My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark - 339 - Grab Your Chapstick

Episode Date: August 11, 2022

This week, Georgia tells the mysterious story of the 1989 Mount Asahidake SOS incident and Karen covers the 1964 Alaska earthquake.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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And welcome. To my favorite murder. Postsummer time. Oh my God. Break. Episode. Been a minute. I mean, but in these strange times, like a month truly feels like eight months.

Yeah. Let's get into what does a minute really mean these days? These days? Four weeks. Four weeks is one minute. That's right. Right. So it has been literally a minute.

Literally a minute. Yeah. We had a little, we had a fun little break of a month, but you guys had some episodes we were really happy to share and proud of. And I immediately celebrated my month off by getting COVID. And then I just waited. I just delayed about seven days and then I got COVID. Yay.

I was kind of perfect. Yeah. It was kind of perfect because it was like, I don't have to cancel any meetings or I don't have to like try to record while I'm sick. I was just like goodbye and like gotten to bed for a week. Yes. And it was nice. So did you, because we were, so I got it on vacation and there were people in the group

and some got the, I only felt bad for 48 hours version. So you got the other version. I don't want to call it long COVID because it's not long COVID, but it is the longer in that choice. Yeah. It wasn't a quick, it wasn't a quick guy, but I, I didn't feel terrible for more than like two days, but then everything else was just kind of blah. And I still can't totally smell and taste perfectly again, which is, you know, like

as someone who loves food and the way it tastes and smells, it's been really hard. Taste and smell is a huge part of eating. Not the only part. Some might say foundational. I'm still doing it. My personal heartbreak is that there are things that I can and can't taste. Cheerios are right there for me. So I'm eating a lot of just Cheerios as a meal is working out pretty well because other

stuff I'll be like halfway through it and I'll be eating habitually going, this is all texture and no, super weird. There's no joy in it. No. There's no like, ooh, did I just get a little bit of caramelized onion? There's no, no layers are happening whatsoever. But the heartbreak for me is coffee tastes fucking terrible. Oh yeah.

Okay. Coffee tastes to me now what it probably tastes like to a seven year old that takes a swig of their parents coffee. That's good though. It's like starting fresh. Right. It's like starting from a fresh palate. Let's see what we really like.

Maybe we don't like what we thought we liked. Maybe Mexican pizzas aren't my favorite food in the world. Maybe my palate has matured. I don't know. Or what if you find out that Mexican pizza is one of the more like complex recipes there is in restaurant world today? It could be. I don't know because I can't fucking taste anything.

You wouldn't. You wouldn't know. You have some time because they're bringing the Mexican pizza back permanently. I read an article, sorry, more accurately. I saw an article that said it's coming back like next month. I'll take it. I'll go there. As a permanent, it's not going to be a special like they did last time that they're bringing

it back. Yeah. Like a year ago, someone should have told them that that, okay, I'm not going to yell about the Mexican pizza on this true crime podcast. In these trying times, what would be great is if fast food restaurants could go full nostalgia and just be like doing things the way they used to for the people who can barely hang on. Question.

Choco, taco thoughts and feelings. Embarrassing answer. I've never eaten a choco taco. You're like the third person I know, well, who has said that and I'm like, I thought I knew you. How have you never had a choco taco? Well, my first response is going to be it's an East Coast thing to a person who grew up in Los Angeles.

I always assumed it was like either a Midwest or an East Coast thing because we, but also living out in the country, we didn't have an ice cream man. None of that. That shit was like stuff that was only on TV in my opinion. An ice cream man was a full fantasy situation. Okay. Yeah. We definitely had one.

Rumor was he sold LSD. I never was old enough to, you know, there's that age limit on LSD buying from a candy man or whatever. I hope. I never got there, but word on the street. I have so many things I watched, but I don't know if they're all worthwhile talking about or like listen to. But wait really quick.

Can I ask you about the choco taco? Was it your pick? First of all, did you get to grab a quarter and run out to the ice cream man every day? A, was Janet down with something like that? And then B, was it one of your picks? So Janet was never home. So I would break into my sister's shitty little kids safe, you know, which you don't need a fucking number for a password for.

You just turn it around. I am a safe cracker. That's right. So I'd take some change from her and we J walk on one of the busiest streets in Irvine to go to this little market that was across the street from us. And yes, the choco taco was a regular pick for me. It's just so satisfying. It's basically just a like a drumstick, but in taco form.

Oh, that's smart. Yeah. It works. It worked. It did work. That was a real flare up social media taste, man, there's a lot going on. And that's one of the things. And that the day that flared up, I was like, don't have to have an opinion, don't have

an opinion, never need to think about this again. Yeah. I mean, I literally haven't had one in 20 years, but there are, there is a nostalgia aspect for me. So yeah, it's a bummer, but what are you going to, you know, life goes on true. You can't get down because of that. There's other ice creams in the world. I'm here to say there's a ton of other ice creams and shapes in the world.

If you like a thing that's shaped like one thing that's supposed to be savory, but it's actually sweet, I totally get that. Even something that's shaped like a normal thing that's not supposed to be frozen, aka a fucking Snickers ice cream bar or a Twix ice cream bar. Have you had? Oh my God. Yes. Next time you go to the store.

Snickers. Not a Twix. Get the Twix ice cream bar. That thing is legit. Is there a cookie element? It's yeah. Cause it's like a Twix. Basically it's just that the filling is ice cream.

So there's like caramel in it and it's like got the cookie and it's really fucking good. Amazing. Trust me. I eat food. Trust me on this one. Whether or not, here's what I think is really telling about me. What to me feels like I have 40% of my taste buds and or smelling side. I don't know what the issue is exactly.

What's going on. Still am powering down as much food as I can. Like the habit of eating has only kind of slowed down a little bit, which is pretty bewildering to realize where I'm just like, well, I still get to eat. I'm still going to eat this burrito. I mean, how many things in life though, make you kind of happy. There's very few and eating is on the top of that list, which I'm like fine with. That's a thing.

It's way up there. It's way up there. I mean, maybe now's the time for you to try seafood more since you hated seafood so much. But then what would the benefit be if I can't smell it or taste it, like then I'm just, then it's all this amazing seafood texture. No, I, because you know, delicious oysters, no, because then it'll like slowly reintroduce you to this thing without the full frontal of the, of the seafood taste. And you'll slowly acclimate to it instead of it being like, and then anytime someone's

like, do you want to go get sushi? You don't have to explain yourself about sushi. Well, but you know what's funny? Most of the time I don't anyway, because you can like, I think a lot of times we think we have to do stuff like that, like preamble. People are not paying attention to anything you do. I go to sushi and then just get miso soup, edamame, you know, if they have those spicy crunchy tuna things and those are amazing and it's always fresh.

So it doesn't taste like, but anyway, yeah. Well I'm going to bring over a whole swordfish, cooked swordfish to your house after this. And I'm going to go ahead and debone it for you and feed it to you. You're like first eat the eyes. You will love it. I mean it's swordfish. I don't know why it's the funniest fish. It's the funniest fish to offer.

It's too big. You're like, how would you walk it in? You're like, can you meet me out at my car please? I have a swordfish on top of my car on my bike rack. Okay, first I have to get a bike rack because I don't ride bikes and so I don't have a bike rack. That'd be amazing if you were a fisherman, a commercial fisherman that added a bike rack to your car so that you could carry around fresh fish to your friend's house.

I bet that's a thing. Since we're on the subject of food and people doing crazy things for food, did you watch the bear? Oh, yes I did. Ah, fuck boy. What's up, chef? Fuck boy. Hi.

What's up? Serious, kind of sweaty, really intense, focused, talented, haunted, very large-eyed, tatted, like shitty tattoos, shitty tattoos, shitty tattoos, smoker, which is like, that's so bad. I love you. I mean, did that guy smile once in that series? No, because he was tortured. He was so tortured.

He was so stressed and busy, which we love, and he was tortured. But then I think his eyes lit up one time during a conversation where I was like, this is so powerful. When he talks about food, like you and I, except you and I are talking, he's talking about Noma, the best, we're talking about Taco Bell. Taco Bell, bring it back, that Mexican pizza, but we're right. Chocos, we are right. We're populist.

We love it. We're right too. We're on our own TV show. It's called The Binge. Yes, you were going to make a point. I never was, and I never will. Okay. Then I'll think, I'll try to think of one, because the bear I did, watching everybody

go crazy for the bear on social media, I was like, okay, fine. And then I was like, yes, thank you, because I think I've told you this before. You know that Bradley Cooper movie, Burnt, where he's a chef that's all stressed out? It's the same, yes, it's the same thing, right? I've watched that movie easily five times. It's very hard to explain because I've never seen it. It's a real dark horse of a film. There's a little romance in it.

There's some drama. There's a lot going on, but it's like what I realize is, oh, I am very interested in chefs and what they do and how they do it. It's that thing of like when front of house and back of house hookup, it's like fireworks and lots of alcohol and some cocaine. I think more cocaine. Most cocaine. Yeah.

Just to keep it going. I didn't date a chef, but a chef had a crush on me when I was a lot younger. And I worked at this health food store in Santa Monica, and he would bring me, and he worked at the restaurant next door, so he was always in, and he'd bring me food, and it was like chef food. And I was like, how is this pasta, it's just fucking pasta, but it's the best pasta I've ever fucking had in my life. And then he revealed to me that he had an old from way before, and look, we've all been

through some shit when we were younger and made bad mistakes, had an old swastika tattoo. And I was like, and he was like very apologetic, obviously I'm Jewish. He was like, didn't want to tell me. And so I was like, I just can't take it, you're doing it. Well, I mean, what, what, was it the 90s? Had they not had the laser tattoo removal yet? It was the 90s, and I think it was on his head, like a scalp. Whoa.

Jesus, this got dark. So he was a straight up skinhead? Yeah, he had been like a skinhead. Fuck. I know. Well, but based on what I've learned from Anthony Bourdain and the like, it's almost like troubled past leads you to the intensity of the kitchen culture really working for you.

Like there is that thing. You thrive in there. Yeah. Yeah, they say the same thing about some fucked up writer's rooms, where if the boss is fucked up enough, the people who really thrive are the people who had fucked up parents, because they're like, yes, I'm back home, mother's milk, you know what I mean? Right, because you get like yelled at and screamed at and then praised for three seconds and you're like, and you like live off of that little bit and it works.

And you're like, oh my God, it's Christmas and I'm eight years old. This is how it is. I'm sorry, the idea of a man being able to be like, give me these six ingredients in your refrigerator and I will go ahead and whip something up. And the best thing. Yeah. In quarantine, I've sat and fantasized about that concept and brought myself to tears of just like, imagine a world where like this could be possible for you someday if you would

just. And this whole 15 minutes has just been a hello, fresh ad promo code loneliness. Anyways, lonely. I will say this, Mike, my cousin Stevie, who I talk about a lot on here at one point in his young life, he had a restaurant. Oh, wow. Yeah. And it was like a kind of a sandwich shop that also had a good gourmet food.

That's how he met his wife dream. I want to open a restaurant. Not a restaurant. I want a sandwich shop someday. Yes. Oh, our friend Joe DeRosa opened a fucking sandwich shop. What? And we went to New York and went and ate at his sandwich shop.

Did you not know this? A brick and mortar sandwich shop. It's more of a bar that serves some of the best sandwiches I've ever had. It's called Joey Roses. If you're in New York, go say hi to Joe DeRosa, our good friend. One of the reasons we met. I can't believe that. He has a sandwich shop and it's good.

He must be so happy. Is he so happy? He's so happy and so stressed out because it turns out that running a bar and restaurant is very hard. But it's just like a normal, like cool New York bar, but it's like, you know, he always had really great taste and it was into old video games and shit. It's like that. So it's cool.

And then he makes like really quality, or they make like really quality sandwiches. That is fucking amazing. Congratulations, Joe. If you ever hear this, I miss you. No, he won't. I haven't. Yeah. He won't.

Oh, I was just going to tell a story that my cousins did to you is really, no, no. It's very dumb to go back to, but it's kind of satisfying. He makes food all the time, like when he comes to visit and stuff and watching both of them clean the countertops, like they do it all at once. So they have all these like leftover habits. Yeah. That's like being in the Marines or something and still making your bed every day. Exactly.

So they take these like hot towel, hot dish towels and wipe down the counter. So like my kitchen is never cleaner than when they cook in it because it gets this like hot towel, wipe down thing where I'm just like, God damn, what a valuable like trait to learn. And they put tape on things and mark the date, right? And drink out of like a container cup instead of a container instead of a chef's chef's write us. What do we want them to tell us?

Tell us your, tell us if you're single, what your, what you're into, horses, reading, where you hang out. Whatever, I don't know, tell us about being a chef and how insane it is and like your worst chef, you're like your worst night on the job or brunch or whatever. Stressed thing. Yeah. Like what does it really like to be a chef? This is a spoiler.

So if you're going to watch this show, you know, don't be in this conversation, the bear. But there's that thing where he gets delivered what he thinks is 200 pounds of meat and it's 20 pounds of meat. Like that real subtle and they play it so perfectly because that's how problems actually show up to you. Like a person speaking in a totally normal tone of voice, like, no, it's 20. No, that's what you asked for. Yeah.

I'm just the delivery guy. Bye. And he just leaves and then you're just like, now this huge problem is sitting on me until I solve it. Yeah. It's like so perfectly played. It's a great show. Vince couldn't watch it because he doesn't like stress, stressful TV show.

Like he couldn't watch, um, what's the one with the gem? Uncut gems. Uncut gems. He couldn't watch that. Like when things are really stressful, so I had to watch it alone and just, uh, yeah. Yeah. It was beautiful. It was so good.

It was really good. I watched Blackbird and I caught up on Blackbird. Me too. Yeah. That's quite something. I saw like an actual show, I think it was a dateline where he was, the real guy was interviewed and it was, it's got to be so hard to play real people. Yeah.

This show is so creepy and so good. Yeah. Right? And so realistic. Yeah. I mean, the people, I thought when the guy first got brought in, I was just like, oh, and then, and then I was just like, and then it just becomes, you're like, that's what that guy is.

Oh my God. Paul Walter Hauser is the name, the serial killer, and I think he's giving what's his name from Mindhunter or Run For His Money. Sorry. Cameron Britton. Cameron Britton, friend of the show. Well, Cameron Britton is the trailblazer, let's say it that way. That's true.

That's true. You know? I mean, I don't know if it's just me, yet make your thing better in the great competition of life. That voice is so creepy. Such a bummer. Oh my God. And then Taryn Egerton, like crying in his cell after having to hear, and he's just like,

oh, it's so good. Blackbird, you guys sure? It's so good. Also, Taryn Egerton or Edgerton, and you don't know how to pronounce it, because he's Welsh, so that's the perfect excuse for an American, yeah. But he was in, obviously, he was in Rocket Man, an amazing, like, I saw that movie and I was like, holy shit, who is this guy? Oh, incredible.

If you haven't seen Rocket Man, so worth it. It's such a beautiful, wonderfully executed thing. I hate shit like that, too, by the way, and I fucking love it, Vincent, I both fucking loved it. It's irresistible. Yeah. Biopics make me uncomfortable in a deep, deep way, like musicals do, but this. And this is kind of both, yeah.

Yeah, it was both. And I loved it. Okay, yeah. Okay, the other one was. He's just so good and you don't expect, yeah, he's such a good performer, but then he also was in Me, My Dad, and Nora's favorite movie of, let's say, 2017, I can't remember when it came out, Eddie the Eagle, which is a true story about a British guy who all his life wanted to be in the Olympics and figured out that the most likely way he could do that

was to do the long jump in the Winter Olympics, and he did it. And it is the funniest fucking story, and Taryn Egerton plays the guy. And once again, he shows up and you would have no idea it was him. I love it. He's such a good actor. That's such a great premise for your life. I know. I love that.

I was going to say for a movie, but it's real, like a premise for your life. Let's get on board with those. I know where you're kind of like, my goal is this weird thing that's really broad. I'll just figure out how to get there by any means necessary. It's not like the thing I love is this and I want to get here. I want to get here. How do I make A to B? Another thing that you recommended that this is a Karen was right corner that Vince and

I have been binging through COVID, through our COVID adventures is Detectorists. Oh, come on. We can't stop singing that song to each other. I'll be your treasure. Oh, like also that guy that sings that song is an actor. And he's in the show. He performs it once. Yeah.

That show is great. We're on season two or three. We're on season three. I love it. So it makes me want to get a Detector, a Metal Detector. I've always wanted to do that. Those scenes where it's the actual group of Detectorists that meet are some of the funniest. There's so much great comedy in those scenes.

It's like six of them and they're all perfect. They're all perfect. And I have to give a bunch of people credit years ago. I think I said I started it and then whatever was going on at the time I needed something different, but people kept writing to me and saying, go back to it. You will love it. Or I would say something on the show and they'd be like, this is what happens in Detectorists. It's made for you.

So Murderina's new. They knew. And when I finally watched the whole thing and the way it kind of lays out and I don't understand anything about it, but it really is. I almost cried. Oh, yeah. A Detectorist show. And I almost cried.

It's beautiful. And Mackenzie Crook, who plays, who is the taller guy, is the guy from the British office. And he wrote and directed it. It's his project. He's incredible. I love that guy. I love it too. Oh.

Let me do a quick shout out to Murderina's actually, because I was at the airport, I think the Las Vegas airport before. I have one of these too. You do? Okay. Yeah. Or maybe I was in, okay, no, it was on my trip to New York where I got COVID. I was in the bathroom at the airport where everyone in LAX wore a mask.

No one at JFK wore a mask. That was just my observation. No offense, New York. And this girl stopped me and was like, hey, you know, whatever, I work for the company that through your Santa Barbara event, you know, our weekend, she's like, I just work for them. I didn't listen to your podcasts before that. And I, and I've just worked for this event company forever.

I have never, ever been at an event where there's so many nice people and so many people who are so happy and so stoked to be there and so polite. And no one was rowdy and everyone was awesome and everyone like was just getting along. And so she's like, complimented that. And I was like, so honored to be. That's very cool. Isn't that cool? Yeah, because it's all, it's a bunch of cool girls.

Yeah. Yeah, totally. We're very lucky. We don't litter. Girls like us don't litter. We actually keep an eye out for a lot of things. We pick up other people's litter who litter. That's right.

We're the kind of people who will step forward and say, excuse me, the line is over there. Yeah. Or like if you have a cigarette, you put your cigarette out and put it in your pocket till you can find a trash can. Like you don't litter. I don't know why I'm stuck on littering. It seems like a nice girl thing to not litter. It's like a good symbol of how you place the boundaries that are not actual rules.

You don't have to do it, but you do it. Right. And those are our girls. That's right. Or women, or other, or men. There's definitely men at that weekend. Those beyond the binary, everyone. Everybody under the sun is included.

All right. We got a lot of shit taken care of, didn't we? Yeah. That was plenty for our first, oh wait, sorry. We can't continue without discussing the Summerton man was identified. Like for real? Yeah, but I didn't read it because I was so sick of all of these maybes. For real, for real.

And it was the guy that we thought it would be who was in love with the chick who lived nearby and they had a kid. I didn't. Hey, I should read articles instead of skimming headlines. They have the name. He had a relative nearby, he was either getting divorced or divorced, and yeah, so you can look at it. I will read it before the next episode.

That's very exciting. It's pretty fascinating. It is. They don't think he died naturally, but they don't know what happened as far as I remember from what I read. I mean, mysteries being solved is very exciting. There's so many cold cases that are being solved these days that are, it's just like, I mean, we're coming for you, everyone, except not in the Somerton man's case, but everyone

else. Yeah, it's exciting. Seems like not in that case. Yeah. Should we do a little network check-in? Let's do it. Hey, you guys, we have a podcast network. It's called Exactly Right Media.

And over on our movie podcast, I saw what you did. Hosts Millie and Danielle cover two teen thrillers from 1998, your favorites, the faculty and disturbing behavior. Nice. And this week, Michelle Boutot and Jordan Carlos welcome New York City comedian, Nori Davis to adulting. There are, that's our newest show. I hope you guys are listening.

It is so frickin' awesome. We're so proud of it. It's hilarious. People are loving adulting. Yeah. On parent footprint with Dr. Dan, Jennifer Pasteloff, who's the author of On Being Human, A Memoir of Waking Up, Living Real and Listening Hard, joins Dr. Dan. I love that frickin' show.

Just because he's my cousin, because he's really smart. And then the MFM merch store at myfavoritmurder.com, we have the Here's the Thing muscle tea now. You guys were like, we need muscle teas and we were like, that's, is that what's in style now? And you're like, yes, you're old. And so we were like, great. Here it is. So here's the thing.

Fuck everyone. Muscle teas are available. Here's your muscle tea. Here's your fanny pack. Go live your life at your music festival, Youngster. Do it. Enjoy. I love a fanny pack.

And they're excellent. I'm a big fan. All right. You've done it. I think it's in your first, right? Oh, I'm first. Hey, speaking of mysteries. Oh.

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And we're the hosts of Wondery's podcast, Even the Rich, where we bring you absolutely true and absolutely shocking stories about the most famous families and biggest celebrities the world has ever seen. Our newest series is all about the incomparable diva, Whitney Houston. Whitney's voice defined a generation and even after her death, her talent remains unmatched. But her incredible success hit a deeply private pain. In our series, Whitney Houston, Destiny of a Diva, we'll tell you how she hid her true self to make everyone around her happy and how the pressure to be all things to all people

led her down a dark path. Follow Even the Rich wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen ad free on the Amazon Music or Wondery app. Today I'm going to tell you the story of the mysterious 1989 Mount Ahaseidake SOS incident. So there's some Japanese words in here that I'm going to have to try my best to translate, but I haven't studied Japanese in so long, so it might not be great. It's been, since you've been to Japanese school, it's been, it's decades probably. But just put in your best effort until anyone can ask.

Ahaseidake is the name of the mountain. So that's correct, I believe. So the sources used in today's episode are an associated press article, a strange outdoors article, news website, tbs.co, the website, yamahack.com, the blog, tizakasamo.net, an article on the blog, red.cash, the mysterious universe website, an article on listverse.com by Sean Hennessey, some Reddit pages, including where I found the story initially by a user named super underscore king underscore you underscore rule and Wikipedia. So let's start.

On July 24th, 1989, two men from Tokyo are out hiking the Mount Asahadake, which is the tallest mountain on Japan's northernmost island of Hakido. The mountain, which is also known as Mount Asahi, great beer, is around 7,514 feet high and located in the northern part of the Daisetsu Zan National Park. So this big, beautiful Japanese mountain you can imagine, I'm sure it's breathtaking. It's an active stratovolcano, which is basically a volcano which forms out of alternate layers of lava and ash. And stratovolcanoes are also really steep and therefore very cone shaped.

So steam and volcanic gases are emitted from the mountain and then they have these cracks in them. So the steam and stuff comes out the cracks and smaller holes on the surface. I'm sure it looks like an alien planet in the best way. So obviously the mountain attracts a lot of adventurers, skiers, snowboarders in the winter as well. It's also a super popular hiking spot in the summer. It's got a rope way going from the foot of the mountain up to around 5,200 feet.

So it's like you climb this rope up the mountain, like pull yourself up like a cable car kind of. And when you say you, you don't mean me, do you? You don't mean me or you, maybe Steven, he's younger than us. Steven would do it. Steven would do it. Yeah, but I don't know about us. I did hike Mount Fuji in high school.

You do? What? Yes. My dad took my sister and I and we hiked Mount Fuji, but it was like old people were doing it too. So it wasn't as exciting as that. What was the steepest part, like did it get steep? I think the steepest part was probably the very end when you go to like the summit.

We hiked it overnight so that the sun rose through the clouds and then you got to see it. And they like pumped music up there and everything like to make it, you feel like you feel really patriotic. The eye of the tiger. Was it eye of the tiger? Yes, it was. Oh my God.

Wow. That's epic. That's very cool. Yeah. Nice one, Steven. It's truly one of the coolest things I've ever experienced. Yeah. Was there a rope anywhere?

Yes. There was a rope all along the side so you could hang on it too. So. Okay. That's a nice place with a rope. Got it. Okay. Very cool.

So even though the summer is ideal for hiking, the weather's great, the temperature differences between the base of the mountain and the summit can be as much of a difference as 68 degrees Fahrenheit. So that's pretty a lot. The altitude also means conditions can change quickly, resulting in plummeting temperatures and cloud cover severely limiting visibility, which can disorient even the most experienced hikers. You also got to have that chapstick because the wind kicks up or some weird sun thing.

Oh, ouch. I'm getting that feeling where you're going to make me go up this mountain and so what do I need? Grab your chapstick, Karen. Chapstick's number one. So on July 24th, 1989, these two men from Tokyo are out hiking Mount Asahideke. They're hiking the mountain and that evening authorities are alerted that the men, these two men, and I can't find their name anywhere, otherwise I would shout them out even though

they might not want that to happen. The men haven't come back from their hike, so rescue helicopters are dispatched. And as rescuers fly over the area of the start of this river called Chubetsu, about two and a half miles from the Mount Summit, they spot something that gives them hope that maybe these men are safe because it's really dangerous. Obviously, they set them the helicopters and searchers out immediately because at night it's freezing temperatures, like you can't make it through the night. And sorry, it's an active volcano?

Yeah, I don't know if it's active, meaning they're worried it's going to explode at any time or it's just like, it's still working. The plumbing's still there. The plumbing is still on, the water's turned on, but nothing really happens, got it. Exactly. So from the air, the helicopters are able to spot a huge sign on the slope of the mountain that clearly spells out S-O-S in English. The sign appears to have been made from huge logs, dra-

Sorry. What? What did I say? So it was in English, but I mean like- Yeah, that's right. Is there a Japanese- Just nodded Japanese characters? Because I was just like, oh wow, got it, wait, aren't those letters?

It's just a sign. That was on me, I had to think about that a lot. No, it makes sense though. The sign appears to have been made from huge logs dragged into position from nearby birch trees. So you can imagine, if it's on this mountain and the helicopters are able to spot it, that means they're humongous logs spelling it out. It would have taken considerable effort to build, given each letter measures about 16

feet long and 10 feet wide. The logs have also been stacked three high. So someone was fucking making this sign when these guys wanted to be saved, obviously. As the choppers do a sweep of the area, they spot the lost hikers about two miles north of the SOS sign. As you can imagine, it's a relief for everyone. The men are exhausted and taken to a hospital to be assessed. And they explain that they were caught in a flash flood and had to seek refuge inside

a cave. The other thing about this mountain is that brown bears, the biggest dicks of the bear world are all over the mountain. Yep. Right? I made that up. It could be black bears that are the biggest dicks, but I don't- I mean-

I bet Grizzly or Kodiak is going to be in there, too. But here's the thing about any of those bears, their hands can kill you just for- if they were just like, oh, there's a fly by your face, you're dead immediately. Like, even if they meant it in a nice way and they never do, but if they did, it wouldn't matter because they have like five knives on there. What if there was one who did mean it in a nice way and he just kept killing his friends because he was like- because the flies just kept flying around him. Oh, let me get just- oh, not another one.

Jack, I'm sorry. This one's on me again. Again. My bad. I'm a bear. Okay, but the guys are in generally good shape. It's a happy ending. Authorities tell the men that their practical thinking and constructing that SOS sign is

what saved their lives. But the hikers are like, what are you fucking talking about? No, they're not. They have no idea what their rescuers were talking about. They didn't construct any sign and they didn't see any sign while they were hiking either. They were simply overwhelmed with relief when they saw the helicopters approaching and were like, yeah, get us to fuck out of here. No clue about the SOS sign.

Ooh, I like this. So now everyone's confused, if the hikers didn't construct the sign, then who the fuck did, right? Japanese media gets wind of the story, which is so baffling that a Hokkaido TV reporter, Kobu Arabatani, decides to accompany the police out to the mountain to take a look for himself, which I guess you can do in Japan. You know, they're just trying to look into it. Yeah.

Journalist style. That's right. You know. After the two Tokyo men had been rescued on July 29th, Koyo and the police searched the area surrounding the SOS sign for any indication of anyone else that could possibly be stranded. And they hope that if someone had gone missing recently, they can be rescued too. But about 165 feet away from the sign, Koyo, the journalist, comes across a large hole dug underneath the roots of some trees.

It's not huge, but it's big enough for an adult-sized human to hide if they need shelter from the elements and those motherfucking brown bears, those bears. So Koyo climbs inside this hole. No, what? I know. Seriously, like how many thousands of dollars would it take for you to climb into a hole on a mountain? Also be like, are there any bears in there?

Hi. How about snakes? How about those weird pill bugs that you just wouldn't want on you? No. You could name a thousand animals. You know, like Japan probably has some insects that rival Australian insects too. Absolutely. Right?

Like in a beautiful way, but also in a like, don't climb into a fucking pit way. Okay, let's share with this, I mean, truly, I hope this reporter is making a bank. He's fine. He's fine. Yeah. It all turns out fine. Well, that's the point is that he's trying to make bank, I think. He goes inside and he makes a bizarre discovery.

There's a notebook, two cameras, and a driver's license in the hole. The name on the license is Kenji Iwamoru, who's from Conan City in the Aichi Perfecture. Don't know where that is personally. I don't know anything you just said. It's tough. This is all the way across the world. Yeah. I do subscribe to this incredible Japanese tea time, like sweets and tea box, but so far

these places haven't been covered in it. No one's mentioned any of these mountains or animals or reporters. So the mystery deepens, 25-year-old worker Kenji has indeed gone missing while hiking on the mountain, but not recently. The last time anyone had seen him is five years earlier on July 10th, 1984. At the time, Kenji had been staying at a lodge on the mountain. He told the proprietor he was going to go for a hike. He doesn't make it back to the lodge to get his belongings.

We don't know a ton about Kenji except from the fact that he's really into anime, and he has an interest in computers having been a graduate of the Kyoto Institute of Technology. So police look further into his disappearance, and he had set out on his solo hike, and he hadn't returned to work even a week later. So clearly no one was really paying attention at the lodge that he was missing. So Kenji's parents finally report him missing to police. At the time, back then, an extensive search is undertaken for him on the mountain. There's no sign of him anywhere.

And police just conclude that he'd lost his way, and they stopped searching. So it isn't hard to actually get lost on this mountain. So it isn't a huge coincidence because it's not a long hike up the mountain, but on the way back down, there are two large boulders, which hikers use as markers to get their bearings. One boulder is known as safe rock, and that leads down to the town where you start from. But the other boulder, it has a rope around it so that you can tell it's not the same rock, and it's called, you ready for this? It's called fake safe rock.

So one's called safe rock. The other, they were like tied a bow around it, and were like, this is fake. Do not fall for this. No, don't fall for this. And so that's situated on a trail that leads off a cliff. Oh, God. Yeah. And the problem is the boulders look almost identical, except for the bow.

Rope. I keep falling in a bow because it just sounds so useless. Of all the ways to delineate that second boulder, tie a rope around it. Get some red paint and just fucking cover it. And then put a sign in as many languages as you can find to say, don't go this way. Just says no on it. It's very common for inexperienced hikers to confuse those two, even in good weather, because they're the same fucking rock.

So hikers to setting the mountain who use the quote, fake safe rock as their guidepost on accident, find themselves in the area where the rescuers found the SOS sign. So it's likely that Kenji went towards the fake rock. It's a spot where thick, tall bamboo grass makes it all but impossible to navigate down the mountain coupled with the fact that it leads to a cliff. So back to 1989, when they found the two hikers safe in the SOS sign, police are conducting that thorough search of the area where the journalist Koyo finds them. And they make an intriguing yet ultimately gruesome discovery near the SOS sign.

They locate a knapsack containing a towel, soap, a tripod, a pair of men's sneakers, a cassette recorder, and four cassette tapes. And they also find another thing, they find human bones, which appear to have sustained bite marks from animal activity. So some of the bones are broken, perhaps while the person was still alive, and the skeletonized remains are sent for testing. Then the authorities put one of the cassette tapes in the recorder and hit play. They hear the theme music from your favorite Japanese anime TV show, Karen, the super dimension

fortress macros and magical princess Miki Momo. Is that right? It's so good. Well, the thing about, it's a lot like the bear. It's really stressful. They work at a restaurant. No. I've never heard of this show before.

But from ever on after today, you are like make the bear, what's it called when you compare things to the bear? Just that has nothing to fucking do with it. Yes. It's always going to be in relation to the bear. Yeah. Yeah. No, from now on.

But then they're listening to this tape of the theme music and then something else comes on the tape and recording lasting a total of two minutes and 17 seconds, the distressed and disjointed voice of an unidentified man can be heard clearly yelling for help. So someone pressed, because it's an old Walkman, right? Probably or whatever. So someone pressed record so they could record over the whatever was on the cassette. Remember when you had to do that to record off the radio? Oh, yeah.

So it's basically someone for two minutes and 17 seconds freaking out and saying that they're lost. The rough translation. So I guess there's only 16 seconds of the recording that exists publicly. You can find it in a YouTube video. And the rough translation is, but it's in Japanese, everyone, so do that what you will. Yeah. The rough translation is, quote, SOS help me.

I can't move on the cliff, SOS help me. The places where I first met the helicopter, I can't move further due to bamboo brush being in the way, please get me out of here. So super eerie, it doesn't totally make sense because he's talking about a place where he first met a helicopter, meaning he might have seen one of the helicopters trying to save him, thought they spotted him and they didn't, something like that. And he's slowly enunciating every word and you know how much you love like trauma recordings. That's kind of your favorite 911 calls and stuff, your favorite thing in the world.

I say no. But there's nothing to suggest the man is talking to anyone. It's clearly him just recording this thing to like get to people to try to save him. Police play the recording for Kenji's parents and they can't tell for sure whether it's their son or not, but they do confirm that the knapsack and the other items, all the stuff is his. And meanwhile, the forensic testing on the human skeleton comes back as those belonging to a woman aged between 20 and 40 years old with type O blood.

So which doesn't look like what Kenji had, I think. So it's not even a male's body. So that's a sudden weird twist-a-roo, right? Like who's bones are these, right? But then there's also mentioned that the bones could belong to more than one person. But of course this all creates confusion. There's no record of any woman being in that age range going missing on the mountain and Kenji was by himself anyway.

So following the test results more than six months later, police then finally announced that they believe the remains are actually of a man with type A blood type, which is Kenji's blood type. So that's a little suspicious too, but it was 1990. So maybe they weren't as good at telling whether a skeleton belongs to a man or woman. I don't know. Yeah. The tech wasn't there.

Or maybe it was easier to confuse. Yeah. But then just don't say anything. Right. Just say, can I have two more days, please? Right. Or can you send this to a bigger lab? Send it to Tokyo.

Tokyo is like advanced. You know it is. They've always had the biggest, best billboards and light-up neon signs. There's no way their DNA stuff in the 80s wasn't totally kick-ass. That's right. Have you ever been anywhere over there in Asia? Dying to. Japan someday for sure, yeah.

We're going. Yeah. Yeah. So it's looking more and more like the skeleton is definitely Kenji's. And the man on the tape, it's not certain, but it's probably Kenji and his SOS recording. And it looks like he's definitely the person who created the giant SOS as well, although it is very, very heavy. And if he had broken bones to begin with, it might have been impossible for him to do

it. So maybe it wasn't him. It's not like 100% sure that it was him, but the time frame fits based on aerial photos as well. Okay. But it would have taken him around two days to build and would have involved a lot of heavy physical work. And the logs would have had to be chopped down unless there was foresting going on at the

time, which they don't think there was, but there was never any hatchet found on the scene either. So super weird and mysterious. So although he didn't survive his perilous hike and that SOS sign never saved him, it did help to rescue two other hikers five years later. So in a way, he's kind of a hero because who knows if those two hikers would have been found if that SOS sign hadn't been spotted by the helicopters trying to save them. So that is the story of the mysterious 1989 Mount Asahidake SOS incident.

That is the craziest coincidence or I guess coincidence is the wrong word because it was a problem area on the mountain. To me, what's weird is helicopters had not seen that sign in the five years between. Five years. Because other people had to go missing. It's almost, it is a crazy weird coincidence and like a, you know, this, and it's so sad story of the sky getting stuck out there. He probably succumbed to the elements or starvation or a bear who the fuck knows.

Maybe clearly was trying to survive for a while if he had the holes that he was in, like he had the hole. He recorded this message and he made this SOS sign. That sounds like it would have been really, really hard even for an able-bodied person who has food and no broken limbs to make. So it's a pretty incredible story. Completely baseless idea, but if say those bones were actually identified correctly in the beginning, it was a woman's bones between 20 and 40.

Like they said, what if there was another person lost out there that he found a woman wandering out there and then they made that SOS thing together. And then something like they didn't get rescued and then someone got, you know, something terrible happened. Can we get those bones tested again? Can this be our new Summerton man? Yeah, we need a replacement for Summerton man. I mean, that's just like, that is a fascinating story though.

That's just so, like everybody knows how we feel about the forest and the dangers that lie within. There's just so many. Stay out of it. There are many, please. Very compelling and also very, you know, I think I've mentioned this to you before, but I read the book, Mysterious California, and it does talk about how like Mount Shasta does have lizard humanoid creatures that walk around in golf clothes.

Sure, sure, sure. Not lizard heads, but golf shirts and stuff like that. I do think there is a, the mystery element to like a mountain being up on a mountain where people don't normally go, the higher you get, the elevation and the elements. What could be living in the mountain if you did find a cave that actually brought you into the mountain? Especially if it's volcanic, right? So you are into like conspiracy about like, we don't really know what's at the bottom

of the ocean or inside a mountain. Entirely. It's one of my worst habits because I've talked about like things like the complete in terms of archaeology, garbage show, ancient aliens. I'm not defending that because I believe in aliens, so we can have this conversation all day. Yes. I mean, the alien part is separate, but they continually talk on ancient aliens about

how it has to be aliens that helped build the pyramids of Giza or the any of the wonders of the world or whatever, where it's like, absolutely not. That was just unchecked, hideous slavery, right? And we were actually probably smarter back then compared to now. Right. We do think we're progressing always and it's like, maybe we're not, dude. We're not. Have you seen the internet ever?

Have you seen Roe versus Wade lately? They pulled that thing apart for the absolute detriment of society just to kind of like weirdly prove a point. It is, it's insanity. It's on the same thing that they used back then, which is that it's, which is someone else's religion that other people don't even fucking believe in, but they have to abide by your religious fucking laws because you happen to be in charge in the moment, pharaohs or whatever.

And so you're using slave labor or Republicans, so you're using slave labor. I did see a really great protest sign that said, if you don't like abortion, ignore it like you do school shootings. Did you see the one that was like, so glad that my pregnant 10 year old will be able to read religious studies on the wall of their school while they're hiding from shooters? Oh God. They put it all in one sentence. Yeah.

Guys, we're laughing. We are horrified and it's disgusting. We're laughing because the reality we live in that now includes monkeypox being the new thing. The new thing. Like it's too much. It's beyond. It's bad for human beings to live in a society where these things have been accepted.

Yeah. Off the grid. Off the grid. Let's go. Continue the fight. Well, here's my story for you. Uh-oh. Okay.

Here we go. I think I'm just going to get into it and I'll tell you why I picked this story three quarters to eight tenths of the way through it. Great. But I'm just going to tell you it's Alaska's 1964 Good Friday earthquake. Can I show you something? No one's going to be able to see this, but my toes curled when you said that. Are you hanging on?

Because I'm so excited. I'm curling my toes in excitement, and I just showed Karen on Zoom. It's a big one. Get ready. Okay. The main sources used in today's story are the chronology of physical events of the Alaskan earthquake by Jeannie Chance from 1966. You'll learn more about Jeannie Chance in this story.

She's basically the reason that there are eyewitness stories about the experience of going through this earthquake. And then there's a book called This Is Chance, the great Alaska earthquake, Jeannie Chance and the shattered city she held together by John Muallum. There's a book called On Shaky Ground, America's Earthquake Alert by John Nance. The 1964 great Alaska earthquake and tsunamis, a modern perspective and enduring legacies by the United States, your favorite author, the United States Geological Survey. And then there's lots more sources that will be in our show notes that you can go look

at if you're interested in any of these things. Okay, cool. So it is Friday, March 27th, 1964, and that's good Friday for all those Catholics out there. You're eating fish. You are going to probably a morning mass. That's the Friday that kicks off the Easter weekend. So in the story of Jesus and his sacrifice for all of us, it started on Friday. I'm not going to explain the whole thing.

So I have, is that, okay, is Ash Wednesday, two days earlier? Ash Wednesday, no, no. Okay. You guys like your days. God, there's days and there's ashes and there's repentance and there's thinking about stuff and there's asking for forgiveness. But really, you know you don't deserve it. Okay.

There was a thing going to Catholic school, there's a thing called the stations of the cross that they do not make kids do anymore. And I think we were the last generation. And it is one of the weirdest, oldest, kind of like most old fashioned, weird medieval, like the priest has incense and he's just, he's waving a thing of incense around. And you basically, in Catholic churches, they have station, what they call stations of the cross. And it's every step of the way of what happened to Jesus on his way to being crucified.

Oh, fun. And you just kind of go over it, you know, when you're like 12, you just like, hey, don't forget. It's amazing. Okay. Why did they stop it? Because it's traumatizing for children? Yeah, it also takes like, it might, yeah, they don't care about that.

But at our school, like I think schools don't do it anymore, because the parents, it basically Gen X parents showed up and were like, we're not doing this anymore. Yeah. Girls would always faint during stations of the cross. It took like three hours. It was just constant like praying, kneeling, standing, sitting. It was very old school. Okay.

It has nothing to do with this story. Okay, good. But now I'm obsessed in my mind. I'm like, wait, is Ash Wednesday before the Wednesday before Easter Sunday? But I don't think it is. I think it's earlier in the year. Because you know, it's like a whole season of repentance. Yeah.

Okay. But I could be wrong and I'm in a lot of trouble if I'm wrong. Going to hell. My grandmother truly is coming up out of her grave to be like, are you kidding me? Okay. So it's good Friday, the Friday before Easter Sunday. In Anchorage, Alaska, a woman named Jeannie Chance is at home enjoying a rare quiet moment to herself.

The 37 year old Texas transplant is a reporter at a local radio station and a busy working mom of three. She originally took the job at the radio station to supplement her family's income after moving to Alaska and in doing so, she became the young state's first female broadcaster 64. That's when everything was changing and Alaska at the time was only five years old. So yeah, it's all new and fresh and whatever. So in an era where many women in news exclusively covered topics like cooking or housekeeping, Jeannie just wants to be out in the field.

She is all about covering more ambitious, more compelling stories, which of course annoys some of her male colleagues who find her professional drive to be incompatible with the domestic duties of a wife and mother. Oh, go back and be in kitchen. I'm hungry. I mean hungry. But I wrote in spite of this dumb bullshit, Jeannie is excellent at her job. She covers everything from local crime to dog sled races and she's known for showing

up on location day or night to cover breaking news. So she's in it. I mean like she just is. It's a hard to fuck yourself to the man. Yeah. She's just kind of like, well, I know you want me to stay home, but that's your problem with your mother that you need to solve. I'm going to live my life as a badass reporter.

Yeah. I know you don't care for abortion rights, but that's your problem. It's your problem. Get a vasectomy. Get someone pregnant, yeah, who you don't want. Snip it off. Yeah. Solve the problem for yourself and let other people live.

Yeah. Okay. Let's not upstage Jeannie. So she has a signature sign off that is this is Jeannie Chance, K-E-N-I News on the Go. So you can just picture. She's got like a little London fog raincoat that she wears and she also carries a tape recorder with the record button on it and a microphone attached to it. She's all about it.

Okay. So it's just before 5.30 in the evening on Friday, March 27th. And Jeannie is being forced to switch into her mom mode, which is the other job that she excels at. Her oldest son has interrupted her moment of peace with a problem. He forgot to buy the manual that he's required to bring to a swimming lesson the next day. So Jeannie lectures him on procrastination, pulls on her boots, hops in the car and pulls out onto the road.

She's going to go take care of business like all working moms do. So she comes, she slows to a stop at a red light and suddenly her car starts bouncing up and down. And the first thing that she thinks that she, that like a tire blew out. And then the car bucks again and she looks up and she watches the traffic light go out. And then she hears the horrible sound of metal grating on metal. And across the intersection, cars that had been parked neatly in a row are now violently smashing into one another and before separating, like over and over again, like an accordion

folding in and out. So Jeannie basically just holds onto that steering wheel and she keeps her foot pressed down on the brake, hoping it'll somehow steady her shaking car. Her mom's moving a mile a minute. She doesn't really understand what's happening and then finally she realizes this is an earthquake. And the same thing happened to my dad in the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. He was driving across Petaluma and he thought he got a flat tire. And that was a big one, right?

It was huge. Yeah. But not as big as this one. I have been in a little earthquake in a car before that we all remembered driving over a pothole or something like that. It's such a weird sensation. It's the ground moving under your tires. Like that's crazy.

Yeah. So from an epicenter 75 miles away and 15 feet underground, nearly 600 miles of fault lines are rupturing in real time. And this is just the beginning of a disaster that will change Alaska and the whole world around it forever. This is the start of the largest earthquake North America has ever seen. Holy shit. I don't know anything about this.

Right? Okay. So in 1964, Alaska has only been a state for five years, but it has a long, rich native history proceeding at statehood and enduring colonization by Russians and the eventual purchase by the United States. So Anchorage is the capital and that's a big city that's evolving. It does retain its frontier sensibilities. And of course it welcomes tourists into its very nice hotels, its luxury apartment buildings.

They even have a JCPenney downtown, which is actually a feather in Anchorage's cap because it's proof that big U.S. companies believe in this burgeoning city enough to put down roots in it. But a hundred miles away, it's a little bit different in the coastal city of Valdez. So not far from Alaska's postcard worthy Prince William Sound region with the snow-capped mountains, crystal blue waters, glaciers, orcas, you've seen it. Valdez has a population of about 1,200 people, but that number is actually on the decline because this city's town, we should say, is not the most future-oriented town.

And on top of that, it was hastily built on spongy, unsustainable ground during the gold rush with really no thought toward longevity or sustainability. So it's kind of, it's a gold rush town that's been in decline. Right. They didn't try to make a permanent town. They were like, this is temporary gold rush. Gold rush, right? And gold rush all the way up in Alaska where, you know, when the gold rush was happening,

that was just territory. Yeah. Have you been to Alaska? I have. Me too. Did you go on a cruise there? Did you? Yes.

That's how I went. I didn't. Did you, would you just drive up there? No, I've made a TV show for a cooking channel. Oh, that's right. Did you have some sweets up there? No, this is a different one. This is mine and Ally's TV show tripping out with Ally and Georgia, and we went to Homer

and ate reindeer. And I got seasick. The end. Yeah. That's right. It's really beautiful. And it's so cool. It's like breathtaking.

It's so rugged. I mean, talk about like gorgeous mountains and the scenery is like unbelievable. Everything, the air is really clean. And everyone's so nice because they're so like, you came here. Yeah. Let's be like, what's the word? Hospital? I don't know.

Hospital. Okay. So it's a Valdez quiet town. Not much happens, but it is a harbor town. So if anything's going to happen, it kind of usually is there. Yeah. That's where it happens. And on this day, coverage in the Valdez Times newspaper is just as you'd expect for a small

sleepy town. There's articles about a high school student who just won a blue ribbon at a science fair in Anchorage. It's big news. There's marriage announcements. There's movie listings for Mickey Roney and Jack Plants films that are playing nearby. But the biggest story in town that weekend is the arrival of the SS China, which is a huge ship that comes in to basically, you know, it comes in every once in a while and

it brings supplies, fresh produce, you know, Easter flowers for this holiday weekend. And it basically represents connection to the outside world that when you're that remote in such a remote location, it really, it's really nice for the people that live there. So and also local men get jobs when those ships come in unloading all the cargo. And for the most part, it's just really entertaining. So like those ships come in, all the citizens go down to the harbor. They just want to see the big ship up close, parents bring their kids, the kids are greeted by crew members of the ship with little treats like fruit and candies.

So the SS China is basically the biggest news in town that Easter weekend. So 13 year old Tom Gibson is one of the many Valdez residents who's excited to go down and see the China on that Friday night. So just after 5.30 that night, he and his older brother and a couple of friends get into a car and they're driving down toward the waterfront. They're nearing the waterfront when the earth starts shaking. They of course don't have any idea, again, being in a car during an earthquake, you kind of don't know what's going on.

And Tom would later say his field of vision became like a fun house mirror. Everything got wobbly and warped. And for a moment, the boys thought maybe other kids were jumping on the car as a prank and bouncing it up and down. So the driver stops and the boys can't believe their eyes because the road in front of them has begun undulating like a wave in the ocean, cresting and falling in a cycle. So of course they all panic, Tom reaches for his door handle, but because the road is rising and falling so dramatically, when he goes to open the car door, it hits pavement and

gets jammed. Oh my God. So they can't get out of the car until the road goes back down. They have to wait for the cycle to end to open the car and escape the car. Holy shit. Just all of a sudden, reality is altered in this way where you have to adapt to, oh, the road is like fluid. No.

That's fucking crazy. Yeah. So basically, they do this thing where they all basically have to figure out when they can open the car doors to get out and run. They all get out. Back on the SS China, the captain, Captain Stewart, scrambles from the dining room to the ship's deck and he looks out at the pier in Valdez. Moments ago, it was crowded and bustling with families, kids and parents everywhere.

Now he sees an absolute horror show, crowds of adults and children, quote, running in all directions, trying to keep their footing as the dock buckled and split up. So the dock from the movement. Ah. At like the worst possible moment. Yes. Crowded with people. Similar scenes of horror are happening all over South Central Alaska at this same moment

as this quake violently shakes the earth and many cities, including Valdez, oil tanks explode, causing huge fires. In Seward, train tracks buckle and box cars split apart and go in different directions off of train tracks. Yeah. People in Anchorage run from falling debris and as they run, fall into huge cracks that just open up in the ground. Your favorite.

Others are buried in the rubble of falling buildings. What's weird is as opposed to a sinkhole that's like kind of a big, a sinkhole falls into the ground in this sensical way. The pictures that I've seen of these, it's like a seam opens in the air. It's like that movie that the rock was in, San Andreas, where you're just like, that then happened. It's like, no, that is literally what happens. And is what's going to happen in the next 10 years.

True. Keep water by your bed or whatever. Keep your shoes and your flashlights nearby. Okay. There's people who fall into holes. There's also people who weren't able to get away from the buildings and they're either inside or running outside and they just get buried in the rubble from the falling buildings. Oh my God.

So just to give you a sense of how big this earthquake is, the one I was just talking about, the 89 Loma Prieta earthquake in the Bay Area of San Francisco, California, injured 4,000 people. It lasted 15 seconds and it had a magnitude of 6.9. So that was just like a huge, crazy jolt. There was an earthquake in January of 2010 that hit Haiti, that killed hundreds of thousands of people. It lasted 30 seconds and it had a magnitude of 7.0.

And of course, a very famous earthquake, which is the 06 earthquake of San Francisco, one of the deadliest in history, it lasted basically between 45 and 60 seconds. It had a magnitude of 7.9. The Alaskan earthquake of 1964 had a 9.2 magnitude and it lasted for four minutes. No. Yes. Four minutes. That's too long.

If you're from California, you know that even just short jolts are really scary, the sustained, that idea of a sustained earthquake like that is horrifying. And also, this one isn't the biggest ever. In 1960, there was an earthquake in Chile. It was a 9.5 magnitude and it lasted 10 minutes. I want to explain to people who have never been in an earthquake how fucking weird it is and it feels like it goes on forever and ever, even when it's 15 seconds. And I remember someone I know explaining, they were in the Northridge earthquake and

the way they explained, they lived in an apartment and they got up and were looking out the window as the earthquake happened and normally across the window, like through the window, they could see the apartment next door. But they remember seeing sky because the ground was shaking and moving so much that the apartment building next to them had just swayed out of sight. That's how fucking eerie and weird it is and don't know if it's about to get bigger and worse. Like you're just standing there hoping it'll end soon, waiting, waiting, waiting.

You just think like get under a table, get in the doorway, which is what we were taught. It's just so freaky. It's so freaky and I, yeah, I kind of can't get over 9.0. It's just so wild, but then to have it just go on and on. And then it makes me wonder if it gets that high, I wonder if the plate shifting, the reason it lasts so long is because if it goes past a certain point, it's going to be long. I don't know. Send us your expertise.

No, send us your earthquake stories and tell us what it's like for you and your expertise on everything. Okay, so of course four minutes of the earth violently shaking is extremely disturbing and disorienting, but there's almost no time literally in this case it only seconds for people to get their bearings before the next hellish chapter of this disaster begins. Almost as soon as the ground begins to shake, large amounts of seawater retract from the shore. So this is what happens in big earthquakes that I didn't know until very recently and

I find it insanely fascinating and apparently it didn't go quietly either. There's a very loud booming roar as the water in the harbor of Valdez is sucked away back out into the ocean and then it rushes back in and basically 98 million cubic yards of shore go out into the ocean with also with all the debris that's been broken down into the ocean and it comes back as a tsunami. And when it does retract, 50 feet of seafloor is exposed in the harbor. So wild. Which is just mind boggling and then also I'm like, wait, treasure.

I know, I'm like, detector is out there, run out to foot 48 and find something. Okay, so basically back. So that's happening in the ocean on land with the earthquake still active, 13 year old Tom is rushing down the street trying to figure out where to go next and amid all the chaos, he looks down toward the waterfront and he sees something that makes no sense. The SS China, which is a massive cargo ship is flipped on its side and suspended by a huge wave above the docks to the point where its propeller was visibly spinning in the air.

So basically when that tsunami wave came back in, it took that ship with it and that ship crested the wave as it came in and hit basically the port in Valdez. And of course, the water has all kinds of debris. It's basically starting a second disaster situation within a disaster situation. So horrible. So on board the SS China, Captain Stuart and the other crew members hang on as the boat is whipped around the harbor. So they just have to go with what's happening, like that boat is just going with where the

water takes it. It crashes into the Valdez docks where people had been gathered just minutes ago, then it scrapes the bottom of the ocean as the water is sucked back out to sea. When the water rushes back in, the ship crashes into a marina where smaller boats are docked. And then once again, scraping bottom, it gets pulled back out. Basically the China is tossed over a Valdez cannery that had been completely submerged in the tsunami. Basically in Captain Stuart's account of that day, there was a point where the ship took,

as he calls it, a tremendous role that he did not think it was going to come back from. The dock in Valdez is gone. Dozens of people have been killed at the waterfront. And also three of the China's crew members are killed. So back in Anchorage, which is a hundred miles away, remember, Jeannie Chance is still in her car and her car is still moving back and forth. She's actually to the point where she's worried the car is going to flip over. That's how much it was moving.

She keeps her foot pressed on the brake to try to steady it, which we don't know if that really would be working or if that's just to make her feel better. The outside world is blurry, but she can make out three people, a man with two women who are clinging to a brick wall of a building on a sidewalk nearby. And then she watches as the foundations of the building splits, a crack goes up the wall, the wall sways outward and throws those three people to the ground. And then finally the earth stops shaking. In the town of Anchorage, the bulk of the damage is only from ground movement and landslides.

They didn't have the same water problem that Valdez had. Over 200 homes and 150 commercial buildings, as well as roads and bridges, are completely destroyed in this earthquake. Oh my God. Anchorage is not a huge town to begin with. So it's really leveled. Their downtown has hit really hard. Fissures open, some sidewalks and streets drop 10 feet into the earth, and buildings crumble

onto pedestrians and onto parked cars. There's actually this unbelievable picture we're going to show this to you super quick. That's workers. Oh my God. Can you see that? Yeah, it's a map. That's like a street, a normal street, but they're trying, like the street itself has dropped down below, the sidewalk has dropped down, and then the workers, yeah, they're

just trying to get people out of those buildings. Like the front, you can't come out of a building because the street below has moved so much that there's some, some doors were completely, completely blocked by a sidewalk higher than it was before. Like it kind of goes up in the air. It's just crazy. It's wild. It's chaotic.

The JCPenney building, which was the emblem of Anchorage's corporate endorsement, looks like a demolition site. And the Anchorage Airport's control tower was toppled to the ground, killing the air traffic controller who was working inside. Oh, bother. Oh, it just went over, horrible. So when the earthquake ends, Jeannie instantly switches into reporter mode, as you know she would.

Right. She seems to be the only motorist daring enough to start her engine again, and she drives three blocks to the Anchorage Public Safety Building. She gets there basically 60 seconds after the earthquake stops. And once she's there, she figures she'll find a first responder or a city official to interview and get a report ready to go for the evening news. But instead, Jeannie's greeted by an overwhelmed city official who essentially offloads the job of public information officer onto her.

But Jeannie takes it in stride. That night and into the weekend, Jeannie reports live on the radio from her outpost in the Anchorage Public Safety Building, relaying information from public health and safety officials as aftershocks continue to rattle the building. She tells listeners how to use snow to make safe drinking water and where shelters are being set up for those people whose homes have been destroyed. She even begins to make connections between separated family members. People are actually walking up to Jeannie's counter at the Public Safety Building and sharing

their full names for Jeannie to read on air to spread the messages to their loved ones that they survived and they're okay. She works straight through that Friday night. She only signs off at two hour nap on Sunday afternoon, and she wakes up and goes straight back to broadcasting. Wow. I believe she broadcasts for like 96 hours basically and became like the central communication post for all these poor people whose everything had just been leveled.

Back in Valdez, the SS China is finally pulled out into deeper waters where it's knocked around the sea for a while, but the ship has miraculously survived. Captain Stewart is able to anchor the China about a half mile from shore, and from there he starts using his radio to dispatch messages about the destruction in Valdez. The ship becomes an important resource for the area in the coming days, providing the only source of outside communication for the town until the US Army arrives. So basically they saw what happened, they know that there's all these people in crisis, and so they just stay out at sea and basically broadcast, letting everybody know like you

got to get up here. Around 10 PM, five hours after the initial quake, Captain Stewart watches from the sea as fires burn throughout Valdez. He describes the scene that evening as ghastly and one that will keep him awake for days saying quote, I saw people running with no place to run to. They were just engulfed by buildings, water, mud, everything. Oh my God. So of course the damage is heavy across Southern Alaska.

Chenega, which is the oldest native settlement in the Prince William Sound region, loses a third of its population after a 65 foot wave crashes into the small village minutes after the first jolt. Almost every single building in this settlement is destroyed by this tidal wave. The native villages of Old Harbor, Afognak, Ozynki, are also damaged in the disaster. And in Kagoayak, all but three buildings are leveled. And in that city, all photos of the village were lost from before 1964. So any recorded photo from Gold Rush, from anything, it all gone.

Oh, Ivee, tragic. In Seward, which has one of Alaska's busiest ports, ground movement from the quake causes waterfront oil tanks to go up in flames almost immediately. And then as the waves come in and pummel the town, basically the fuel is spreading and on fire on the water. So it's like the fuel just gets spread all over. But it's on fire, it gets spread by water and then catches everything else on fire. It's like a nightmare.

The height of the tsunami waves vary from place to place, but the largest reportedly reaches an incredible 200 feet high in Shoup Bay, which is not far from Valdez. That's taller than the Leaning Tower of Pisa. That's fucking insane. It's a tidal wave. Yeah. It's horrifying. Or a tsunami.

The earthquake is so massive, it reverberates all the way down the west coast of the United States. It causes the space needle in Seattle to sway. The open ocean tsunami wave that was triggered by the earthquake also travels south. It hits open ocean speeds of over 400 miles an hour and up to 150 feet at sea. It causes damage along the coasts of British Columbia and into Washington state. These begin hitting Oregon around 11 o'clock and this is so tragic. There's a family on the beach and four children are swept away by this tsunami wave that no

one knew was coming. A short time later, multiple waves, Battle Crescent City, California, including one that was 20 feet tall, 11 people are killed there. The initial tsunami wave shrunk to a few feet by the time it reached San Francisco, but it still manages to tear down a pier that had 30 boats attached to it. The jolt from this earthquake was so severe that it briefly caused the entire continent of North America to shift upwards. In Louisiana, rough waters caused by the earthquake capsized several fishing boats.

It just keeps reverberating out all the way to South Africa, which is a much lighter scale, but the water levels rose and were affected because of this earthquake that far away. In total, the disaster is estimated to have cost $311 million in property damage, which is $2.3 billion in today's money. And it caused heavy damage to a land area that encompassed 50,000 square miles. But the only reason I know about this is because the damage and anchorage was so bad that they started hiring laborers from San Francisco to travel up there to help them rebuild that city.

So my grandpa, since it was 1964, all his kids were mostly, except for my aunt Jo and my aunt Kevin, who are the two youngest, almost all of the kids were either teenagers or out of the house. So my grandpa, who was a plasterer, traveled up there with a bunch of other skilled laborers and helped rebuild anchorage. They lived in a work camp. And he said, later, my dad said, my grandpa had a great time. He told all these stories about, because he had basically spent, since he was 17 years

old, working his ass off and being a first-generation immigrant and trying to build a life. And then he had nine kids. And so basically, this was almost like his midlife. He got to kind of go and party and hang out. He said they had a great time. They played cards and they all had this work camp, and they were just there helping these people. That's amazing to hear stories like that growing up all the time.

That's the only one I heard of. Other than that, our family was there with San Francisco. Yeah, but you heard, sorry, they talked about your grandpa doing that all the time. Yes. When I was a little bit older. Yeah. That was like a kind of a weird discovery where somebody made a reference to it. That's when, oh, that's when dad was gone because he was up in Alaska.

And then it was just like, why would grandpa go to Alaska? Yeah. Wow. And then he's like, oh, they helped rebuild anchorage. That is wild. Isn't that crazy? Yeah. So there is a silver lining in terms of science about this disaster.

And that's that the 1964 Alaska earthquake basically taught us much more about how the earth works and how earthquakes work. Basically at the time, they didn't believe in plate tectonics. That was kind of like a outsider theory. And this earthquake proved that plate tectonics were real. And that's what basically all huge earthquakes or all earthquakes are the result of. So very briefly, the theory of plate tectonics proposes earth's crust is divvied up into plates.

They float over the earth's mantle. And when these plates meet, there's a dramatic effect like earthquakes or the creation of mountains. So in the 1964 earthquake, a plate slipped under another plate. It was the Pacific and the North American plates. They learned about tectonic plate shifts, subduction zones, which is the area where those plates overlap and earthquakes and their effect, like how they cause tsunamis. There were no tsunami warning systems.

There was nothing like that existed before this earthquake. And basically because of it, it all exists now. This earthquake led to the establishment of the National Earthquake Information Center and the Palmary Observatory in Alaska, which has since evolved into the National Tsunami Warning Center. So it's all from this one thing. And of course, this earthquake was traumatic for so many people, livelihoods, infrastructure. Whole towns were lost in the damage, including native Alaskan villages with long, rich histories

that were just wiped out. Oh, this was the part I was going to put my ground of story here. Anchorage had to rebuild much of its young city. And what remained of the town of Valdez was completely raised and it had to be relocated a couple of miles away. But they just had to start a new town somewhere else. Wow. Captain Steward of the SS China and his remaining crew were awarded the Ship Safety Achievement

Award in 1965, which is, quote, the highest honor given to US flag vessels for performance demonstrating safety training and discipline. The National Safety Council and the American Merchant Marine Institute commended the crew for not only saving the ship and the lives of many of its crew members, but for helping the town of Valdez by providing communication services until the army arrived. So just days after the earthquake and directly on the heels of her, oh, it was a 59 hour broadcast marathon. Wow.

Reporter Jeanne Chance immediately hit the road to continue covering the earthquake. So she took her portable tape recorder and interviewed survivors all across Alaska, including Captain Steward. And so his testimony that appears in this story is because Jeanne Chance picked up and was like, I'm going to go talk to everybody about this. Amazing. It's so amazing. And basically the majority, the reason this story can be told in those first person, like

the Tom, the 13 year old and everybody is because of the work that Jeanne Chance did. And then she won several awards and much deserved recognition for her nonstop reporting during and after the earthquake. And four years later in 1968, she was elected to the Alaska House of Representatives, where she supported progressive legislation that especially represented and protected women. She pushed for increased abortion access in Alaska before the passage of Roe versus Wade in 1973. Wow.

So she was early days, may the spirit of Jeanne Chance come back to us and enable us to fight. Hell yeah. I was like, that wasn't even written down, I got myself on that one. Look at my shirt. Hell yeah. Hell yeah. Hell yeah. The 1964 Good Friday earthquake changed the geography, the coastlines and the elevation

of many parts of South Central Alaska. I mean, it fucking like literally changed the earth. The massive destruction of buildings, homes and infrastructure meant that many places had to entirely rebuild, reimagine and reinvest in their communities. Tom Gilson, who was that 13 year old boy who was on his way to see the SS chain of that night, eventually made it to safety. And he survived. And in adulthood, he went on to serve a stint as the Valdez town treasurer.

And he's occasionally talked with reporters about the trauma that he carries from that weekend. He has said, quote, a truck will rumble by and I'll think about it. I'm not afraid to admit it. It made a huge impression on me. It's okay to admit it. Yeah, dad. Yeah.

Yeah. Go ahead and express those feelings. Yeah. No one is surprised whatsoever. It made an impression on you that the asphalt in front of your car got shook and out like a blanket. Right. Yeah.

It's called PTSD. Yeah. And you're allowed to have it. You know, because of him being willing to talk about it, it's his stories and all of the ones, the recollections that Jeannie recorded from the disaster, the terrible ones, the heroic ones, the ones that blend the two, that paint a picture of what happened that day, which is so unfathomable to many of us. And there's a real service in those people sharing those stories with Jeannie and with

us. Perhaps no one puts it better than Jeannie herself in a forward introducing her collection of survivor interviews. She writes, quote, a salute goes to the many courageous Alaskans who faced tragedy and conquered it and then calmly told their stories that others might benefit. And just one last thing. To this day, the Alaskan earthquake of 1964 remains one of the strongest ever recorded. There would be 11 aftershocks with magnitudes of at least 6.0 for 24 hours after the initial

event, and then smaller aftershocks for a year afterwards. No, no, no. Don't do that. Yes. And that is the story of the 1964 Alaskan earthquake, the largest American earthquake to date. Holy shit. I'd never even heard about it.

I mean, I bet I hadn't. I just ignored it. But still. That is crazy. I think people in California kind of have to do that. We're always very like, we're always very faux casual about it's just an earthquake, but we're really all waiting for the big one. Oh, absolutely.

Oh my God. Amazing. Great job. I love that there's a personal connection there. That's fascinating. Right. That's my grandpa, Martin Kilgera, if he went up there. Marty.

Marty. He's the OG Marty. Yeah, he is. Wow. Great job. But how earth can murder you story telling episode? This season on the history channel. I mean, powerful first show back after such a long and illness laden vacation.

That's right. Wow. So much sleeping. So much sleeping. Got done. Oh my God. I was in bed for days. Yeah, me too.

It was pretty great. It was kind of nice. Cats pretty awesome. Cats everywhere. It was kind of ideal. It's like the thing I've been working my entire life up towards like training for my entire life. Yeah.

Napping and I finally. Days of napping. Yeah. All right. Well, thanks for joining us again. We're happy to be back. Yep. New episodes coming up.

We're vacations over. Yeah. It's just doesn't matter. We got sick. It's over. Essentially. That's that's what's going on. So thanks for being here with us.

Yeah. And stay sexy. And don't get murdered. Goodbye. Elvis, do you want a cookie? Yeah. This has been an exactly right production. Our senior producer is Hannah Kyle Crichton.

Our producer is Alejandra Keck. This episode was engineered and mixed by Stephen Ray Morris. Our researchers are Marin McLashen and Gemma Harris. Email your hometowns and fucking hurrays to myfavoritmurder at gmail.com. Follow the show and Instagram and Facebook at myfavoritmurder and Twitter at myfavemurder. Goodbye. Goodbye. Listen, follow, leave us a review on Amazon Music, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get

your podcasts. Hey, Prime members, did you know that you can listen to my favorite murder early and ad free on Amazon Music? Download the Amazon Music app today. You can support my favorite murder by filling out a survey at wanderie.com slash survey.