloth to help protect it. Now, whether that worked or not, who knows. The other idea being that this was more or less a close combat scenario weapon. You know, you're not gonna be able to launch it

at great distances, so then your enemies may be realized. Okay, well they have Greek fire. We need to figure out how to combat them from afar and annihilate them from afar. Keep there, keep our distance in a way that they're unable to deploy their wonder weapon. Yeah. I mean, it might be a horrifying weapon up close, but what if it can only shoot about twenty feet? Yeah, because really it was made for galley warfare, this close combat among

these these vessels. Now, it's also possible that as the Arab threat declined in the eighth century and no other naval power threatened Byzantium until really until the Italian City States in the twelfth century, that they simply stopped producing specialized fire vessels if they didn't need them. Yeah, I mean, because it's another key thing is that these are these

are very specialized weapons. It's if you think to any like strategy video game where you're building units for your army, like this is not a unit you would just spam the heck out off because it's it's ultimately very specialized. You could build a thousand of them and you'll lose the WARLD like that, because the war is not being exclusively fought for this theater of battle. Yeah, and that that's also I mean talking about the difference between naval

and land powers. I mean, a lot of the threats you might be facing would be from the land, and this is now. People did talk about land based uses for Greek fire, but it's a lot less common. It's primarily in this ship based method. And that's one reason that I sort of favor the pressurized cauldron and pump method as opposed to saying that they're well, there might have been saltpeter in it or some other kind of explosive incendiary oxidizer to get that power pushing it out.

I think that the fact that we primarily see it being used in ships is a good indication that they had to have a large apparatus of pumps and hydraulics in place in order to pressurize it to get it to shoot the way they wanted. Yeah, I think that there's there's definitely a strong case or that and uh and and of course The cost is another huge factor here too. So if this is a specialized shock weapon that is also expensive to produce, because even it's been

argued that the fuel itself was fairly inexpensive. Still, the pressurized system we're talking about in the training for those individuals, it becomes a very costly weapon. And so does it make sense to have a bunch of fireships just on hand if you don't need them, you know, and and and end up you know, you end up not needing them for say a century or more. So, looking at this whole discussion, I'm trying to figure out what the

main takeaway about the interplay between secrecy and technology is. Well, I mean, I think there are a couple of key points. I mean, one is just that a secretive technology is more than just uh some you know, a patent on a sheet of paper, necessarily more than just a formula. Uh. It's it's it's a lot more complicated than that. And to steal technology is is a is a grander endeavor, uh than simply you know, taking a few photographs of a top secret document. It's funny how in this uh,

this peperophobic versus peperophilic conception of technology versus science. You can almost look at the same thing and call it a paperophobic technology or a paperophilic piece of science. I think about fire itself in the Greek myth, you know, so you have Prometheus stealing fire from the gods. Is the fire their science or is it technology? I mean as a tool. Usually we think to think of technology as a thing in a tool in science is an abstract process. But isn't it? Is it an example of

sharing scientific knowledge or technological knowledge? Um? I mean maybe it's that the gods think about fire as a technology, a state secret to be protected to keep out of the hands of these humans, and Prometheus re envisioned it, uh to to take it out of the technological realm and say this is science. This is basic knowledge that can be applied to all things, and it should be

shared to all people. Yeah. And I think the other aspect here is, even if we strip away the military aspects in the in the state security aspects of Greek fire, it's such a specialized technology that doesn't have a lot of uses outside of this particular uh you know, field of battle. Like, it's not it's hard to I cannot instantly think of an example of another application for Greek fire as an advanced technology is a specialized technology. What's

a peaceful use for a flamethrower? There's there's not one. And even if you go to Burning Man, you're not seeing a true flamethrower. You know, you're seeing a pyro techniqu you know exchange. You're seeing uh, you know, fire a shot into the sky, but it's not like jellied gasoline, um, you know, squirted onto people. I mean, maybe it does make me think there are some things that are not worth sharing because there is no conceivable positive use for them.

But then again, maybe that's just my lack of imagination. Maybe somebody out there, if you're listening right now and you can think of a way that a flamethrower could be used in a totally peaceful way that harms no one and helps people live better lives or uh you know, builds a better not a better mousetrap that's a killing machine. Also, well builds a better something very sweet and wonder full. Let us know. I want to know what that is.

What do you do with a flamethrower? That's all happy times. It reminds me of a some e card from years back where it was I think it was from a medieval woodcut of or it was made to look like one of an individual standing next to some ridiculous looking wheeled contraption and he had kind of a sad look on his face, and the text just read I invent awful things. And that's kind of what we're talking about with Greek fire. Yes, it's it's very advanced, it's very sophisticated,

it's super secret, but it's really an awful invention. Well, this has been interesting, Robert, Yeah, Yeah, there's been a lot of fun. Uh so, and and hopefully it's it's stirs some interesting thoughts out there, you know, whether you're into the history of military technology or not. Um, you know, just about the kind of going off on our our previous episode about secrets and the keeping of secrets. You know, it ties into that and and also just the nature

of technology. I'm glad I learned that saltpeter can be used for ammunition, for sausage, or for sexual impotence. Yes, yes, fire up that libido, or don't actually attempt to fire up your libido with saltpeter, or at least don't blame it on us when things go awry. All right, Hey, we thank you for listening in. And uh, while you're waiting on the next episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind to come out, why don't you head on over to stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. That is

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