===TRANSCRIPT START===

Astonishing Legends Network. Disclaimer, this episode includes the usual amount of adult language and graphic discussions you've come to expect around here. But in the event it becomes an unusual amount, expect another call from me.

Hey everybody, welcome back to Scared All The Time. I'm Chris Cullari.

And I'm Ed Voccola.

And this is our third installment in our Summer of Fear series. So far, we've covered brain eating amoebas and shark attacks. So this week, we're moving away from living creatures that can ruin your summer and straight into the kind of explosive mistakes that make you wish you'd never been born. Because while summer is a time for celebration and excitement, some people get a little carried away. There's certain traditions that we turn to during these hot days and long nights that often result in severe bodily injury. Number one on that list is fireworks. Well, number one on that list is probably drunk driving, but number two is probably fireworks. Misused, legislated against and banned in the state of Massachusetts and heavily regulated in others, fireworks take all the violent cacophony of war and make it cute. They were never intended to be something we're scared of, but every year as we approach the fourth, people are injured or killed by the rockets red glare and bombs bursting in hand. In fact, according to the US Consumer Product Safety Commission, over 230 people a day go to the emergency room following a fireworks related injury in the month surrounding July 4th. And those are the small accidents. Because as we'll see, once fireworks go bad, they tend to go very, very bad. So let's light the fuse, take a big step back and hope we don't explode. What are we? Now it is time for. It is time for Scared All The Time. Hey everybody, welcome back to the show. I hope you've been enjoying the summer of fear so far. I know we have, we have a whole new list of things to be afraid of. And we've heard from quite a number of you that we've ruined your swimming this summer with our brain eating amoebas episode. So.

Sorry. Ruined ours too.

Sorry slash you're welcome. How many lives have we saved? That's the other way to think of it. So.

We gotta get a big digital sign behind us that has like how many lives we've saved keeps going up. It's the opposite of those smoking ones.

Absolutely. We'll work on that. That'll be when we clear a certain threshold on Patreon. Maybe we'll get the digital sign. And speaking of, we'll keep housekeeping really quick. We've got a lot of personal stories opening up this episode, so we'll keep it quick. But we did just want to say thanks again to everyone who has signed up for the Scared All The Time Patreon. If you haven't yet, go over to patreon.com/scared all the time and check out what we've got going on over there. At the lowest tier, you're getting ad-free early releases every week, which means you get both shows, Scared All The Time and New Fear Unlocked. And I think the deals get even better from there. You got a lot of bang for your buck at each level and all the money goes to helping this show stay afloat and keeping food in my belly and Ed's belly.

Probably more importantly, your kid's belly, but I will gladly forego feeding Felix if we can get that signed faster.

Sorry, buddy. So yeah, we couldn't do this show without you guys, without all the fans who listen every week, who leave us reviews, who write us emails. So thank you guys as always. I think you're going to love this episode.

Speaking of which, I think it's been a couple of weeks since we've done a few reviews. You want to hit a few reviews?

Let's hit some five star reviews. You guys know it, you love it, you leave a five star review, we will read it or we'll read some of them. And hopefully eventually we'll read all of them. So this first five star review comes from Sleepy Frog 111. Five stars, fave podcast of all time.

Damn.

Crazy.

Wild.

Scared All The Time of all time.

First one he's ever listened to. That's what I hear.

Yeah.

This review says, I've been listening to this podcast since Astonishing Legends mentioned their debut. It quickly became my favorite podcast of all time and I have now listened to their whole discography twice, LOL.

Wow.

Their humor brightens my boring work from home days. It makes me look forward to weekend chores. Thank you, Chris and Ed. Please never stop. Sleepy Frog, we never will. We've been cursed by Satan to do this forever.

That's true. If only we got cursed by that thinner Gypsy, then I can get what I want too. But no, you guys get only what you want. So yeah, we'll keep making them. Thanks for the five star review.

Thanks. You got one more over there, Ed?

I can do one. And like I said, we have a long show, well, a long opening. So the one on chooses a nice shorty. All right, this is from Whackadoo, or Whackadoo Zero. It's five stars. Pretty good. A smart guy in a tunnel. Yeah, there's more to it, but not much more. Pretty good. A smart guy and a dumb guy work through things that give them anxiety.

Hey!

That's it, I've been succinct.

That might be the new description of the show.

Yeah, oh shit.

On all platforms.

Yeah, we'll let you guys at home decide who the smart and dumb guy are.

Yeah, I like that that's left anonymous.

Yeah, it seems pretty, much like they're talking about me, though.

You're both, you're both.

Yeah, that's true. All right, so anything else we need to discuss? All right, fireworks. Don't be stupid this 4th of July. Have a lot of fun, and if you're thinking about being stupid, hopefully when you listen to this episode, you'll second guess that.

Yeah, it gets real bad for some people. So be safe, have fun, and we'll see you guys on the other side.

Bye-bye. Well, not bye-bye, fuck. We're starting the episode.

All right, man, this is going to be a good one. I think it's a nice break from all the nightmarish death and horror we learned about in the first two entries in our series, because this is more a look at the good natured, America's funniest home video style death and destruction humans create by being dumb.

Sure.

Because let's face it, fireworks are not a natural threat. Our ancestors didn't have these problems.

Unless your ancestors are from China or something, where is birthplace, I think, of gunpowder?

Yes, which we'll get to in a minute. But even there, there's no ancient boogeyman stories warning children not to cross state lines to buy explosives two weeks after they get out of school for the summer. You know, there's no ancient stories that people had these kinds of concerns.

Well, do we have that now?

No, but I'm saying all of the kind of ancient fears we've discussed, usually have some stories surrounding them that tried to prevent people from falling victim to those horrible things. And fireworks, we definitely don't have that, because fireworks and the attendant injuries that fireworks are responsible for, whether that's missing fingers, blown off faces, melting, pulsing flesh wounds, these are all human inventions. We have no one to blame but ourselves when something goes wrong. So, Ed, to kick us off, let's get some fireworks stories going. You must have had some close calls growing up. Was there a fourth that went sideways, or someone in the news in Connecticut that your parents pointed to and said, don't do that?

No, I don't, I don't think I was ever, I've been surprised by the size of, you know, you go to a friend's house, their dad's got something they bought in Pennsylvania. And, you know, it's like, oh, that guy's drunk before this started. Yeah. And, you know, my brother gets some big stuff sometimes, but I don't think I've ever, you know, dodged or jumped out of the way of anything flying at me.

When you say big, when you say big stuff, what are we talking about?

Well, I mean, it's not like Roman candles and sparklers and stuff, you know, it's like a big square that's shooting stuff, you know, 100 feet in the air, stuff like one of mortar based things. But no, I mean, I remember as a kid, there was non Fourth of July related fireworks stuff, there'd always be some piece of shit kid who'd have like an M80 or fucking cherry bomb, which was like equally scary. Anything with a wick was scary.

Yeah.

Outside of birthday candles, I guess, for a long time. But birthday candles, they have their own, they bothered me too. My mom would always get those ones where like you'd blow it out, but it would keep relighting.

Yeah.

It's more anxiety than fear, but they're both doing harm, I think, like illegal fireworks and that ridiculous birthday candle. But no, yeah, I don't have anything like that. No, I do have one of my oldest memories of is going to Hershey, Pennsylvania to go to Hershey Park. Nice. And my dad brought like, I don't know if he brought it from home or just acquired it, but we had like a big black trash bag. I think the statute of limitations is passed on this. Like we had like a big black industrial trash bag, probably from his shop, that we'd stopped and got like a shit ton of fireworks in Pennsylvania for the drive back to Connecticut, because you can't buy them in Connecticut.

Yeah.

At least you couldn't when I was a kid.

Yeah. I was doing some research into which states you can and can't buy fireworks in. And it looks like Massachusetts right now is the only state that actually banned them completely. But I do think there's like different, because I remember in Pennsylvania, you could buy them, but people still went across state lines to get them. So there must be like different rules about what kinds of fireworks you can get in different states or something.

It is weird. I mean, it's a weird thing. Do you have a big story you're trying to set up here? Because I'll get into my like weird regulations behind it thought. But if you have a story, give it to me.

No, I don't have a big story. I mean, I was always kind of scared of fireworks growing up. We spent most of our Fourth of Julys at my grandparents' in Springfield, Massachusetts.

Yeah, land of outlawed fireworks.

Well, the land of outlawed fireworks, but my grandfather was a vet, and so he liked to do the fourth right. And they would take us to the city's fireworks display every year. And when I was a little kid, I didn't even like balloons because they could pop suddenly. So you could imagine how I felt about giant explosions in the sky that were appearing with no warning.

Oh, no. Weighted blankets were invented for you and dogs.

Yeah, pretty much. I still wince at fireworks displays. Like they're fine, but I'm not going to demand to go.

I love them. I love them. It's probably my second favorite holiday after New Year's Eve.

It's just to me, it's like it's the same level of anxiety and adrenaline burnout that I get going to Halloween Horror Nights. But Halloween Horror Nights is a lot more fun for me.

No, I would never do that. That's like those are things that have made it a part of their day to scare you fireworks or just being fireworks.

Yeah, but that noise, that loud noise, like, I don't know, I find it. I find it very draining, especially when they all go off at the end. You know, they always do like the grand finale and you can't even differentiate the fireworks. They're just like.

Yeah, I think many people would say that's the best part. That's what we're waiting for.

They're wrong. I also felt similarly about the fireworks that we would light up in my grandparents backyard. Technically, like I said, Massachusetts banned fireworks in 1943, but no one really cares.

I'm sorry, they banned it before the war was even over?

Yeah.

Did we need the gunpowder for the war effort?

I don't think there was an actual incident that I could find. It just seemed that that was when... It may have had something to do with gunpowder and the war effort, but yeah, they banned them in 1943. No one really cares. I mean, everybody still uses them in the summer. I think the law is used more if you accidentally blow yourself or someone else up, that there's like specific... They'll file you or hit you with a specific charge.

No, I mean, you know how many times I've seen cops stop their squad cars or whatever to just watch people publicly shoot off? Like, we obviously don't want to have a permit or anything. Everyone's just enjoying fireworks.

Yeah.

It's kind of like an unwritten thing of just like, don't be a fucking idiot, although people always are.

It is funny that you say they were banned in Connecticut, though, because I always assume that's where my grandfather got them. I assumed he went to Connecticut.

Yeah, they were banned. I'm just saying I've never in my life seen someone buy anything outside of like a sparkler here, so.

Yeah, I mean, he mostly, it was usually sparklers. We never set off cherry bombs or M-80s or mortars.

I don't think cherry bombs and M-80s are for 4th of July. I think that's just for rat tail having kids.

Yeah, they want to stuff them down a frog's throat.

Yeah, living next door to fucking Andy and Toy Story.

There was a kid next door to me or next door to my Italian grandmothers in Pennsylvania. I might have told this story in the podcast before, but he was a rat-tailed little freak. And later, I believe he became an out and proud neo-Nazi.

But when he was a kid that shot the squirrel.

Yeah, he shot a squirrel in the face. He definitely killed some animals with a cherry bomb.

100%. There's nothing he won't put a cherry bomb on or in.

No, but yeah, so I was not terrified of them. And weirdly, I do think even though I didn't like the big ones and even though the little ones made me nervous, playing with them on the fourth is one of my favorite memories from childhood.

Yeah, of course. Fucking fireworks rule.

Writing your name in the air with the sparklers.

Oh yeah, mm-hmm, running around. It's like a little bit of adulthood you get as a kid. They like give you this dangerous weapon and you get to go around with your friends and like, I don't know, chase each other. It rules.

Yeah, although I was still, even with sparklers, I was very concerned about getting burned.

You can get burned for sure, yeah.

I never liked holding the base with my hand. I always wanted to try to like wrap it or like something so that I wouldn't.

And kerosene, kerosene rag, that was a good idea. Did you ever use the big ones?

The big sparklers?

Yeah, like the real big ones, but the size of like big pixie sticks?

Yeah, I don't think I've ever held one, but I've definitely seen one.

Oh, buddy, I remember getting those one year and it was crazy. I remember just, I took it out of the box and I just stared at it for like a super long time. Like, cause it's weird as whatever phosphor or whatever the hell's caked on there. It's got like this, it glows and the sun hits it and stuff. It's sparkly and I just, pre ever lighting it. You know what I'm saying? Like, I just remember being like, what? This is, it's like they took so much from a normal one and they caked it onto this fucking stick. This is so exciting. And then imagine my surprise that when we lit it, my brothers and I lit it that night when my dad lit it, they were tiered with different colors. It would burn into different colors as it went down. And I was like, could life get any better than this?

You, the joy with which you speak about fireworks makes me think that you might have a little bit of a pyro spark in you.

Oh, I certainly don't. I mean, I had them as a, I had a little like Chinese firecrackers, those like little strips look like tiny TNTs.

This is, it's just, this is the most poetic, I think I've ever heard you on the show.

Oh yeah, true, true, true. Well, I told you, it's my second favorite holiday outside of New Year's Eve.

Also lots of fireworks on New Year's Eve.

That's true. I only have good memories. I like go out of my way to watch good fireworks. I'm in Connecticut right now because I know we have a couple of great fireworks spots. When I was a kid, my dad would take us out on a boat and we'd go out into like, sometimes Port Jeff on Long Island and stuff, but other times just different parts of Connecticut. Well, when you're on the water, you get access to all these different shorelines. So you're seeing all these different towns who are going to be doing their own fireworks. If I had just gone to the park, I would just see that. But out in the water, you can see a bunch of different fireworks. I've watched the barge fireworks in New York City. I fucking love fireworks.

One of my favorite fireworks memories is, I was a few years ago, I was house sitting for my cousin like an hour, hour and a half south of where I live in LA. I was driving back from her house to my place on the night of the 4th of July. As I drove up the highway, the entire both sides of the highway in the air, the whole drive almost, you could just see a continuous stream of fireworks going off because-

Those are illegal fireworks in LA.

Well, some of them were, but I drove past the Disney fireworks. I drove past all the small cities fireworks.

Yeah, because they're down there in Orange County.

Yeah. I mean, you can tell which ones are illegal and which ones are like, oh, that must be commerce is setting off their fireworks or whatever. Yeah.

We'll definitely put it in the show notes. You've seen the video of, I think it's like Michael something, this helicopter YouTuber who made the video a couple of years ago of flying over all the neighborhoods of LA during the fourth. It's like people don't really get, A, the size of Los Angeles as we've seen from all this fucking news garbage recently, but also it sounds like a war zone.

Yeah.

Quite literally all day and night in Los Angeles for two straight days.

Yeah.

I mean, these poor dogs, but you will not have a moment's silence. I'd be interested to see what Felix thinks.

Yeah. I don't know how bad it's going to be out here. I'm sure we'll hear some in Pasadena, but...

Well, after the fires, hopefully, nobody ever gives a shit. After the fires, you'd think they'd rain it in a little bit. I mean, hey, let's not throw projectiles of fire or whatever.

Yeah. Well, that actually reminds me of... So I did have two close calls with fireworks growing up. One was a fire-based one. A couple of the guys that I was friends with in seventh or eighth grade one night, I was supposed to be hanging out with them and I didn't go for whatever reason. And they ended up setting up fireworks in a dry corn field and ended up burning a bunch of it down. Oh shit. And they escaped, but they did get in a lot of trouble. They, even though they weren't injured. With my luck, I probably would have burned up in the corn.

Yeah. Leave me. Just get up.

The other was definitely my fault. And it was because we were using a firework as it was not intended to be used. It was summer, I think 10th grade. And a couple of my friends and I were trying to make a black and white zombie movie over a weekend. And we had just started experimenting with really low-budget special effects. So we made guts for this movie. I remember out of getting stuffed animal stuffing and a big roll and taking strips of it and then coating them with tomato sauce and raw hamburger meat to look like guts. We filled pressurized chemical sprayers with red liquid that looked like blood, so we could like shoot it from fake wounds.

Oh, that's fun.

Yeah, but the big grand finale of this movie was that we wanted to have our hero take a shotgun and blow a zombie's head off.

That seems important for unsupervised children to figure that one out.

The way we thought to do this was the hero hits the zombie actor to the ground and then we cut up to a shot of the hero pointing a gun down at the camera. And then when we cut back to the zombie, it's not the actor, it's a zombie dummy that we make out of like a melon with a wig on it. And we put a mortar in the melon.

There's a loneliest epidemic in this country. I feel like there's better uses for a melon with a wig on it.

The idea for this was that we would frame the shot of the head from a safe distance by just zooming in. And then we would light the fuse and have plenty of time to run away before it went off. And we would just use those frames where the head actually exploded so that when we edit it into the sequence.

You don't want to hold on that melon too long and be like, that definitely wasn't the actor.

And it looked like this shotgun blew this head off. But we made a pretty, well, we made two pretty big mistakes.

You forgot to put eyebrows on the melon.

No, no, no. Much, much bigger than that. I'm sure the melon looks great. I don't remember exactly how we made it up, but I'm sure we made, we drew a nice big smiley face on there or whatever. The first mistake we made was that we did this way too close to a propane grill that was in the backyard. What? I don't think we had a sense of just how big the mortar explosion was going to be. Because we usually would set them off from a tube. You put them, if you've never used a mortar before, you get like a big tube and you put this little spherical mortar down in the tube, you light the fuse and then when it goes off, it propels itself up out of the tube into the air and explodes.

Wait, then how is it going to make the melon explode if it has a whole delayed process? You thought it was just going to bounce into the top of the melon. It's in the melon?

It was in the melon, yeah.

Yeah, so you thought it was going to fly out of its, I don't know, sleeve, bonk into the top of the melon, just explode inside of there.

No, no, no, we didn't put it in the sleeve. We put the mortar itself in the melon, thinking somewhat stupidly, A, that the explosion was going to be smaller than it was, and B, we didn't fully think through the fact that just because the mortar wasn't in the tube and it was in fact in the melon, didn't mean that it wasn't going to try to go anywhere. Like, we didn't think through the physics of that. And so to this day, I'm not entirely sure what happened because the footage isn't very good, but as soon as we lit the fuse and the sparks started flying, the mortar started like rocking around and like crazy inside the melon and like rocking it back and forth. And a few seconds later, it exploded in a much more serious way than we thought it would and much closer to this grill than we'd placed it. And the worst part was we couldn't even use it because when we cut it into the movie, I'll have to see if I could find a clip of it somewhere. It's the funniest thing because the sequence is the guy pointing a shotgun at this thing, but then the explosion is like a bomb going off. It's nothing like what a shotgun shot would look like.

No, that's really funny though.

It was very funny to us at the time, but if it had been a few feet closer to that propane tank, it could have been.

Well, if you can't find that footage, I'll at least put in the show notes the guy flying over LA and also, I think we talked about it in a previous episode for some reason, the video of the person putting fireworks under a pot in the street of varying sizes to show how high it makes the pot fly off the road, like a stew pot. And it's just like, holy shit. You couldn't believe some of that, so I imagine that melon was in for a bad day.

I mean, yeah, the melon, it certainly, it blew up. It blew up real good. But yeah, it almost could have been very, very bad for us.

I mean, I don't know, that's just kids being kids. You're trying to do something, you're trying to make something. Everything dumb I did with my brothers was not under my parents' supervision. I'm sure I've talked about the BB gun stuff and everything on the previous episodes.

Yeah, it does make me feel like, now I have a kid and I'm like, man, I want him to have the freedom to go do crazy stuff. And even if sometimes it's a little dangerous, that's part of growing up. But I think back to stuff like that, where I'm like, whoo, man, I guess I'd be pretty pissed off just because I'd be so scared that, you know, I mean, one of us could have died. We could have died.

We're gonna probably address some of those stories of the not could have version in this episode.

Momentarily, yes.

Just this week, somebody brought up a great term I hadn't heard, not a term, but they just asked the question, that they were like, hey, are you a cul-de-sac? Were you a cul-de-sac kid? And I was like, actually, yes. But, because they were like, yeah, cul-de-sac kids. We were like, especially older millennials, but every generation, but for sure older millennials, who weren't necessarily like the latch-key kids of Gen X, but he's like, cul-de-sac kids had freedom, man. Because like all the neighborhood kids went to the cul-de-sac. It's not like you weren't running into a street that's a busy road or like in order to get to the cul-de-sac, you've left any main roads. So you have like a little bit more freedom to get on your bikes and all go meet up and end up at the cul-de-sac doing dumb shit. And I was like, yeah, cul-de-sac kids.

Yeah. Well, we all survived. Somehow, we survived our fireworks experiences from youth, and that leaves us to turn our attention to the history of people who were not so lucky and who were just as dumb as us, but the explosion was a few feet closer to the grill. Or we'll get to those people, I guess, after we take a look at how the hell we got here anyway. How did fire and explosions and loud noises become so much fun to us? And when did people start blowing their limbs off with them?

Day one.

According to the American Pyrotechnic Association, quote, many historians believe that fireworks originally were developed in the second century BC in ancient Luoyang, China. It's believed that the first natural firecrackers were bamboo stalks that when thrown on a fire would explode to the bank because of the overheating of the hollow air pockets in the bamboo. The Chinese believe that these natural firecrackers, quote, unquote, would ward off evil spirits. As the legend goes, a monster called Nian would come out to eat villagers and destroy their houses each New Year's Eve and only these fireworks would keep it at bay.

Dude, my mom has that same mentality every time. She might have done it when you were here. Every time she like leaves the back door, she makes this like whoop whoop noise to like let the animals know she's coming.

It's so crazy.

I don't remember your mom doing this. I saw a mangy ass fox this morning too. And I was like, guess he didn't get the fucking memo.

Around 850 AD, ancient alchemists in China, searching for an elixir of life that would render the user immortal, made a discovery that would have the opposite effect for untold millions. They discovered gunpowder. One of these enterprising alchemists, whose name has been forever lost to history, mixed 75 parts saltpeter, also known as potassium nitrate, with 15 parts charcoal and 10 parts sulfur. This mixture had no discernible life-lengthening properties, but it did explode with a flash and a bang when exposed to an open flame. According to a text from that era, and by text I mean like a book, not a text, not a text message for those younger listeners.

Oh my god, yeah, it's just this guy texting his friend being like, I am become death.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, the destroyer of melons.

Exactly.

According to a text from that era, smoke and flames result so that the alchemist's hands and faces have been burned, and even the whole house where they were working burned down.

Gone.

So immediately, what are we doing here? This is not, alchemist, put this aside, this is a failure. This isn't helping anyone live longer.

No, well it depends.

Well, yeah, I guess it helps the those-

It becomes a deterrent.

It becomes a deterrent and it helps those who are in control of the magic explosion powder live longer by blowing up their enemies.

Exactly.

These fireworks, or the fireworks that resulted from the discovery of this mixture of saltpeter, charcoal and sulfur, were used basically the same way that the bamboo stalks were. They were just tossed into the fire on New Year's. Same sound basically, not much fire and light, a little bit more than a bamboo stick, but not much. Enough to ward off the neon, I guess. But seems like a pretty scaredy cat fucking monster, if that's all it takes to scare it off.

I mean, it's probably equivalent to those, like I mentioned earlier, those like Chinese firecrackers, those like string of red TNTs that my brothers and I would, like we'd take them all apart and make a giant pile and make a big explosion.

What were the, did they call them black cats or, what were the ones that was just like a little bit of powder wrapped in paper, you throw it at the ground?

Oh yeah, I forgot what they were called right now, but yeah, I threw those at the ground all fucking day. Like my neighborhood is littered with whatever that little white paper was.

Yeah, I think that's basically what they built here, it's just instead of throwing it on the ground, you threw it in the fire and it was the same idea.

Sure.

It didn't take long though for this technology of gunpowder to find its place on the battlefield. According to ThoughtCo, as early as 904 AD, Song Dynasty military forces used gunpowder devices against their primary enemy, the Mongols. These weapons included, flying fire, which was an arrow with a burning tube of gunpowder attached to the shaft, which I associate with the movie Mulan. Do they do that a lot in Mulan? I feel like there's a lot of that in Mulan.

You're just saying a firework on the front of an arrow is in Mulan?

I think, yeah, basically, the flying fire arrows, because I think they're fighting the Mongols in that movie.

That would make sense. I think everyone was fighting the Mongols at one point. I think everyone might be Mongol.

That's true, I guess they took over most of the world.

I think I don't do 23andMe, because fuck that noise, but I think all of us are a little Mongol, maybe.

A little bit. Flying fire arrows were miniature rockets, which propelled themselves into enemy ranks and inspired terror among both men and, importantly, horses, because then the horses would freak out and toss everyone to the ground and give you-

Oh yeah, they didn't get the memo on this.

No, not at all. It must have seemed like fearsome magic to the first warriors who were confronted with the power of gunpowder. Others saw military applications of gunpowder, and I didn't go down this rabbit hole because it's got really very little to do with fireworks, but I find this fascinating. The Song Dynasty in 904 AD were apparently using primitive hand grenades, poisonous gas shells, flamethrowers, and land mines.

Yeah, we wouldn't have any kind of international conventions to put a stop to this for a thousand years.

I don't remember the flamethrowers from Mulan. Somebody let me know if I'm misremembering.

For all we know, the flamethrowers are just when some guys fucking rickshaw hit a fucking rock and it just blew a bunch of it up and people thought it was a weapon.

Yeah, my god. What a genius, what a military genius.

Because they made all those vases, right? They had all the, they had like jade.

The Ming dynasty was famous for their.

I'm just saying, Asians are out here, they're making vases, they're making gunpowder. So if you look at a vase as basically like a cannon shell, then I can see how if you accidentally lit a bunch on fire, it would like blow out as like almost a flamethrower looking thing.

Once again, your secret pyromaniac comes out. I have never once looked at a vase and thought of it as a shell for a fucking weapon.

What do you think? I mean, you just turn a cannon vertically and it's a vase. You just put the flowers in the front.

You're not wrong. Yeah, famously that happened in the 60s, right? They stuck the hippies stuck the flowers in the gun barrels.

Yeah, what do you think they learned to do?

Yeah, right. By the mid to late 11th century, the Song government had become concerned about gunpowder technology spreading to other countries.

Oh, God. Formerly, they had the same concern with COVID.

Yeah, they were much more worried about the blowback from other people getting their hands on gunpowder. So the sale of saltpeter to foreigners was banned in 1076. Didn't matter. Knowledge of gunpowder was carried along the Silk Road to India, the Middle East and Europe. In 1267, a European writer made reference to gunpowder. And by 1280, the first recipes for the explosive mixture were published in the West. China's secret was out. And it's kind of crazy to think of an arms race in the early days of the 1000s. But that's what it was. It was an international arms race to get gunpowder. Little did any of these people know that European alchemists were already building the ultimate super weapon, homunculi.

Oh shit, yeah. They have the same life expectancy as a firework.

That's true, that's true. Although the nice thing at least about gunpowder is it's a much less sexually explicit recipe than homunculi.

That's true.

Anyway, while all of these kingdoms were racing to kill each other as explosively as possible, the Italians got involved in making things a little more fun, which is nice, because usually we're the ones killing each other. But around 1292, Marco Polo brought firecrackers back to Italy, sparking a huge interest with the Italians. During the Renaissance, military rockets would be modified with different compounds to create new colors and types of fireworks. Not only did the Italians create the first true airborne fireworks, but they were instrumental in the development of other types of fireworks like the, unsurprisingly, Roman Candle and the kind of aerial displays that we see today. Only nobles and royalty used these fireworks at first as sort of a show of wealth and power, but that would change over time.

That's my neighborhood here. That's why I'm sticking around. They just, all the rich people load up the beach with like an unbelievable on par with any city throwing fireworks display.

Well, it's true. It's true. I mean, fireworks are still, I mean, yes, anyone can buy them. But I guess if you think about it during the fourth in America, it is sort of a display of local wealth and power, like your local city where the power is concentrated goes, we're gonna put on a show.

A bigger show than this city and this city. And these people on the beach here, I'm not exaggerating, tens of thousands, tens of thousands of dollars in fireworks. They do a full 20 minute show with like a fucking accompanying music, a grand finale, like it is crazy and there's no, it's just free and you just go and it is not sanctioned as far as I'm concerned.

After we went to Monster Quest, or Monster Quest, Monster Fest last year, I almost stuck around in Connecticut for this, but I couldn't.

Yeah, I told you to stay because it's awesome.

The Smithsonian tells us that if you attended a fireworks show in 1600 or thereabouts, the science of what you were seeing would not have been much different from ancient China, but it would have been more entertaining. Aerial fireworks, which were still plain orange, and here there's a little bit of conflicting information as to whether or not, some places I read that the Italians created colored fireworks. The Smithsonian seems to think that by the 1600s, which would have been after the Renaissance, that they were still orange. So unclear, but either way, by the time that the 1600s rolled around, the shows were bigger and they were run by specific people called fire masters and their assistants, the Green Men. Before the show, the Green Men, which were named for the leaves they wore to protect themselves from sparks.

Oh my God, I thought it was gonna be something else entirely.

No, I imagine, I couldn't find an etching of them or anything, but I imagine they literally were just wearing what must have looked sort of like a ghillie suit made of like real leaves or something.

Yeah, that's why you couldn't find any drawings of them because they blended in with the fucking surroundings. No one even knew they were there.

Yeah. They would tell jokes to the crowd while they prepared the celebration. Being a Green Man, however, was a highly dangerous position, unsurprisingly.

Yeah, you're a rodeo clown.

Basically, yeah. Many of them were injured or killed when their fireworks malfunctioned. King James II's Fire Master was actually awarded knighthood for his impressive work.

Dude, I want to include a fucking Green Man or a Fire Master in bards now. What a fun position to have back in the day.

You should bring one to the fireworks show in your neighborhood.

Just show up with a bunch of giant leaves.

You should put the leaves on and go warm up the crowd.

Dude, what is it? I don't know. I don't know why this is so stupid, but it's just like, what's the guy showing up with leaves from his yard equivalent of like, I'm not wearing hockey pads? Like a real green man or whatever has like fucking Jurassic period huge leaves to protect him. And someone else just has like weird, rustly ass yard leaves.

Tiny shh, shh, shh, shh.

Yeah, we hear you coming and we don't want you here.

In the 1700s, King Louis XV was obsessed with fireworks shows and his royal pyrotechnicians were more Italian guys, the Ruggeri brothers, who became legendary in the world of fireworks.

Real fast, do you think that there is a correlation in any way to when we did our clowns episode that like clowning comes out of Italy as well? Like the idea of like goofy showmanship, being a big part of Italian culture, like old Italian culture, anything to put on a show, it seems like.

Yeah, I mean, we definitely are allowed people. We are a center of attention people. So, you know, these guys and their brethren were fascinated by, let me put it this way. I think the firework reflects the Italian personality and anger.

And the economy, it explodes and disappears.

So the Ruggeri brothers became legendary in the fireworks world. These guys pioneered all sorts of techniques that turned fireworks from explosions into art. They created moving displays, aerial patterns, and they developed what's known as the quick match fuse to fire multiple rockets in sync. So basically these guys invented the choreography that we still use in fireworks shows. And the Ruggeri Family Fireworks Company is still around today.

That's awesome.

Yeah, they're killing it.

I'm sure there's technological changes. You know, that great thing in October Sky, one of my all time favorite movies, where each time they do the rocket, the technology changes a little bit, where it starts with like lighting a match, then they have an erector set, then they're pressing a button. So I'm sure that deployment aspect changes, and there's probably R&D in that field, but I have to imagine the mixture and stuff has been the same for a thousand years. You can keep, you know, as long as you own the land and the warehouses, you can keep these brothers in business. It just seems like you got the ingredients, you got the materials, just do it again next year.

Yeah, pretty much. I mean, the only thing that really threatens the fireworks display, I feel like, are those drone companies that put on drone displays now.

Oh, yeah, those are fucking wild, but I'm also like, I hate them, because they're not natural and they're loud as shit, and they're creepy as hell when they all land together.

They'll never replace a 4th of July fireworks show, but I could see drones replacing other celebrations.

The Macy's Day Parade, we're coming for you. Those balloons are gone. No one has to wake up to Snoopy's Eye in their window anymore.

By the 1700s, fireworks displays were ensconced as a part of European life when times called for celebration. And on July 2nd, 1776, two days before the Declaration of Independence was signed, John Adams wrote this letter to his wife, quote, this day will be most memorable in the history of America, he predicted. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be solemnized with pump and parade, he wrote, with shoes, I think shows, but you know, they used to spell things funny. So it's with an E. Shoes, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations, by which he meant fireworks, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forevermore.

Yeah, this guy was in politics, which means he had like an illumination company. He had a games company.

He owned an interest in all of those things.

In every one of those things. Yeah, let's make this a yearly. Let's put the defib, what's the me putting a defibrillator in every building?

Yeah, exactly. His shoes company went out of business, unfortunately. We no longer respect the shoe.

It's a really big shoe.

It's a really big shoe.

He signed a show there, so came back full circle.

And so it was. On July 4th, 1777, the first anniversary of America's countryhood, there were indeed fireworks and we never looked back.

No.

The Smithsonian reminds us that if you had been there for America's anniversary, you still would not have seen colored fireworks. Explosions like those we see today would not be created for another 60 years when Italian inventors added in metals like strontium or barium.

Yeah, breathe this shit in, kids.

Yeah, those are the elements that create the colored explosions that we see. It's just different minerals and different elements that they pull off.

That burn in a different color at the same heat as the other items, yeah.

Yeah, exactly. So at long last, in the 1830s, our modern fireworks were born and celebrations took on an entirely new light. Lucky for Scared All The Time, as soon as we invented fireworks, we also invented fireworks disasters. They go kind of hand and blown off hand.

Wow. Nice.

So one early failure of pyrotechnic pageantry was in 1749 in London. King George II threw a massive fireworks show in Green Park to celebrate a peace treaty complete with a giant wooden pavilion and 10,000 rockets.

Yeah. That's a good thing to have under all that.

Oh, you'll be shocked to know this went terribly wrong. The composer Handel was hired to write music for it. He wrote a piece literally called Music for Royal Fireworks.

I love it. I love a deadline.

Yeah. The preview was bad enough. They should have known this was not going to work out well on the night of. The preview alone drew 8,000 people to the Vohall Gardens and caused a three-hour traffic jam on the London Bridge. During preparations for the show on the night of, a cannon misfired and blew off a soldier's hand in front of the king, who was touring the backstage area and just a guy blew his hand off right there and then. The king, to his credit, gave the guy money. I don't know if he was on the spot, but he did pay the guy for his injuries sustained in entertainment. And then, when the event itself actually started, it went up in flames. A stray spark from one of the rockets ignited the enormous wooden stage, which caught fire mid show and burned for hours. Quick thinking carpenters saved the day by tearing down parts of the structure to stop the spread, but not before chaos ensued.

Flashing bacteria rules or whatever. You know what I mean?

Yeah, cut it off.

Just cut it off. It felt like they had hoses back then. You have to have a guy go to a well and get a bucket of water, put it on a fucking donkey, run it over. There wasn't city water or water towers that could add the pressure to make the water even go up high enough. So just cut it off.

That is pretty grim that we had fireworks before we had fire prevention technology.

Oh, I'm sorry, Chris. Are we not currently putting more money than human history into AI and no money into AI safety?

It's true.

So yeah, this is not surprising.

Progress, it's the march of progress.

It's like that old Seinfeld joke. Seinfeld used to have this bit about helmets and how they're ridiculous. And it was like, oh, rather than not play the sport that would require this helmet, we just gave them helmets. Oh, these guys keep banging their heads to each other playing football. Should we stop? No, no, no. Just give them a helmet.

So the chaos didn't stop with the entire stage burning down. Two other rockets went off course. One set fire to the clothes of a young woman who escaped with minor burns after swift action from bystanders who stripped her down to her underwear.

God, they gotta stop with this removal of the, stop, drop, and roll.

The only thing scarier than getting your clothes set on fire in 1749 is a crowd then tearing them off of you.

Yeah, yeah. Now you're confused about like, I have a lot of predator behavior.

The other rocket that went off course burned two more gunners and one lost both of his eyes.

What did he get paid? Hopefully the same as more than the guy who lost his hand.

I don't know, but it does make me think that unless an orchestra near you hires a crowd of professional screamers, I don't think anyone will ever hear music for fireworks as completely as it was performed that night.

I don't know if Handel had any of that on the chart.

No, it was just sort of the natural state of things as the music was played, explosions and screams.

Do you think, well, I don't know how he did, but I'm sure there was a joke to be made that he handled it well.

Hey.

It's not good.

A few years later, on May 30th, 1770, the city of Paris threw a massive fireworks display to celebrate the wedding of the Dauphine, the future Louis XVI to Marie Antoinette. Over 100,000 Parisians packed the streets near Place de la Concorde to watch the show.

Yeah, but how many hours were the traffic jam?

And we need to know, was it horses? Fireworks were still something of a novelty at this time, and the display, designed by those famed Ruggeri brothers, was supposed to be the height of luxury and joy. Instead, it turned to chaos. According to historical accounts, all was going well when suddenly a gust of wind blew down among the crowd, some rockets only partially exploded. Fireworks, like so many inventions of Italian origin, were still, to the mass of the French public, a comparative novelty. And this, together with the positive inconvenience and even danger of a fall of blazing missiles in the midst of thousands of excited and closely packed spectators, was quite enough to account for the terrible confusion resulting in many hundreds of fatal accidents which now ensued. Which is a nice 1700s way of saying the crowd panicked, a stampede erupted and hundreds of people were trampled to death.

Yeah, because it wouldn't have been like the wind blew it out and then the rocket or whatever landed. It wouldn't then, maybe it would continue later and have a delayed charge. It wouldn't seem like it would. So yeah, it must've just been like people fucking crawling over each other.

I love that phrasing of together with the positive inconvenience and even danger of a fall of blazing missiles.

Yeah.

I would lead with just danger. If I were an editor of the 1700s person who wrote this, I would just cross out inconvenience.

I would cross it out if I'm just the type setter being like, I got to bring down more fucking little metal blocks because you wanted to add this other word.

Yeah, it's funny. We were a lot more long winded in text when it was even much harder to print that text.

I mean, maybe it's just like anything in life. Nobody checks in on the crew. They were probably complaining every day about that. It should have been like, the whole story should be fireworks, night, ruined, many dead. That should be the whole story.

The official death toll given by authorities was 133 people killed.

Wow.

Many people in Paris believe the true number was much higher. One witness writing years later claimed that more than 1,200 people may have lost their lives once you counted those who died of injuries later. This person said quote, I know many persons who 30 months after these frightful scenes still bore the marks of objects which had been crushed into them.

Oh no.

Some lingered on for 10 years and then died.

They had a whole generation of cobblestone looking people.

Yeah. The very loony tunes looking guys with patterns smooshed into them.

The old grill mark boys.

I may say without exaggeration that in the general panic and crush more than 1200 unfortunate persons lost their lives. One entire family disappeared. I assume just crushed directly into paste on the cobblestone street.

Oh my God. Or witness protection. We don't know.

And there was scarcely a household which had not to lament the death of a relative or friend.

Oh yeah. I don't imagine people are, you know, those are all people who kind of lived in Paris and around Paris. I don't think you're walking that far. So everyone you know is there.

Some 19th century references even put the death toll at 3000, which would be a 911 size disaster brought on by a fireworks display.

Please. Hey, brought on by wind.

That's true. That's true. Brought on by the positively inconvenient gust of wind.

It was a better time though, because not one of these articles was like it was an inside job.

That's true.

There was a bit more social cohesion.

That's true.

Even right before a revolution.

Yeah.

It was more social cohesion.

Well, we'll get to that in a second. But even using the low official number, assuming 3000 is a pure exaggeration and 1200 is the fear making it seem worse.

The old fear inflation.

We'll go with the official number. It was one of the worst fireworks disasters on record. And that record stood for centuries. Depending on which numbers are accurate, it still might be the worst fireworks disaster of all time. You'd think that the pyrotechnic maestros, the Ruggeri brothers, those rug boys, would catch some heat for the disaster. No.

They're out there being like it's wind.

They were the ones who dropped partially exploded fireworks on the crowd. But no.

Yeah, but they probably have it in their contract, their fucking linguine ass contract that was like, but we can't account for anything once they go up. That's not us anymore. We just said we would provide you fireworks.

The French government probably was really frustrated that they wrote their contract in pasta.

Oh my God. Glued to it. It was like they're falling off like a little kid's fucking arts and crafts. It was like, what did he say here? Just like huge parts fell off.

But Ed, because of what you were saying, the looming revolution, city officials caught the heat for poor planning and the French public was outraged that such a joyful event could turn deadly. And the event became one more black mark against the regime to the point that some historians do consider this accident a small factor in the brewing discontent before the French Revolution.

Makes sense.

They basically, the public basically viewed this as the rich and powerful ruling class. It's just one more thing that fucked the peasants basically.

Oh yeah, these are the same, this is literally the same group of let them eat cake.

Yes.

Before that, they were being like, I don't know, let them be grill shaped. Let them look insane.

Let them taste cobblestone.

Yeah, let them eat ash. Everyone's like, what? You said ash, calm down.

Here's a little ironic note. Not long after this disaster, Cloud Fortune Rugieri, one of the fireworks makers, came up with new chemical mixtures to create the colored fireworks that we know today. And so you can sort of look at this is that in the wake of the tragedy caused by fireworks, the Rugieri brothers solution was better fireworks. And it worked. The introduction of colors made fireworks even more popular across Europe.

I think the introduction of some sort of wind abatement technology would be a better use of their time. But I guess it's what it is, right? It's like, oh, there's always dangers to social media. Let's give them an app that they'll like more, become more addicted to. Or it's like that great line in Ready Player One, where the villainous company is like, we do believe that we can have up to 80% of the screen be ads before people become nauseous or whatever. And so, yeah, just give them something different to, that's the let them eat cake of fireworks. Just give them something different to be in awe of and they'll stop worrying about how last week they did it and a thousand people died.

Moving into the 19th century, records of fireworks mishaps-

Don't you move into the 19th century like that. You acknowledge what I said.

I'll move into the 19th century however I fucking want. Records of fireworks mishaps are a bit spotty, but they definitely occurred. Fireworks at this point were often homemade or unregulated and injuries were so common that some newspapers ran annual tallies of 4th of July casualties.

That's good.

They should. Which I think we should still do, yeah.

Absolutely. I mean, if we're going to have the, like, Halloween candy scare that seems to get a new list made every year, they should definitely be like, Yep, here's how many fingers are gone this year.

Fingers we've lost, fallen soldiers.

Yep, fallen digits.

In fact, by the late 1800s, the situation in America was pretty grim.

Oh, I wonder what happened. What happened towards the middle end of it that would make the place seem real grim?

The situation regarding fireworks specifically.

Sure, all the gun power had to be used for something for like four years.

According to Time Magazine's Dark History of Fireworks, fireworks were unrestricted and widely available, and people devised creative and cruel ways to use them, like throwing lit firecrackers at horses to scare them, or, as Ed is going to post a video of, of putting firecrackers under tin cans, milk bottles or flower pots to launch shrapnel bombs for fun. Not surprisingly, injury and death rates skyrocketed. One disillusioned Pennsylvania resident wrote in his diary on July 4th, 1866 that the holiday is, quote, the most hateful day of the year.

That's coming back.

When the birth of democracy is celebrated by license and noise, the sound of guns and firecrackers around us never stopped. It is difficult to feel patriotic on the 4th of July.

Buddy.

Which is pretty much what people say in LA now.

Yeah, but I mean, I don't know about all that. But this does sound like someone who would call into a fucking radio show today.

Yeah, this was an old crotchety guy writing in his diary.

This is a garbage person. Yeah, into your diary to tell somebody. Or you're probably somebody who everyone hates already. So you're like, go fucking write it in your diary. Don't stop talking to us about your obsession with whatever this shit is. We hate it.

He's trying to write how much he hates his neighbors and his windows are just getting pelted with more fireworks.

It's just he's writing it in the diary too. Like, there's another one.

Yeah. But these were all small scale injuries and casualties that didn't really make the news in any kind of detail. That changed on November 4th, 1902, which was election night in New York City. The owners of the New York Journal newspaper had sponsored a huge election night fireworks show in Manhattan. And according to a contemporary article in the British newspaper, The Spectator, about 50,000 people gathered around Madison Square Garden to watch. Among the pyrotechnics planned were massive aerial bombs loaded into cast iron mortars. So these were more like mini cannons. And at some point, one of these mortars tipped over and fired three heavy fireworks bombs straight into the crowd at point blank range.

It's just, this is not the first tipped mortar we've heard since we've started this episode. Like, pop a nail in there. You know what I mean? Put them on a board. The fuck are we doing?

If you, wait, pop a nail in where? In the mortar? That's just gonna make a shrapnel bomb?

Like on the base of the normal. Oh, to keep the base of the mortar. Like nail them down or put them on a long board, which I think a lot of times I see stuff now, but just don't have the opportunity for some guy with a big butt like me to turn and now all of a sudden you fucking knocked it over.

Can you imagine it's some corpulent, 18 or early 1900s back rooms politician with the giant suspenders on?

Oh yeah, who's that guy? And in New York too, who the hell was that big fat idiot? He's in, he got the first fire brigade, Tammany Hall.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Like a Tammany looking fuck.

Yeah, Tim just blomp with his giant ass knocking the fireworks away.

Oh yeah, he got caught in his suspenders.

Well, the result was pure carnage. Quote, many persons were actually blown to pieces by the explosions.

Yeah.

When the smoke cleared, the estimated death toll was around a dozen people and 70 to 80 wounded. With what I could only describe as dry British snark, the paper described it as, quote, an accident on the dreadful American scale. They noted Americans seemed weirdly quick to forget such incidents as just disastrous incidents to be moved on from.

Oh yeah, we're still dealing with that smaller and smaller projectiles.

We did, but we moved on pretty quick for this because I'd never heard of it before. But I'll point out-

You know what I'm saying, we're moving on from school shootings fucking three days later. You think we're gonna give a shit about this fireworks incident?

The British moved on from enslaving much of India, so fucking pip pip cheerio. Take it somewhere else, brother.

Yeah, for real.

Another early disaster struck in 1903 in Patterson, New Jersey, when a downtown shop storing fireworks ignited and 17 people were killed. These incidents weren't isolated. As Independence Day celebrations grew, so did accidents across the country. Storehouses blew up, rockets misfired into crowds, and entire city blocks caught fire. Statistics from the early 1900s showed just how dangerous Independence Day celebrations had become. Over the five 4th of July holidays from 1903 to 1907, 1,153 people were killed and over 21,500 were injured in the US due to fireworks and fireworks related festivities. That's more than a thousand deaths in five years from 4th of July celebrations.

Now the first, not celebration, but the first use was 904, right? 904 AD.

Yes.

So would this be a thousand years or a hundred years? I can't do that math. So exactly on the thousand year anniversary of fireworks, we got an injury per year represented.

Yeah, we had nearly 1200 people who were made independent from their bodies on Independence Day.

I mean, that's really funny.

That's a war scale casualty count.

Well, at this point, we are using war munitions. After the Civil War, that mortar that fucking fell over and shot people's rib cages into a brick wall where it's stuck. That is not the same thing as the mortars that were used probably in Paris.

No, no. I mean, but I will say in researching this, I was actually genuinely surprised by how dangerous the history of fire. Like, you know, you know that people hurt themselves every year or whatever, but it almost reaches the point here in the early 1900s where I'm surprised that we still have 4th of July celebrations because it got so bloody for a while. Newspapers at the time started calling for a quote, safe and sane, 4th of July. Cities like Cleveland and New York launched reforms around 1908 to ban the most dangerous fireworks.

And when did Cleveland's fucking river set on fire?

I don't know, but.

1911 or something, 1913s, they knew that place was a tinderbox.

Yeah. They launched reforms around 1908 to ban the most dangerous fireworks and encourage alternative celebrations. Not that it helped any. You could go down the list. The literal fireworks accidents and incidents list on Wikipedia. And it is just an endless list of horrible sounding disasters from across the globe. Fireworks stand explosion in Salvador, Brazil, 100 plus dead. Fireworks explosion destroys school, Puebla, Mexico, 13 dead. Bright sparklers fireworks disaster in Sungai, Bulo, Malaysia, 26 dead, 83 injured. Bangs Lake park explosion should never have set off fireworks at Bangs Lake.

Yeah, no, no, or it got named after that incident.

We don't know. I guess Boom Boom Pond was all booked up that day. One dead, eight injured. It goes on and on. Even WrestleMania 24 was touched by the gods of fireworks disasters with an accident that injured somewhere around 40 people. As we entered the second half of the 20th century, fireworks disasters started to really hit their stride. Explosions got bigger and technology advanced to the point that people started to think, hey, what if we set off fireworks indoors too? And in that list of disasters, the top 10 worst body counts in fireworks all occurred after 1950 and nine out of 10 of them occurred inside.

What is, what are we doing inside for?

It's not a place where fireworks belong.

We're a huge country. There are states that are literally known as big sky state and stuff. We've got outdoors to do it in, or do it in is a weird thing to say for outside, but you know what I mean?

You love an explosion. You love a firework. How do you feel? Have you ever seen one at like a rock show or a wrestling show or something? Have you ever been around indoor fireworks?

Oh, I guess that's what you mean, like pyrotechnics in a concert.

Yes.

No, I don't know if I actually, outside of like flames or something coming up from the front of the stage or a rock show or bigger versions of sparklers, no, I don't think I've ever seen a projectile, let's put it this way, a projectile firework indoors before, no.

Yeah. I decided not to cover it for this episode, but honestly, a lot of the worst, quote unquote fireworks disasters are like the Great White disaster.

Remember that? Yeah, the club.

Like technically, that was a fireworks disaster. It's not, it was more of like stage flames or whatever, but a lot of the worst of the worst are things like that. One of the fireworks disasters I found that might lay claim to being the worst of all time happened in 1977 on Chinese New Year's Eve. So that's right, it finally bit him in the ass. The first big New Year celebration allowed after the Cultural Revolution. This was in a remote part of Xin Yang region where hundreds of people, mostly families of local military veterans, packed into a communal hall to watch a movie.

Oh my God, I thought you were gonna say packed into like one super long paper dragon. And it was like, well, I see where this is going.

Well, spirits were high. It wasn't a paper dragon, but for years, Mao's government had banned traditional New Year festivities, and now people were allowed to celebrate again. Although based on what happened here, maybe Mao was on to something because some kids...

Okay, that's the poll quote we need.

Just in this particular case, because some kids in this communal hall celebrating Chinese New Year brought firecrackers. One of them lit a spinning firecracker on the floor inside the hall. That toy spun its way into a pile of dry decorative wreaths. Ironically, wreaths that had been left there as a memorial display for Chairman Mao.

That's going to look politically motivated.

The wreaths went up in flames in seconds, and the entire hall launched into an inferno. Much like the Parisian fireworks stampede, panic ensued, and the crowd surged for the exits. Sorry, exit one solo. There was only one exit in this entire hall, and all of these hundreds of people had only...

It's communism, right? I mean, they all share. Well, I mean, I guess it wasn't then, but, you know, they're still sharing this door.

Well, they were all to share the same grave inside this building because the crowd all crushed each other trying to get through the doorway. And by the time it was over, 694 people were dead.

Bro, crushing? We gotta do an episode on crushing. Remember that crushing a few years ago? Was it in South America or whatever? Just people, for whatever reason, got spooked. And then they ended up in that, like, trample-based death is...

I think the fear is crowds, because that's where this happens, is like...

But I'm saying, like, trample-based death, it just seems to... It can happen just as quick of an incident as fireworks deaths.

Yeah.

Like, all of a sudden, people be trampling.

Well, and there doesn't even need...

You're fucked.

The really sad thing about a lot of mass crowd fatalities like that is that there doesn't even need to actually be a threat. People just need to think there's a threat, like...

That's why it's illegal to yell fire in a theater.

Yeah, or people think they see a gun these days. And I don't know if anyone's died, but I've definitely seen news stories about, like, a panic cause somewhere, because they think someone's got a gun, and then everybody, you know, makes a run for the exits, and then there was no gun. I thought you couldn't... No, I don't have a joke for that, nevermind. All right, moving on.

Oh yeah, trample and gun violence. That's where you were trying to find... That's a rich area for jokes. Yeah.

So, the fireworks disasters that are the worst of the worst aren't always the fault of the end user. I mean, yes, obviously each year brings stories of people acting dumb with explosives, but many of the world's worst fireworks disasters are due to manufacturing fireworks.

Yeah.

Which is an extremely dangerous endeavor in and of itself.

Yeah.

I mean, this is basically the art of packing miniature bombs for fun and profit. So, terrible things are going to happen.

Is this you're going to do Benton? You're going to do the Benton factory?

No, although I'm sure that's on the list.

OK.

Do you want to tell us the Benton factory before I dive into the ones I've got?

No, I will. Well, first off, it's factories a loose term, I think. I think it was an illegal fireworks making situation. But if anybody's interested in, if you guys like this episode and want to hear a fucking wild fireworks disaster, I'll put it in the show notes. It's Murder Y'all podcast did one on the Benton fireworks disaster in Benton, Tennessee that is just so fucking crazy. It's not like a super high death toll, but it's just the thing where you're like, fucking I'm sure you're about to get into right now, where it's like, holy crap, the destructive power of just the ingredients is, you're not really ready for what that can do.

Yeah.

So yeah, I'm glad we're not covering it so that people can go listen to that episode because it's really interesting.

Yeah, I've got two crazy international ones here. So there's a couple reasons that these get so bad though. First, you've got the fact that many fireworks, often because making them is so dangerous, are manufactured in poor countries by poorly trained or completely untrained workers.

Dude, that's the best fireworks and the best cocaine.

These people are given the task of manually mixing and handling explosive volatile compounds like black powder and flash powder or just gunpowder, along with fine metal powder and oxidizers, all of which are extremely flammable and reactive on their own. Like just a little friction or heat or a static charge can ignite this stuff in an instant.

Oh yeah, you know they're using like big leaves that the green guys were wearing to like a spatula and stuff too.

Yeah, once that spark is lit, they are designed to explode. So there's no chance to catch a mistake before the chemical chain reaction occurs and can level a factory along with everyone inside of it.

Yeah.

I also, I say factory, but the reality is that in a lot of countries, fireworks are often made in flimsy structures or even family homes.

Yeah, who wants to rebuild when it inevitably explodes? The flimsier the structure, the better. You know what I mean? Oh, all we lost was a bunch of bamboo.

Ventilation, temperature control and sparkproof equipment are luxuries that many small manufacturers don't have.

Or podcasters.

In dense neighborhoods, people might be assembling firecrackers on the porch or drying fuses in the sun. And when things blow up, local firefighters might not have the equipment to fight an explosive fast-moving blaze. And to top it off, operators commonly stockpile large quantities of finished fireworks because there's only so many times a year that you're really moving fireworks, so you are holding stockpiles of this.

Sure, that's true. Yeah.

And if one batch ignites, the whole inventory can blow up. So safety regulations, where they exist, usually require limits on how much material can be kept in one building.

But remember when LAPD or whatever tried to, or the sheriff's department had to explode all of those illegal fireworks that they had been collecting, and then they ended up blowing up their own truck?

Yep. Well, and that just goes to show, the LAPD couldn't safely blow up these fireworks.

I mean, you can take any word out of context there, and it'll still be true. It'll all still be true.

In practice, though, especially in poorly regulated factories in small countries throughout the world, rules like these are ignored, meaning hundreds of pounds of gunpowder might be crammed into a single shed. Making fireworks, ultimately, no matter how you do it, is going to be like working inside a tinderbox.

Also, have you ever been to any poor country? Everybody's always like ripping darts, too. So, you know there's a guy like just having a cigarette like four feet from that, too.

The factory supervisor or the-

The foreman?

The foreman, thank you, is just ripping darts. Even under good conditions, manufacturing fireworks is risky, but when you factor in human error, cost-cutting and no oversight, that's when the disaster really strikes.

You know what we should do? We should make like for next 4th of July, we should make a short or something that's like Wages of Fear or The Sorcerer, but it's like us trying to get, we couldn't afford better fireworks, so we had to like, we found an old fireworks shed in one of these poor countries that we have to then, we get hired because we're broke podcasters to travel it to the city for the display or whatever, the fireworks display.

It sounds great.

It's just us moving like M80s instead of sticks of dynamite. I love it. We can just do it with little kids. We can do like the Muppet Babies version of Wages of Fear.

As one Indian report notes, an average of 25 workers die every year in fireworks manufacturing accidents, and that is likely an underestimate. In reality, the toll in major producing regions is probably closer to 50 to 100 deaths a year in India alone. And if there is a poster child for the deadly fireworks business, it is the city or town of Sivakasi in India. This small city in Tamil Nadu is known as India's firecracker capital, and churns out as much as 90% of the country's fireworks supply. It is a, no pun intended, booming business, employing over 100,000 workers, but it is also literally booming in the worst ways with frequent explosions and fires. One of the worst booms struck in 2012 at the Aam Siva Shakti factory near Sivakasai. In the frantic run up to Diwali, the Hindu festival of light at the major festival for fireworks sales in India, the factory was working around the clock to meet demand. Corners were cut, and the plant at this point was actually operating illegally. Its license had been suspended for safety violations.

Yeah, but it sounds like if 90% of the fireworks are made there, the whole city depends on making it, so they're like, fuck it, we'll pay the fines.

1000%, Ed, you know the ends of these stories before I even get to them. So this factory had its license suspended for stockpiling excess explosives and cramming too many people into the buildings to work. But even though the license was suspended, production never stopped. Like you said, their economy runs on fireworks, so shutting down a factory, even an unsafe one, is bad for business. And regulatory oversight in some of these fireworks capitals is less than a joke. It's not enforced. Either whether they're short staffed or there's graft, there's payoffs, they might suspend the license, but that doesn't mean anything if no one's asking to see your license.

Is India the same country where they do the like, they throw colored dye at each other, that like festival of like tossing colored fucking smoke or whatever dirt?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I forget what it's called, but yes.

I'd be like, hey, you know, we have this incredible way to make this beautiful display of color that's not killing everyone every year. We're showing you by example.

Maybe. Yeah, it's just as beautiful. That tradition probably started because somebody was desperately throwing dirt onto an exploding fireworks factory trying to put it out.

And like, wait a second, you guys have gunpowder. We have, I don't know, they're probably equally unsafe. Who knows what you've breathing that shit in.

Anyway, the point is, it was only a matter of time before this turned into a very serious problem and around midday on September 5th, an explosion tore through the Almsiva Shakti plant and ignited a massive blaze. The fire raged for hours, fueled by piles of firecrackers and chemicals stored in 40 different rooms. Blast after blast erupted as the stock detonated, setting bricks and concrete flying and gutting virtually the entire factory.

Now, this is a waiting game. You have to just wait until, it's like making popcorn. You have to wait until you stop hearing something to know it's done.

Yeah, the noise, well, people making popcorn up to 2 kilometers away might have been confused by the noises they were hearing, because that's how far away you could hear these explosions. Shock waves knocked down walls of the factory, and some victims weren't even employees. Several passerby were killed after rushing in to try to help the first injured, only to be caught by subsequent blasts. By the time the flames were doused four hours later, at least 40 to 52 people were dead, and over 70 were injured.

That's one month of work, Bell.

Photographs showed the facility in ruins, and many of the dead were so badly burned that identification was a challenge. And as we mentioned earlier, rescue efforts were hampered here by Savakasai's lack of basic infrastructure. Narrow roads delayed fire trucks, and the region had no burn trauma center to treat the dozens of severely injured, which seems like something you'd probably want to have near your fireworks capital, but...

No, again, no money in the safety aspects ever, just the money in the profits aspect.

Many burned workers had to be driven 70 kilometers to the nearest city hospital, and many of them died en route.

Yeah, especially to explain yourself. 70 kilometers is too far to hear what just happens. Now you got to, there's a communication issue. I mean, this might be a stupid question, I don't know, but like, can you have windows in a fireworks factory? Like, would that just act as like a magnifying glass that didn't, you know what I mean? Like, you can start a fire with a magnifying glass.

No, I don't think, I thought you were saying that because that just creates waves of deadly shrapnel if there's an explosion.

Oh no, no, it's not final destination. I just meant like, in terms of the safety protocols of the infrastructure you do build, I have to imagine, like, you can't have it, you have to keep it in a cool, dark place, right? You can't have a window get hot in the middle of the day and then create heat and like a beam goes on to a wick and then it explodes. I'm not saying I need an answer to this, it was just a thought.

Yeah, I mean, I guess, I don't know how quickly glass or poorly made glass or whatever can become a focusing lens that could create a fire.

Well, I have to imagine these places are all ramshackle, so it might just be built of discarded magnifying glasses for all I know.

Even worse than the fact that there is no hospital that could handle the burns nearby. Workers at this factory had zero safety training. One survivor said, quote, We were not told anything about the materials. We did not realize this could be dangerous. Which is kind of insane to me. I mean, I feel like even without training, you'd have some sense that the job was dangerous.

What year was this?

This was...

This was modern era?

Yeah, yeah, 2012. Yeah, 2012.

That's a billion people, dude. You gotta take the jobs you can get. I mean, I get it.

No, I know, but I feel like... But Google existed, so... Google existed. You know you're building fireworks, right? Or maybe you don't. I mean, maybe somebody just says, hey, sit in this room, dump this powder into this powder, and that's all you get, and you don't really know what you're doing. I guess that's possible.

That's true.

Many laborers were poor migrants from other states willing to take on risky work for lack of better options. They were reportedly making just a few dollars a day to handle explosive powder by hand. After the disaster, police arrested some low level employees and supervisors, and the owner, who shockingly was an influential local politician, fled town. And then when the pressure mounted, he was finally arrested days later, but was not hit with any significant charges. So there were rules on paper, but very few in practice. And the story in this town doesn't really end there. Accidents keep happening all the time. Smaller blasts and fires occur almost every year in the region's 800 plus licensed factories and countless unlicensed illegal ones.

I guess in some ways it's good to just put them all in one place.

Yeah, I guess.

I mean, it definitely isn't, but it's also like, I don't know if it all goes bad, we're only losing this one city.

You'd think at this point they would have a better fire response and or a burn unit built nearby. Because I know you're saying there's no money in the prevention of stuff, but I feel like if you were an enterprising business man, you'd say, hmm, a burn unit here might make me some money. It seems like I'd have a lot of customers. But another place that would need it is the last place I want to discuss. A place that perhaps more than anywhere on earth is prone to fireworks disasters.

Oh, Fireworksville?

Mexico's capital of pyrotechnics, Toltepec, also known as the town that keeps exploding.

Is that on the sign?

It should be, but I don't think so. This town, Toltepec, is home to a fireworks industry that stretches back more than 200 years. About 65% of the locals living in Toltepec work in the fireworks trade. It is such a part of the culture that they even hold an annual fireworks festival where the workers joyously blow things up on purpose. Unfortunately, Toltepec has also made global headlines for blowing up not on purpose repeatedly and spectacularly.

Five Waymos.

My joke about the Waymos was, hey, those cars are Waymo on fire now than they were a few minutes ago.

This is huge. This is huge for you. I'm glad you're able to get that out.

I'm a comedy writer now.

That's a discussion for a different pod.

The most infamous incident was the San Poblito market explosion on December 20th, 2016. A disaster so big, it looked like a literal war zone. San Poblito was an outdoor fireworks market, a bizarre of hundreds of stalls where vendors sold everything from sparklers to rockets.

I have to imagine you start with sparklers and then you work your way up to be in the rocket salesman at the end of the aisle.

Yeah, I hope it would be great if they arranged it in order. So you come in one end of the marketplace and it's little stuff. By the time you get to the end, there's the acme size giant red rocket.

You want no part of what's down here. You're a sparkler, you may be a Roman candle guy. Only people with eye patches can come back here. You got to prove you've been around a rocket.

The stands keep getting more and more ramshackle. More people have eye patches and slings on their limbs.

They're just selling through injury.

Yeah. Well, officials had touted the San Poblito market as the safest fireworks market in Latin America.

Yeah, and we're America's number one fear-based podcast. You can write whatever you want in a bag.

Due to, they named it this because they had introduced new safety measures after earlier accidents. But on this busy pre-Christmas shopping day, something ignited in one stall. And Christmas came early for anyone who asked Santa for a jaw-dropping nightmare.

I was about to say, people... It wasn't people ignited with joy over the sale prices.

No. Witnesses described a rapid chain reaction. One fireworks stand blue, setting off the next and so on. A staccato of bangs and flashes ripping through the entire market. Hundreds of thousands of kilograms of fireworks went up in a succession of blasts, sending a towering mushroom cloud of smoke over the town.

You know, there's that shot in fucking Waterworld where the rocket stall guy is like, finally, thank God or whatever. Like, yeah, remember when it blows up? Not to give away Waterworld 30 years later.

But I, the worst thing about Waterworld is that they cut the sea monster out of it.

There was a sea monster.

There was a sea monster sequence that I believe they I can't remember now if they didn't shoot it. But I think I've seen photographs of the sea monster in the water, like behind the scenes stuff. And I don't know whatever happened with it. But yeah, there was a sea monster.

Somebody like me was like, humans are the world's biggest monsters. You don't have to introduce fucking a sea monster. This is fine. It's already three hours long and there's jet skis.

In this story, fireworks are the monster. The explosion was so powerful that it leveled the market and the homes nearby were badly damaged by the blast shockwave too. Roofs were flattened, windows blew out and at least 42 people were killed, 84 injured. Many with severe burns over most of their bodies. Among the casualties were dozens of shoppers and vendors and unfortunately even children. Kids as young as 13 suffered burns across 90% of their bodies.

None of them had that in their Christmas list.

No, they hopefully were on the naughty list or they're gonna have a real conflicted relationship with the holiday when they grow up.

Now what's the, do we have any information on burn wards in this, like are we closer here than in India?

I did not look up specifically where the burn wards were. I do know that the scene was overwhelming for emergency responders. There was a lot of collection of body parts. There was a lot of searching through the rubble. But what's crazy is that this was the third major explosion at San Pablito Market in just 11 years. There had been similar explosions in 2005 and 2006 that individually destroyed the entire market and needed to be rebuilt from scratch.

Oh my god, this is 2016?

This was 2016, yeah. So, 10 years after the last explosion. They rebuilt the market each time because this fireworks market is the lifeblood of Tulip Tepek's economy and culture too. Many families have made fireworks in this town for generations, and local authorities, of course, are reluctant to shut down anything that provides the livelihoods here. So, even though San Poblito had been shut down in the past, it was allowed to reopen after lobbying and promises of better safety. But these promises were obviously about as solid as... God damn it, I can't think of words. I was trying to come up with a simile on the fly, and I could not. The point is that the entire marketplace exploded in 2005, 2006, 2016, and then another two deadly blasts in Toltepec in 2018 that killed 7 and 24 people respectively.

So we're due for one. This is like Old Faithful.

It's like waiting for the big one in California. Like, oh brother, it's been a couple years since the last one. The town has still not given up its identity as a fireworks hub. Residents know the danger is real, and yet the economic need for this fireworks market and the cultural pride keep the cycle going, which means that as of today, fireworks are still being sold and made in Tulip Peck with supposedly improved safety measures.

I mean, look, there's coal towns, there's mining towns, there's fucking firework towns. There's whatever the hell deadliest catch is based on life.

Crab fishing towns.

Yeah, I just think that people should be maybe compensated a little better if they keep blowing up every three years. I doubt that's the case, but if you're not gonna make it safe, at least give them a bunch of money, like oil roughnecks or deadliest catch people.

It sounds like they're just killing off people instead of paying them more money, they last a couple years and then blow up and then they put new people in there. So.

You guys have any openings here? We will.

We will.

Put your name in.

It'll be a real big burned raggedy looking opening, but.

Yeah, we don't necessarily put up a help wanted sign. You'll know when we need people.

So Ed, with all that said, where would you place fireworks on the fear tier?

Place them real low. I place fireworks as a one when it comes to city based, professionally licensed people in a barge, firework displays, I put fireworks at a six when it's someone's drunk brother-in-law. And it's probably as high as I'll go.

You want to place fireworks on your lover tier. You want to marry a sparkler.

I'm kissing a sparkler right here. That's why there's no video component. Little stick stickly ass looking sparkler.

You said Ed that you wanted me to remind you to bring up James Bond in the fear tier.

Oh yeah, okay. Um, it's not a fully thought out thought, but nothing I say in the show ever is.

That's why we love you.

And this is strictly about safety and regulation and stuff. So you buy a gun, you gotta take a test that don't let you fail it, but still. They'll fucking make sure you keep doing it until they just straight up tell you the answers.

Sounds like the safety inspections at some of these fireworks factories.

Yeah, exactly. So, you know, there's regulation there because it's a deadly weapon. You get a driver's license. They make you take a test, which you can fail, but they'll make sure you pass eventually because it's basically a deadly weapon. I don't... There's maybe because it's not strictly legal everywhere, but there is no... I don't even get a pamphlet when you buy fireworks at like a fireworks place you drive across the country. It's like, here's how to use it. They're like, you don't know how to light a fucking wick, idiot. Like, there's no safety provided or safety that needs to be shown, or like, oh, I've taken a class on how to shoot up a bunch of mortars in my backyard. And I think that's a little weird. And that's why I bring up the James Bond of it all, which is like, I have a theory that James Bond is only cool if your dad showed it to you, if you watch James Bond in any other capacity. James Bond's fucking boring and lame and all those movies are bad. I like the Daniel Craig ones. There's like two I like from the old ones.

I vehemently disagree, but my dad also showed me James Bond.

Your dad showed you James Bond, right? I bet you, as you just said. Same thing with Westerns. I like Westerns more than I like James Bond, but I think it's that same if your dad didn't show it to you. And so I imagine if your dad wasn't, or at least one drunk uncle who you were close to, wasn't a big fireworks person, I don't think fireworks in your backyard is maybe as big of a thing that we're going to go and get the fireworks in Pennsylvania and we're going to have them in our yard and stuff. Because I think because there is no class you can take and there's no anything, you kind of have to have like an adult at some point show you in the backyard. Here's how you set it up. Don't be an idiot. Don't fucking, I mean, they're all going to be idiots. I've seen how many fail army videos at this point, but I just mean like, I just feel like it seems like a very passed on pastime, if you will.

Yeah, that's true.

I mean, and that's because there is no regulation. There is no class to take or whatever.

I don't think most fireworks are very hard to figure out, but I guess what you're saying, it's not that you need someone to show you how to do it. It's that you hopefully have someone who shows you how to do it safely.

Yeah, or even just like what end to not point somewhere. I don't know. You know, I just because it's just a thing. It's like it's a deadly weapon. It's the easiest deadly weapon to get that requires nothing in terms of maybe a driver's license to say you're 18. I don't know.

That's a good question. I mean, truly, I haven't purchased fireworks in a decade, maybe more.

I went in on this last drive across the country. I'm like, oh, I was in Missouri or something or fucking Wyoming. And I was like, oh, there's, you know, as you pass a thousand billboards for fireworks, you know, next 10 exits or whatever. And I went into one just to be like, oh, fuck, I can get fireworks. I got a trunk. You know what I mean? Throw them in there. I was blown away by the prices and I walked right the fuck out. Like fireworks are expensive.

Yeah.

And so I never had the transaction happen. So I have no idea what they would have asked me.

True. That's true.

I'm too fucking poor to even do the poorest ass shit like fireworks in your backyard.

Yeah, that is...

Something associated with like poor ass fucking people.

Next to having a broken lawnmower in your front yard, I think fireworks in the backyard is kind of like the lowest ladder, the lowest...

I can't even afford to buy the lawnmower to have break. That's what I'm saying.

Well, I put fireworks at maybe a three on the fear tier. I don't love handling them. I'm not truly afraid that I'm going to die. And I certainly am not going to hold one in my hand while the fuse is lit. So, you know, not my favorite, not terrified of them.

It's interesting that you put yourself in it. When I did my numbering, I didn't even have me lighting it. I was just meant like being around fireworks. But yes, I guess. Yeah, I didn't. It's funny that you were in your version. You're like, I'm the guy lighting the fireworks.

Well, yeah, I mean, that's I guess that's that's how I feel the most in danger is if I'm holding it in my hand, I guess.

And then you're not afraid of fireworks. You're afraid of your incompetence at a fireworks show.

I'm no longer afraid of Tammany Hall, Porky Pig, Ophish Motherfuckers. Not what's his real name?

Boss something. Boss Tweed.

Yes.

That's the Tammany Hall guy. That's a big fat guy.

I have a vague, our friend Kyle, who grew up in Massachusetts, I have a vague memory. We met him in college and one summer I went-

He's going through Boss Tweed stages.

I went to some event.

Looks great now.

Some summer event at one of his uncles or something. And I vaguely remember a drunk guy running around with fireworks and feeling in danger.

Unsafe. Yeah.

Like it was like a drunk guy being like, you want to see my gun?

Yeah.

No, no, no, put it away.

Of all the things that can get you in time, that's definitely one of them. A drunk guy with fucking backyard fireworks. He slips on a Linguisa, fell off the grill and now he's shooting Roman candles directly into a crib.

Well, on that very summary note, I think this episode draws to a close. So until next time, I'm Chris Cullari.

And I'm Ed Voccola.

And the show is Scared All The Time.

And we'll see you under the fucking lights, baby, under the lights of a summer fireworks show. If you live in this here United States, yeah, go see a fireworks show. Scared All The Time is co-produced by Chris Cullari and Ed Voccola.

Written by Chris Cullari.

Edited by Ed Voccola.

Additional support and keeper of sanity is Tess Vifel.

Our theme song is the track Scared by Perpetual Stew.

And Mr. Disclaimer is A*****.

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Good night.

We are in this together. Together. Together.

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