Latest / Weeknight Mysteries Podcast / Ep. 113 | Color Out of Space - Lovecraft & The Ant Walkers Of Hiroshima

Transcript

Ep. 113 | Color Out of Space - Lovecraft & The Ant Walkers Of Hiroshima · Weeknight Mysteries Podcast

0:00
Speaker 1: If anyone followed me on my gaming channel, they might
0:03
Speaker 1: have seen that I was playing the game Call of Cthulhu.
0:06
Speaker 1: I kind of gave up on it, I probably will
0:08
Speaker 1: return to it at some point, but the thing that
0:11
Speaker 1: made me stop playing it was that I started to
0:13
Speaker 1: reread Lovecraft, and it kind of made me realize how
0:16
Speaker 1: unloved Craftian the game was. I think this is a
0:20
Speaker 1: problem that plays a lot of Lovecraft adaptations, whether it's
0:23
Speaker 1: movies or video games. You can insert as much Lovecraftian
0:27
Speaker 1: lore as you want, but in my opinion this doesn't
0:30
Speaker 1: make it a Lovecraftian horror. I think there's something in
0:34
Speaker 1: Lovecraft writing that is extremely hard to get across in
0:36
Speaker 1: a visual medium, I think maybe that's why it's so
0:39
Speaker 1: hard for people to adapt his works. There's something unseeable
0:43
Speaker 1: or unexplainable in his writings, which is very hard to
0:46
Speaker 1: convey when you're showing the thing visually on the screen.
0:50
Speaker 1: So when I started hearing reviews of The Color Outer Space,
0:53
Speaker 1: I got pretty excited. As people were saying it was
0:57
Speaker 1: one of the most faithful adaptations, it was finally Lovecraft
1:01
Speaker 1: done right, and so I was quite excited to see it.
1:04
Speaker 1: It also stars Nicolas Cage, who is kind of a
1:07
Speaker 1: lovely more hate him kind of actor, but I've got
1:10
Speaker 1: to say I do quite enjoy his films, including The
1:13
Speaker 1: Wicker Man. So I thought I would give it a
1:15
Speaker 1: go and see what the fuss was all about. Is
1:19
Speaker 1: it as faithful as people say? So I've got to
1:22
Speaker 1: say the first impression of this film and the most
1:24
Speaker 1: striking thing about it is the visuals. Every scene is
1:28
Speaker 1: just absolutely stunning to look at. It's a film about
1:32
Speaker 1: color as the title might imply, but they've just really
1:35
Speaker 1: gone to town on the color aspect of this story.
1:39
Speaker 1: It's a film that tells its story with color, I think.
1:42
Speaker 1: It seems like the color is the most important thing
1:45
Speaker 1: on the screen at all times. Everything looks like they've
1:49
Speaker 1: boosted up the saturation to maximum. not in a way
1:52
Speaker 1: that looks wholly unnatural. It just gives everything its like
1:56
Speaker 1: gorgeous lush look to it. And it's quite an interesting
1:59
Speaker 1: choice for a horror adaptation, especially with Lovecraft. I know
2:04
Speaker 1: whenever I read the stories in my head they're always
2:07
Speaker 1: very dark, gloomy type of stories, and that's the kind
2:10
Speaker 1: of imagery I have in my head. And generally horror
2:14
Speaker 1: films are not all that colorful. The colors in it
2:17
Speaker 1: remind me almost of the original Suspiria movie. sort of bright,
2:22
Speaker 1: clashing colors that flash in and out on the screen.
2:25
Speaker 1: There's something really important about the color coding in the movie,
2:29
Speaker 1: and I'd love to see someone go through it scene
2:31
Speaker 1: by scene and decode every use of color in the film,
2:34
Speaker 1: because as well as the alien color, there's just so
2:36
Speaker 1: much more going on. I've noticed that almost every indoor
2:41
Speaker 1: scene they seem to be using blue and this orangey-brown
2:43
Speaker 1: color contrast to the game to each other. And then
2:47
Speaker 1: on the outdoor scenes you've got these greens and purples,
2:50
Speaker 1: contrast in, and then each character seems to have their
2:53
Speaker 1: own color coding. For example, the mother character always seems
2:57
Speaker 1: to be wearing some sort of white outfit, and the
3:00
Speaker 1: daughter's always wearing black. The ward character who plays the
3:04
Speaker 1: narrator in the original story, he's always seems to be
3:07
Speaker 1: wearing blue. Nicolas Gage is often seen wearing this red
3:11
Speaker 1: check color, which I think might be a reference to
3:14
Speaker 1: the original story. There is a certain fate that meets
3:17
Speaker 1: his equivalent character in the story, towards the end the
3:20
Speaker 1: red checked cloth plays some sort of role. So it's
3:24
Speaker 1: probably just a nod towards the original story, but yeah,
3:28
Speaker 1: I think there's something really important with the color, even
3:31
Speaker 1: more than obvious, and like I said, I'd love to
3:34
Speaker 1: see someone do an analysis of the color in this
3:36
Speaker 1: movie and exactly what the meaning of each color is.
3:40
Speaker 1: Even without deciphering everything going on, it's just beautiful to
3:43
Speaker 1: look at. It almost all takes place in the middle
3:47
Speaker 1: of this forest. there's the family who live deep within
3:50
Speaker 1: this woodland. And so every background is just this sea
3:54
Speaker 1: of green. At the beginning of the movie, everything just
3:57
Speaker 1: starts out just beautiful green in the background. And then
4:01
Speaker 1: you get these sort of traces of purple weaved fruit things,
4:04
Speaker 1: the idea of like a purple spiral. It always seems
4:08
Speaker 1: to represent something unnatural. For example, the purple unnatural hair
4:13
Speaker 1: dye in Slovenia's hair, sort of spiraling through her hair.
4:18
Speaker 1: And then when they go to Tommy Chong's character, they
4:21
Speaker 1: go towards his house, he's got these ribbons wrapped around
4:24
Speaker 1: to the trees and spiral shapes in the same purple color.
4:28
Speaker 1: It all seems to sort of try and get this
4:30
Speaker 1: idea in your head from the start that this purple
4:32
Speaker 1: magenta color is a kind of unnatural source among the
4:35
Speaker 1: greenery and natural colors of the woodland. It's kind of
4:38
Speaker 1: an obvious signal, but it's a nice little bit of foreshadowing.
4:43
Speaker 1: So basically, the basic plot of the story, and I'm
4:46
Speaker 1: going to try not to give too many strong spoilers here,
4:49
Speaker 1: but there will be some mild ones. A meteorite lands
4:53
Speaker 1: in Nicolas Cage's front garden. And then within the meteorite
4:57
Speaker 1: is the color from outer space. And I think when
5:00
Speaker 1: Lovecraft was originally writing the story, he wanted to convey
5:04
Speaker 1: an alien presence that was so incomprehensible to human minds,
5:07
Speaker 1: that the only way they had to describe it was
5:09
Speaker 1: of being a color. So in the original story, He
5:13
Speaker 1: describes it as a color which they've never seen before.
5:17
Speaker 1: It's like an unimaginable color. It's something that doesn't exist
5:21
Speaker 1: in our human world. It's a color that shouldn't exist
5:25
Speaker 1: in nature. Obviously, you can't just invent a new color,
5:29
Speaker 1: so they've used this like magenta color. But I was
5:32
Speaker 1: actually looking on IMDB and they've got some interesting trivia
5:36
Speaker 1: about the use of the color. They use magenta because
5:40
Speaker 1: it's a color that doesn't exist from a single wavelength
5:42
Speaker 1: of light as part of the color spectrum of visible light.
5:46
Speaker 1: I don't really understand what that means to be honest.
5:50
Speaker 1: It's an extra spectral color that is already perceived by
5:53
Speaker 1: humans in a specific interaction of the optical rods. So anyway,
5:58
Speaker 1: there's an interesting explanation of why they use magenta, but
6:01
Speaker 1: obviously it's a decent replacement for the indescribable color of
6:04
Speaker 1: the original story. And it looks absolutely stunning in the archive.
6:10
Speaker 1: You've got this kind of idea of this magenta color
6:12
Speaker 1: slowly starting to invade the lush greenery of their surroundings.
6:17
Speaker 1: And first it starts out, you know, the little flowers
6:20
Speaker 1: start sprouting. And then you see like the tendrils wrapping
6:24
Speaker 1: round a tree, mirroring the coloring in the daughter's hair
6:27
Speaker 1: and the ribbons and the trees. You just get this
6:30
Speaker 1: really interesting sense. And this is where they sort of
6:34
Speaker 1: capture the Lovecraftian element the best. there's this slowly creeping
6:39
Speaker 1: into their lives. This magenta color slowly infecting the world
6:43
Speaker 1: around them. And as it begins to infect the world
6:46
Speaker 1: around them, it starts to affect their mental state. And
6:50
Speaker 1: it's done really effectively. I would say for the first
6:54
Speaker 1: two-thirds of the movie, this sort of slow creeping in
6:57
Speaker 1: of this color, this alien color. And the beautiful at
7:01
Speaker 1: the beginning of the movie, and also there's a lot
7:03
Speaker 1: of things where they use color to signal danger. like
7:06
Speaker 1: where she cracks the egg and has blood in the egg.
7:09
Speaker 1: And the delizards with the bright colors on them indicate
7:12
Speaker 1: that they might be poisonous or dangerous. You know, always
7:16
Speaker 1: using these colors to signal some kind of present danger
7:19
Speaker 1: or illness or something that is out of place or unnatural.
7:23
Speaker 1: It's also really obvious that they are absolutely passionate about Lovecraft.
7:28
Speaker 1: There's so many little references in there. And probably loads
7:32
Speaker 1: that completely went over my head. I'm not like a
7:36
Speaker 1: huge Lovecraft fan. But you know, there's all these like
7:40
Speaker 1: references to things within the Lovecraft universe. And also how
7:45
Speaker 1: it would be in a modern world. So I really
7:48
Speaker 1: like the daughter has the cheap paperback Necronomicon that she's reading.
7:52
Speaker 1: And it is the kind of thing that if this
7:54
Speaker 1: book existed in the real world, this is kind of
7:56
Speaker 1: the format that you would expect to get it in
7:58
Speaker 1: the modern world. Beautiful film. I really love the atmosphere
8:04
Speaker 1: at the beginning of this creeping, invading. It feels really
8:08
Speaker 1: menacing and you don't really know what's going on. And
8:11
Speaker 1: the way it starts to affect the mentality of the family.
8:15
Speaker 1: I think towards the end, it starts to fall apart
8:18
Speaker 1: slightly though. It gets to a point where it starts
8:21
Speaker 1: to get a bit too crazy. In the original story,
8:25
Speaker 1: the way the color out of space ultimately affects people
8:28
Speaker 1: and how it affects the livestock is it kind of
8:30
Speaker 1: starts to make them disintegrate. It kind of starts to
8:34
Speaker 1: change things in really subtle ways. Like they describe how
8:38
Speaker 1: they keep finding animals and they can't really tell what's
8:41
Speaker 1: wrong with them. But they've, you know, they find them.
8:46
Speaker 1: It's like a woodchuck or something like that. And it's
8:49
Speaker 1: been transformed in some way. They can't really tell how
8:53
Speaker 1: it just looks unnatural to them. And they see like
8:57
Speaker 1: a hare leaping across the road or a rabbit. And
9:00
Speaker 1: it's tried as a bit too long to be normal.
9:03
Speaker 1: It's just something when they see it, they can't describe it.
9:07
Speaker 1: It's just something unnatural and uncanny about the creatures the
9:10
Speaker 1: way they've been mutated. The movie doesn't go that subtle.
9:15
Speaker 1: Let me just say, without getting any spoilers, it's very
9:19
Speaker 1: unswaddled in its conveying of the horror. This is sort
9:22
Speaker 1: of the, some of the parts one don't like that
9:25
Speaker 1: much about the film. It starts to take on a
9:28
Speaker 1: bit of like a body horror vibe, which would be fine.
9:32
Speaker 1: And it's fine to just for them to stride a
9:34
Speaker 1: bit from the source material. But they rely way too
9:37
Speaker 1: much on computer generated effects to achieve these body horror scenes.
9:42
Speaker 1: And as good as it is, I'm not being down
9:45
Speaker 1: on the people who did these CG effects. It just
9:48
Speaker 1: never looks right. You can always just tell it's not
9:52
Speaker 1: really there. Even if they had a slightly cheaper looking
9:55
Speaker 1: practical effect, I just think it would look so much better.
10:00
Speaker 1: It looks so much more realistic. And it's a shame
10:03
Speaker 1: they didn't go with that. I think it starts to
10:06
Speaker 1: slightly fall apart at that point for me the movie.
10:10
Speaker 1: So I'm going to go over some of the things
10:12
Speaker 1: I didn't like in the film. The characters are all
10:15
Speaker 1: kind of a bit stereotypical. You've got an English Cage
10:19
Speaker 1: playing Nicolas Cage. You've got Tommy Chong playing Tommy Chong.
10:25
Speaker 1: You've got the stoner teenager brother. You've got the wife
10:28
Speaker 1: who's down of cancer and you've got the small child
10:31
Speaker 1: who basically acts as the creepy kid similar to the
10:34
Speaker 1: one in Poltergeist who goes there. Yeah, basically plays that role.
10:39
Speaker 1: And then you've got the the wife cracking snarky teenager.
10:43
Speaker 1: This role seems to be in every movie these days.
10:47
Speaker 1: I don't know why they always have to insert this
10:49
Speaker 1: sort of character. It's basically the snarky teenage girl character
10:54
Speaker 1: who always has a one line if every scene. I
10:57
Speaker 1: call it the live Houston character. Yeah, they did this
11:01
Speaker 1: with the IT movies. They always have to have like
11:04
Speaker 1: witty one liners whenever something scary happens. And it kind
11:09
Speaker 1: of ended up sort of reducing the horror factor of
11:11
Speaker 1: a lot of scenes. And although it's not too bad
11:15
Speaker 1: in this movie, there is a bit of that. There's
11:18
Speaker 1: a bit of a luller and a comedy. I don't
11:21
Speaker 1: know what the obsession of alpacas is. They always have
11:25
Speaker 1: alpacas in there because it's I don't know. I don't
11:28
Speaker 1: know if it's some reference that goes over my head
11:31
Speaker 1: but it's a bit sort of oh look at us
11:33
Speaker 1: how random we are. We've got alpacas I don't know.
11:38
Speaker 1: It's good to have a bit of light relief but
11:41
Speaker 1: I don't know if in this film sometimes it felt
11:43
Speaker 1: a bit out of place. So yeah, I was going
11:46
Speaker 1: to go saying about the characters in the film. I
11:49
Speaker 1: didn't like him too much because he all felt a
11:52
Speaker 1: bit typical. But you can tell with this movie they're
11:55
Speaker 1: trying to do something very different with a horror movie
11:58
Speaker 1: and a lot of the characters felt very tropey. If
12:01
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, they felt very like you'd
12:03
Speaker 1: seen him in every other horror movie and I kind
12:06
Speaker 1: of wish they'd done something slightly different with the characters
12:08
Speaker 1: as well as the movie itself. The final act of
12:12
Speaker 1: the movie, it all feels a bit muddled. The problem
12:16
Speaker 1: is the beginning of the film builds up so well
12:18
Speaker 1: this horror. And it all sort of ends in a
12:21
Speaker 1: crescendo and it all feels a bit sort of they're
12:23
Speaker 1: just throwing a load of things at your load of elements.
12:27
Speaker 1: And whereas I think if they went a bit more slow,
12:30
Speaker 1: a bit more slow-paced and subtle with the horrors, it
12:33
Speaker 1: would be more effective. For example, I think there's some
12:36
Speaker 1: genuinely creepy moments. For example, when there's something that happens
12:41
Speaker 1: to the mother and the younger son, when it first
12:44
Speaker 1: reveals what happens to them, it's pretty horrific. You feel like,
12:48
Speaker 1: oh my god, that's horrible. The reactions of the family
12:53
Speaker 1: are really good and you kind of feel that horror
12:55
Speaker 1: along with them. And then they just kind of, they
12:58
Speaker 1: don't know much else with it. They don't explore the
13:02
Speaker 1: horror of that situation enough. And I think they could
13:05
Speaker 1: have explored this idea a little bit more what they
13:08
Speaker 1: do with the mother and the younger son is pretty horrific.
13:11
Speaker 1: And I think they could have sort of explored their
13:13
Speaker 1: family's reaction to that a little bit more than they do.
13:17
Speaker 1: Like you'll spoil a little bit further with it. There's
13:21
Speaker 1: another really good moment where they go back to Tommy
13:23
Speaker 1: Jong's house and there's just this sound from outside. Just
13:27
Speaker 1: the sound design at this moment in the film is
13:29
Speaker 1: really good. It has a really sinister effect, I think.
13:35
Speaker 1: It shows real moments of horror. But it's kind of
13:38
Speaker 1: interspersed at this point with a lot of very noisy scenes.
13:41
Speaker 1: a lot of very bright flashing colors that are slightly disorientated.
13:46
Speaker 1: And I think it kind of takes away from the
13:48
Speaker 1: horror in certain scenes. It gets a bit kind of
13:51
Speaker 1: a bit over the top. I'm not being too down
13:55
Speaker 1: on the movie, I just think towards the end it
13:57
Speaker 1: could have been torn down a little bit. I understand
14:00
Speaker 1: what they're doing with the colors, but it gets so
14:02
Speaker 1: bright and psychedelic that it actually becomes quite difficult to watch.
14:07
Speaker 1: It's like I was getting a headache at some point.
14:10
Speaker 1: I remember there was a scene where there was like
14:12
Speaker 1: this a blue flashing light from a police car and
14:15
Speaker 1: it was interspersed with this bright magenta color and it
14:17
Speaker 1: was flashing across people's faces and it was just like
14:20
Speaker 1: I was getting a headache from watching it. It was
14:23
Speaker 1: so disorientating and you know, it's interesting visually but it's
14:27
Speaker 1: not horrific, it's not a scary scene. It kind of
14:30
Speaker 1: like that they tried to do something slightly different with
14:33
Speaker 1: what the color does to people and what it does
14:35
Speaker 1: to the animals. But I think if they were going
14:38
Speaker 1: to go with CG effects, I think if they stuck
14:41
Speaker 1: with what it says in the book, it would have
14:42
Speaker 1: been more interesting. In the book, everything turns grey and
14:47
Speaker 1: starts to disintegrate as if it's turned into ash. I
14:50
Speaker 1: think they could have done that quite well with computer
14:53
Speaker 1: generated effects. But I think what they went with it
14:56
Speaker 1: all looked a bit cartoony, a bit slightly silly. A
15:00
Speaker 1: lot of the CG kind of took me out of
15:02
Speaker 1: the atmosphere of the movie at that point. but there
15:05
Speaker 1: were things that they changed from the original story that
15:08
Speaker 1: I had to like. I think in the Lovecraft's original
15:12
Speaker 1: short story, in the final scene, they introduced like a
15:15
Speaker 1: whole bunch of characters that haven't been introduced in the
15:18
Speaker 1: rest of the story. Like the big climax of the
15:21
Speaker 1: story involves a bunch of people that you don't, apart
15:24
Speaker 1: from them, the writer. You don't really know any of
15:27
Speaker 1: the other characters. I think they do a better job.
15:32
Speaker 1: It sort of combines two different parts of the original
15:35
Speaker 1: story to make the end of the movie, which they
15:37
Speaker 1: do that, I think, in a better way. All in all,
15:41
Speaker 1: I enjoyed the movie. I don't want to sound like
15:44
Speaker 1: I'm being down on it. I'm trying to list the
15:47
Speaker 1: things that I didn't like. But I really like that
15:51
Speaker 1: there's a modern horror movie that they've tried to do
15:53
Speaker 1: something different with. I see so many trailers for horror
15:57
Speaker 1: movies coming out and it just looks like every other
15:59
Speaker 1: horror movie I've seen for the last 10 years or so.
16:03
Speaker 1: You can tell immediately, like, beat for beat, everything that's
16:07
Speaker 1: going to happen in that movie just from watching a trailer.
16:10
Speaker 1: And it's just refreshing to see them finally do something
16:13
Speaker 1: a bit different. The visuals and everything with the movie,
16:17
Speaker 1: it's completely unique. The only thing I can compare it
16:21
Speaker 1: to really is Annihilation. I think Annihilation is quite inspired
16:26
Speaker 1: by The Color Out of Space. I think maybe Annihilation
16:30
Speaker 1: doesn't even better job of being Lovecraftian than The Color
16:33
Speaker 1: Out of Space does. An Annihilation, kind of, to me,
16:37
Speaker 1: is like a mashup of Lovecraft and J.D. Ballard's The
16:41
Speaker 1: Crystal World. It's just kind of like those two books
16:44
Speaker 1: combined almost. I felt like some points this film was
16:48
Speaker 1: trying to emulate Annihilation, but not quite doing a good
16:52
Speaker 1: enough job of it. But, as I say, all in all,
16:56
Speaker 1: great different horror movie. And interesting enough to elevate it
17:00
Speaker 1: above just a slew of rubbish that comes out these days.
17:04
Speaker 1: I've really got to give the filmmakers kudos for trying
17:07
Speaker 1: something different and being brave enough in it. Yeah, like
17:10
Speaker 1: I say, the first two thirds of the movie I
17:13
Speaker 1: loved the last third of the movie I didn't like
17:15
Speaker 1: as much, but I didn't hate it. It wasn't boring.
17:20
Speaker 1: It was just kind of lost. It's pacing a little bit.
17:24
Speaker 1: It kind of went a bit too much over the
17:26
Speaker 1: top for me. I say go watch it. It's interesting
17:31
Speaker 1: at least. Is it the best Lovecraft adaptation? I don't know.
17:37
Speaker 1: I haven't seen them all. Has it captured the feeling
17:41
Speaker 1: of a Lovecraft movie? Possibly yes. It's got the sort
17:46
Speaker 1: of weird unexplained even towards the end of it. You
17:49
Speaker 1: don't quite know what the horror is. It leaves enough
17:53
Speaker 1: questions in your mind This is what I like about Lovecraft.
17:58
Speaker 1: He'll describe things in detail. But he'll leave enough out
18:02
Speaker 1: for your mind to sort of turn it over. I'll
18:05
Speaker 1: give you an example. The Mountains of Madness are re-raising it.
18:10
Speaker 1: And the way they describe the city in the book,
18:12
Speaker 1: they give such a detailed account of the structures of
18:15
Speaker 1: the buildings. When they enter this forgotten city, They give
18:19
Speaker 1: such a detailed account of all the structures of the buildings,
18:22
Speaker 1: how they're built, what material they made, of all the rock.
18:27
Speaker 1: You could probably just draw a picture and accurate map
18:29
Speaker 1: of the city just from the description. But there's enough
18:33
Speaker 1: in the descriptions to know that there's something unnatural about
18:35
Speaker 1: it that the narrator can't describe. And although you build
18:39
Speaker 1: up in your mind this accurate image of the city,
18:42
Speaker 1: it leaves something out because the narrator can't quite tell
18:45
Speaker 1: you what it is. It's just something unnatural and evil
18:48
Speaker 1: about it. It kind of causes you to turn this
18:51
Speaker 1: image of the city around in your head and ponder
18:54
Speaker 1: on it. And that's kind of, I think, where the
18:57
Speaker 1: horror is. It's indescribable. And I think this movie does
19:02
Speaker 1: a good job of conveying that sort of ornable horror.
19:06
Speaker 1: It does a good job of capturing that essence of
19:08
Speaker 1: the weird cosmic horror that you can't quite place in
19:11
Speaker 1: your mind. It doesn't quite make sense to a human brain.
19:16
Speaker 1: I think people who read Lovecraft will have their own
19:19
Speaker 1: opinion on what makes a Lovecraftian horror. But for me,
19:23
Speaker 1: it does a fairly good job. And I would recommend it.
19:27
Speaker 1: And I've heard them making like two more in the
19:29
Speaker 1: same series. So I'll be excited to see them. I'll
19:34
Speaker 1: definitely be watching them when they come out. Now, if
19:38
Speaker 1: you've seen it, let me know what you think as well.
19:41
Speaker 1: I'll be interested to know if other people would enjoy
19:44
Speaker 1: it or not. Oh, and I wanted to say as
19:47
Speaker 1: well as someone else. You'll notice more and more as
19:50
Speaker 1: you re-watch it. There seems to be a lot of
19:53
Speaker 1: symbolism and images in there, which you might not spot
19:56
Speaker 1: on the first time round or you might not make
19:59
Speaker 1: the connections. For example, at the beginning of the film,
20:03
Speaker 1: when Lavinere is doing that weird ritual, you see these
20:06
Speaker 1: dull legs hung up in tree and their kind of
20:08
Speaker 1: swastika pattern. And then later on, which I didn't realize,
20:12
Speaker 1: I didn't spot at first as they're going towards Tommy
20:15
Speaker 1: Chong's house. You see a doll hung up in the
20:18
Speaker 1: tree there. And it kind of, I didn't make the
20:22
Speaker 1: connection at first. But then I think, well, I wonder
20:26
Speaker 1: if there's some connection between Tommy Chong's, oh, he's kind
20:29
Speaker 1: of called Ezra. Between Ezra and Lavinere, that isn't quite
20:34
Speaker 1: explained in the movie, but maybe re-watching it, you'll see
20:37
Speaker 1: more links between these different characters. It seems like the
20:41
Speaker 1: kind of movie where there's going to be a lot
20:43
Speaker 1: of these like little weird symbols and Easter eggs and
20:45
Speaker 1: things to spot. And I think re-watching it, you'll get
20:49
Speaker 1: more out of it. So yeah, that was another thing
20:52
Speaker 1: I think might be important. It's probably a movie that
20:56
Speaker 1: requires a few viewings to appreciate fully. On August 6, 1945,
21:03
Speaker 1: the United States dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities
21:06
Speaker 1: of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The bomb that was dropped on
21:10
Speaker 1: Hiroshima was named Little Boy, and it was designed to
21:13
Speaker 1: detonate before hitting the ground. The city had a population
21:17
Speaker 1: of around 350,000 people. The initial explosion killed over 78,000 people,
21:24
Speaker 1: but some would say that these were the lucky ones.
21:27
Speaker 1: It's the accounts of people who survived that truly describe
21:30
Speaker 1: a hell on earth, and it's those accounts that I'm
21:33
Speaker 1: going to be exploring today. This is the horror of
21:36
Speaker 1: the Hiroshima bomb. The accounts in this case come from
21:40
Speaker 1: Charles Pellegrino's book to Helen Beck, The Last Train from Hiroshima.
21:45
Speaker 1: If you want to hear more stories like this, I
21:48
Speaker 1: recommend reading the book, because this case only scratches the
21:51
Speaker 1: surface of the nightmares described. And we have one. Akiko
21:56
Speaker 1: Takakura and her friend Asami were inside the gay pea bank,
22:00
Speaker 1: and they were just about open when the bomb detonated.
22:03
Speaker 1: Although they were relatively close to the hypocenter, just some
22:06
Speaker 1: 250 meters away, the bank's sturdy granite and concrete structure
22:11
Speaker 1: provided significant protection against the deadly atomic rays and the
22:14
Speaker 1: advancing shockwave. Nonetheless, when the shockwave hits, Akiko felt a
22:20
Speaker 1: painful squeezing sensation in her lungs. Asami was thrown against
22:25
Speaker 1: a wall and compressed like an accordion. Then the decorative
22:29
Speaker 1: cladding on the wall burst into shards of granite shrapnel.
22:33
Speaker 1: Akiko would later recall drifting in and out of consciousness
22:36
Speaker 1: during the first few minutes after the explosions. Her lungs
22:40
Speaker 1: ached and she struggled to comprehend what was happening to
22:43
Speaker 1: her body. Then came an overwhelming thirst, unlike anything they'd
22:47
Speaker 1: ever experienced. The bomb's explosion had instantly caused water to
22:52
Speaker 1: evaporate from rivers, ponds, and all exposed surfaces within a
22:56
Speaker 1: two kilometers radius, stripping moisture from every living thing caught
23:00
Speaker 1: in a flash, even those who were inside buildings. They
23:04
Speaker 1: managed to fill air raid helmets with water from a
23:07
Speaker 1: ruptured pipe, but no matter how much they drank, their
23:10
Speaker 1: thirst only became more intense. Within a short while, the
23:14
Speaker 1: air inside the bank became unbearably hot and the women
23:18
Speaker 1: decided they must evacuate. At 8.25 a.m., ten minutes after
23:23
Speaker 1: the explosion, they finally managed to step outside and they
23:26
Speaker 1: saw the extent of the devastation. The sun had completely disappeared,
23:31
Speaker 1: and the landscape was bathed in red caused by fire
23:34
Speaker 1: rising from the remnants of buildings that had been reduced
23:36
Speaker 1: to burning rubble. Akiko looked down the streets and at
23:40
Speaker 1: first it appeared to be empty, but then she noticed
23:43
Speaker 1: the charred remains of people who had been walking towards
23:45
Speaker 1: the bank when the bomb detonated. There were blackened, scorched
23:50
Speaker 1: bodies collapsed over each other as far as you could see.
23:54
Speaker 1: Several bodies had crumpled apart, like sacks of burning leaves
23:57
Speaker 1: spilled under the ground, others had been reduced to charcoal
24:00
Speaker 1: and piles of burning wax. Nearby, Akiko saw the body
24:05
Speaker 1: of a man who was still standing, yet it had
24:07
Speaker 1: been flush fossilized whilst pulling a large two-wheeled cart. Inside
24:12
Speaker 1: the cart, she saw the bodies of two charcoal-crusted children.
24:17
Speaker 1: They were sitting clutching their knees. Overwhelmed, she crouched down
24:21
Speaker 1: in the street, trying to comprehend what she was seeing,
24:24
Speaker 1: then she noticed something on the ground next to her.
24:28
Speaker 1: Something that had remained soft and fleshy. It was a hand,
24:32
Speaker 1: its fingers sticking up and burning like candles, the fat
24:35
Speaker 1: being drawn to the fingertips from the tissues below. At
24:39
Speaker 1: this point it began to rain, and as the drops felly,
24:42
Speaker 1: intense thirst returned, forcing Akiko and his army to turn
24:46
Speaker 1: their faces towards the sky and drink the rain, opening
24:49
Speaker 1: their mouths as wide as possible. The water tasted foul.
24:54
Speaker 1: When Akiko looked down at her arms, she noticed that
24:57
Speaker 1: the water was staining her skin black. The rain was
25:00
Speaker 1: thick and repulsive, like crude oil, but the thirst was
25:04
Speaker 1: so overwhelming that they just continued to drink. These cities
25:08
Speaker 1: vaporized moisture had ascended into the stratosphere, here it had
25:11
Speaker 1: absorbed the stratospheric soot and radioactive particles from the bomb's cloud,
25:16
Speaker 1: and begun to descend again. It was extremely toxic, ingesting
25:20
Speaker 1: even small amounts of it delivered a deadly dose of
25:23
Speaker 1: radioactive material. Whilst Akiko survived, a army would quickly succumb
25:29
Speaker 1: to radiation sickness and perish. A boy named Hiroshi Ito
25:33
Speaker 1: was in school when the bomb was dropped. Five minutes
25:37
Speaker 1: after the explosion, he managed to emerge and scathe through
25:40
Speaker 1: the roof of his collapsed school. Hiroshi stepped out into
25:44
Speaker 1: a mist of black fog. All the other boys around
25:48
Speaker 1: Hiroshi appeared to be severely burned. the toxic black mist
25:51
Speaker 1: and the black rain sent him and about forty other
25:54
Speaker 1: students running to a nearby swimming pool crying for help.
25:58
Speaker 1: On the swimming pool's floor, Hiroshi saw rows of school
26:01
Speaker 1: gals slumped at the water's edge, the gals were dying
26:04
Speaker 1: one after another. Most of them wore only white shirts,
26:08
Speaker 1: their dark pants had ignited when the flash came and
26:11
Speaker 1: had burned away along with the skin on their legs.
26:14
Speaker 1: When he later climbed out of the pool, everywhere he looked,
26:18
Speaker 1: He saw burned schoolchildren moving in an eerie silence like automaton.
26:22
Speaker 1: They had blistered eyes and lips covered in black ash.
26:26
Speaker 1: They appeared to be resigned, strangely lifeless, despite still being alive.
26:32
Speaker 1: Hiroshi looked across the river to the opposite shore and
26:35
Speaker 1: he saw hordes of people fleeing from the direction of
26:38
Speaker 1: the violent fires falling into the river like swarms of insects.
26:42
Speaker 1: Riverside houses began collapsing into the water and soon the
26:46
Speaker 1: people in the river were overtaken by burning debris. The
26:49
Speaker 1: ground around Hiroshi began to erupt into spontaneous fires, panicked,
26:54
Speaker 1: he ran in random directions and desperate to get away.
26:58
Speaker 1: A 13-year-old boy named Hiroshi Kada also managed to survive
27:02
Speaker 1: the collapse of his school, cocooned in an air pocket.
27:06
Speaker 1: He was able to push his way to the surface
27:08
Speaker 1: almost immediately after the blast and he saw a massive
27:11
Speaker 1: mushroom cloud towering over the city. All around him, among
27:15
Speaker 1: the bricks and the rubble he saw other children half
27:18
Speaker 1: buried and dying. Dozens of burned hands reached out, grabbing
27:22
Speaker 1: at Yoshi's feet and shins desperate to get his attention.
27:26
Speaker 1: This was too much for him and Yoshikata panicked. He
27:30
Speaker 1: kicked out the hands reaching up from the rubble and
27:32
Speaker 1: he ran as fast as he could into the smoke.
27:35
Speaker 1: Nearly two kilometers away from the hypocenter Mrs. Sasaki was
27:39
Speaker 1: in her garden when the flash occurred. She emerged from
27:43
Speaker 1: the rubble holding her two-year-old daughter Sadako in her hands,
27:46
Speaker 1: somehow they were both unhinged. Years later Mrs. Sasaki felt
27:51
Speaker 1: grateful that her daughter didn't remember much of what they'd
27:53
Speaker 1: seen that day. She never spoke to a daughter about
27:57
Speaker 1: the horrors that they'd witnessed, especially the tap dancer who'd
28:00
Speaker 1: run past them moments after the explosion. Initially Mrs. Sasaki
28:05
Speaker 1: thought that everyone around them had disappeared, then she noticed
28:08
Speaker 1: a strange man climbing out of a collapsed house. He
28:12
Speaker 1: got up and ran past them towards the curtain of
28:14
Speaker 1: whirling smoke and sparks. He didn't cry for help and
28:18
Speaker 1: he appeared to be unaware of anything or anyone around him.
28:22
Speaker 1: The only sound he made was a rhythmic click clacking
28:25
Speaker 1: as he ran down the road, as if he was
28:27
Speaker 1: tap dancing down the street with metal taps on his shoes.
28:31
Speaker 1: Then Mrs. Sasaki noticed that he wasn't wearing any shoes. Instead,
28:36
Speaker 1: whereas feet should have been there were two bony stumps.
28:40
Speaker 1: As he ran, these protruding bones tapped against the pavement,
28:43
Speaker 1: chipping and fracturing with each step. Soon the man disappeared
28:48
Speaker 1: into a cloud of smoke and the nightmarish tapping faded
28:51
Speaker 1: into the distance. I sold your name Nishioka was stationed
28:55
Speaker 1: outside the city. He heard the bomb going off and
28:58
Speaker 1: he saw a huge mushroom cloud rising above Hiroshima. Shortly
29:03
Speaker 1: afterwards from the direction on the city, a train came
29:06
Speaker 1: running in. All of the train's coaches had lost their windows.
29:11
Speaker 1: Most of the passengers inside were burned to death except
29:14
Speaker 1: for a few stunned people who gathered by the empty
29:16
Speaker 1: windows looking out with blank expressions on their faces. The
29:20
Speaker 1: coaches were all smoldering, at least two were completely engulfed
29:24
Speaker 1: in flames. The soldiers looked on stunned as the train
29:28
Speaker 1: rolled past them. It didn't stop. The engineer at the
29:32
Speaker 1: front looked like a scarecrow. His clothes bloodied and tattered.
29:37
Speaker 1: He leaned out to the portside window vomiting. out a
29:40
Speaker 1: foaming stream of vial. The soldiers managed to stop the
29:44
Speaker 1: train and they took command of the locomotive. They decided
29:48
Speaker 1: to head back towards Hiroshima. The soldier Nishioka went with them.
29:54
Speaker 1: Within minutes Nishioka and the other soldiers encountered lines of
29:57
Speaker 1: people walking along the railroad tracks away from the city.
30:01
Speaker 1: The engine pressed on, blowing its whistle to clear people
30:04
Speaker 1: off the tracks. The further they got into the city,
30:08
Speaker 1: the worse the burns on the walking wounded guards. There
30:12
Speaker 1: were more and more people looking like the walking dead,
30:15
Speaker 1: shuffling along constantly murmuring water. They moved in a mechanical manner,
30:20
Speaker 1: forming long trails, one horribly burned person after another slowly
30:24
Speaker 1: navigating through the smoke. Due to their burned blackened skin
30:28
Speaker 1: and their automaton-like movements, many survivors would lead to refer
30:32
Speaker 1: to them as the Ant Walkers. Another soldier, Private Shigeru Shimoyama,
30:37
Speaker 1: was about six blocks away from the hypocenter when the
30:40
Speaker 1: explosion came. As luck would have it, he'd just stepped
30:44
Speaker 1: into a concrete reinforced warehouse. The force of the wave
30:49
Speaker 1: tossed him against the back wall, saving him from being
30:51
Speaker 1: crushed under a collapsing roof. Outside the warehouse, his fellow
30:56
Speaker 1: soldiers had all vanished in the blink of an eye.
31:00
Speaker 1: When he regained consciousness, into his horror, he discovered that
31:03
Speaker 1: he was hanging about a meter above the ground. His
31:07
Speaker 1: arms and shoulders were impaled on nails protruding from the wall.
31:11
Speaker 1: When he finally broke free and emerged from the rubble,
31:14
Speaker 1: he saw in the distance a group of bureaucrats struggling
31:17
Speaker 1: through the wreckage. These bureaucrats were carrying a life-sized portrait
31:22
Speaker 1: of the emperor away from the burning remains of the castle.
31:25
Speaker 1: Then on the river, Shigeru noticed a naval boat navigating
31:29
Speaker 1: through the debris and bodies. The boat slowed down and stopped.
31:34
Speaker 1: The crew gathered on a deck to salute the portrait
31:36
Speaker 1: of the emperor. This gesture seemed to stir something within
31:40
Speaker 1: the ant people and many of these horribly burned people
31:43
Speaker 1: turned towards the portrait and bowed their heads. When he
31:47
Speaker 1: finally turned around, Shigeru found himself standing face to face
31:50
Speaker 1: with a horse. This horse was strange looking, it was
31:54
Speaker 1: pinkish white, and it took Shigeru a moment to realize
31:57
Speaker 1: what he was looking at. All of the horse's skin
32:01
Speaker 1: and fur were gone. This was caused by something known
32:05
Speaker 1: as deep loving. A phenomenon where the skin when exposed
32:09
Speaker 1: to a wave of compressed supersonic air, is pulled off
32:12
Speaker 1: like a leather glove being pulled from a hand. The
32:16
Speaker 1: animal didn't appear to be in any pain, but the
32:18
Speaker 1: sight horrified Shigeru so much to the began to run
32:21
Speaker 1: away from the area. Every time he glanced back over
32:25
Speaker 1: his shoulder, he saw this skinless horse following him, staring
32:28
Speaker 1: at the soldier pleadingly. Before the explosion, Father Matthias heard
32:33
Speaker 1: two planes overhead, revving their engines as if they were
32:36
Speaker 1: trying to escape something. he doesn't know what happened after that.
32:41
Speaker 1: When he regained consciousness, he realized that he joined hundreds
32:45
Speaker 1: of other and days to half-naked people and he'd become
32:48
Speaker 1: one of the ant walkers. He looked at the man
32:51
Speaker 1: in front of him and he noticed that his skin
32:53
Speaker 1: was hanging loosely from his back like pieces of tattered shirts.
32:57
Speaker 1: All of the flesh on his forearms had been stripped away,
33:00
Speaker 1: revealing blackened bones. Father Matthias aimlessly followed this walking corpse
33:05
Speaker 1: until he bumped into the frame of a charred streetcar.
33:09
Speaker 1: Inside the car, Father Matthias saw the scorched remains of
33:13
Speaker 1: a family, then he noticed movement and unborn baby struggling
33:16
Speaker 1: inside its dead mother. The horrified Father Matthias stumbled away,
33:21
Speaker 1: he didn't know where he was going, he just wanted
33:24
Speaker 1: to get away from the smaller and car as fast
33:26
Speaker 1: as he could. He noticed more than a dozen ant
33:29
Speaker 1: people had formed a line behind him and began to follow.
33:33
Speaker 1: He didn't know how long he'd been walking but suddenly
33:35
Speaker 1: a noise from above caught his attention. He looked up
33:39
Speaker 1: and he saw the corner of a three-story brick apartment building.
33:43
Speaker 1: It was the only structure still standing. Three naked children
33:47
Speaker 1: clung to the top of the tower, screaming hysterically, one
33:51
Speaker 1: of them seemed to be completely covered in blood. Father
33:54
Speaker 1: Matthias continued walking. As he reached the river, the first
33:59
Speaker 1: rescue boat began pulling corpses from the water. Wading in,
34:03
Speaker 1: he noticed a woman carrying a child towards him, pleading
34:07
Speaker 1: for the infant to open his eyes. When the woman
34:10
Speaker 1: stepped into the water, her skin and muscles began to
34:13
Speaker 1: fall away from her bones. At this moment, Father Matthias'
34:18
Speaker 1: numbness began to crack and he was overwhelmed by a
34:21
Speaker 1: sense of guilt. That's when he started to think about
34:24
Speaker 1: the three children that he'd seen on top of the tower.
34:28
Speaker 1: Every day for the rest of his life, he wondered
34:30
Speaker 1: what had happened to them. Each night, They were the
34:33
Speaker 1: last thing that he thought about before falling asleep and
34:36
Speaker 1: his dreams were plagued with their screams. Tsutomi Yamagoshi, a
34:41
Speaker 1: ship designer, was nearly three kilometers from ground zero when
34:45
Speaker 1: a bright flash almost blinded him. Instinctively, he dove into
34:49
Speaker 1: an irrigation ditch and covered his head. The ground shook violently,
34:54
Speaker 1: tossing him nearly a meter into the air. When Yamagoshi
34:58
Speaker 1: looked out, burning paper and smoldering clothes were falling from
35:02
Speaker 1: the sky. One side of his body felt intensely hot.
35:07
Speaker 1: The exposed skin on his left arm was burnt brown
35:10
Speaker 1: and looked like an overcooked chicken. He was suddenly overcome
35:14
Speaker 1: by an intense thirst and he ran towards the river.
35:17
Speaker 1: Despite the coppery scent of blood and the presence of
35:20
Speaker 1: floating corpses, Yamaguchi drank the water. He noticed that the
35:24
Speaker 1: bodies in the river appeared to have unnaturally long arms,
35:28
Speaker 1: almost twice as long as normal. Upon closer inspection, he
35:32
Speaker 1: realized that the flesh on their shoulders and arms had
35:35
Speaker 1: melted and peeled away from the bones, floating on the
35:38
Speaker 1: surface of the water like broken cobwebs still connected to
35:41
Speaker 1: the people by their fingertips. By the river, he encountered
35:45
Speaker 1: a group of children who he would later refer to
35:47
Speaker 1: as the pierced boys. At first, he thought that they'd
35:51
Speaker 1: burned and lacerated back, said sprouted some kind of strange hair,
35:55
Speaker 1: but as he looked closer, he realized that these burnt hairs, long, thin,
36:00
Speaker 1: blackened glass shards had been driven into the boy's flesh
36:03
Speaker 1: by the shockwave. He tried to help these children, advising
36:07
Speaker 1: them to pull the shards from each other's backs, but
36:09
Speaker 1: this proved to be extremely difficult, the children began to
36:13
Speaker 1: grow weaker and they seemed to be dying one after another.
36:17
Speaker 1: All around him people moved in a zombie-like fashion driven
36:19
Speaker 1: by an overwhelming thirst. They lay down at the river
36:23
Speaker 1: and drank the false melting water before wandering off aimlessly
36:26
Speaker 1: into the smoke. By this point Yamaguchi no longer cared
36:31
Speaker 1: about his military duties or the war efforts, all he
36:34
Speaker 1: wanted to do was to get home to see his
36:36
Speaker 1: wife and son. As he wandered through the devastated landscape,
36:40
Speaker 1: Paseo won horror after another, a mother singing a lullaby
36:44
Speaker 1: to her dead child, a horse's head burning with an
36:46
Speaker 1: eerie blue-green flame. He had to cross two rivers on
36:50
Speaker 1: his way home. One of these rivers no longer had
36:54
Speaker 1: a bridge, but there were so many corpses piled up
36:56
Speaker 1: in the shallows that they formed a kind of natural
36:59
Speaker 1: dam that he had to cross. The experience of crawling
37:02
Speaker 1: over these burned bodies to cross the river was extremely traumatic.
37:07
Speaker 1: For the rest of his life, he would revisit that
37:09
Speaker 1: bridge in his nightmares. Walking in a state of shock,
37:13
Speaker 1: Akihiro Takahashi, a 14-year-old boy, was only mildly burned compared
37:18
Speaker 1: to the rest of the population. He followed streetcar tracks
37:22
Speaker 1: past the wrecked, corpse-filled trolleys until he heard a friend
37:26
Speaker 1: calling his name. As he headed off towards his friend,
37:30
Speaker 1: a line of ant people began to form behind him.
37:33
Speaker 1: His friend was so severely poisoned by radiation that his
37:37
Speaker 1: teeth were falling out. Akihiro would later say that before
37:41
Speaker 1: he died, his belly turned purple and he vomited a
37:43
Speaker 1: continuous stream of blue-gray substance. On his journey through the city,
37:49
Speaker 1: Akihiro saw many disturbing things. He encountered a woman with
37:53
Speaker 1: her eyeball dangling on a cheek and he saw a
37:55
Speaker 1: skinned horse with exposed bloody muscle lying dead in a
37:58
Speaker 1: water-filled system. As he walked through the devastation, dozens of
38:03
Speaker 1: people followed him, although most of them no longer looked
38:06
Speaker 1: like humans. He was so horrified by these ant walkers
38:10
Speaker 1: that he tried to distance himself from them, but it
38:13
Speaker 1: seemed that with every twist and turn of his journey,
38:15
Speaker 1: new nightmares awaited him. He ran past the body of
38:19
Speaker 1: a young mother who had been completely degloved, with her
38:22
Speaker 1: screaming infant lying next to her. This baby somehow was
38:26
Speaker 1: still alive, despite its entire skin being turned to charcoal.
38:31
Speaker 1: And this wasn't the last or even the worst horror
38:33
Speaker 1: that Akihiro encountered on his way. He would later say
38:37
Speaker 1: that there were other sights that were so horrifying that
38:40
Speaker 1: words can't describe them. The aftermath of the Hiroshima and
38:44
Speaker 1: Nagasaki bombings was as harrowing as the explosions. the cities
38:49
Speaker 1: were reduced to smoldering ruins with just a few structures
38:52
Speaker 1: left standing and almost no life. The initial death toll
38:56
Speaker 1: from the blasts was staggering, but the long-term consequences were
39:00
Speaker 1: equally devastating. The survivors, known as Hibikusa, faced not only
39:05
Speaker 1: the physical horror of their injuries, but also the lasting
39:08
Speaker 1: effects of radiation exposure. Many survivors developed acute radiation sickness
39:14
Speaker 1: which manifested as nausea, hair loss, and severe burns that
39:18
Speaker 1: healed slowly if at all. In the weeks and months
39:21
Speaker 1: to follow, the death toll continued to rise as infections,
39:25
Speaker 1: organ failure, and cancers claimed many more lives. The cleanup
39:29
Speaker 1: and recovery process was an extremely grim task. Rescue workers,
39:34
Speaker 1: many of whom were soldiers and volunteers, had to navigate
39:38
Speaker 1: through the charred remains of the city and all of
39:40
Speaker 1: the horrors that they had to offer. When soldiers sent
39:44
Speaker 1: by the War Ministry arrived at the city carrying stretches,
39:47
Speaker 1: they couldn't understand why they had been sent because there
39:50
Speaker 1: was not a living thing in sight. When they entered
39:53
Speaker 1: the Crown Zero, they found a statue-like figure of a
39:56
Speaker 1: naked man standing with his arms and legs spread apart.
40:00
Speaker 1: The man had been turned into a brittle pillar of
40:02
Speaker 1: charcoal crumbling at the slightest touch. He must have climbed
40:06
Speaker 1: out of a shelter shortly before the blast, driven by
40:09
Speaker 1: the hot fumes, only to be killed and carbonized instantly
40:12
Speaker 1: where he stood. They encountered a young petite woman carrying
40:16
Speaker 1: the bloated corpse of a dead child on her back.
40:20
Speaker 1: She seemed to be completely insane, screaming incomprehensibly, her shouts
40:25
Speaker 1: getting louder and louder over time. They encountered another woman
40:29
Speaker 1: whose mind appeared to have been completely wiped clean. She
40:33
Speaker 1: appeared to be uninjured except for a large slash across
40:36
Speaker 1: her belly. The soldiers propped her up against the wall
40:39
Speaker 1: where she spent the night. In their morning they found
40:42
Speaker 1: her sitting in a pool of her own blood. It
40:46
Speaker 1: seemed as if she'd spent the night carefully trying to
40:48
Speaker 1: push her own intestines back inside herself. It was at
40:52
Speaker 1: this point that they noticed that she was pregnant. A
40:56
Speaker 1: baby only halfway to term had emerged from her belly
40:59
Speaker 1: along with her intestines and had hung lifelessly from her body.
41:03
Speaker 1: When soldiers approached to try and help her, she gave
41:06
Speaker 1: them a hideous smile before collapsing and dying. The psychological
41:10
Speaker 1: toll on the rescuers and the survivors was profound. For
41:14
Speaker 1: years afterwards many struggled with the haunting memories of the
41:17
Speaker 1: dead and dying, the airy silence of the devastated cities
41:21
Speaker 1: and the incomprehensible sense of loss. Even now decades later
41:25
Speaker 1: these scars both physical and emotional remain. I hope you
41:30
Speaker 1: found this case interesting. I think this provides just a
41:33
Speaker 1: tiny snapshot of the kind of horrors that people saw
41:36
Speaker 1: in the aftermath of the Hiroshima bomb. For every horror
41:40
Speaker 1: story you've heard today there were probably hundreds of thousands
41:43
Speaker 1: more that remained untold. It really does help me make
41:47
Speaker 1: more recordings like this. So thank you very much to
41:51
Speaker 1: all of you. If you're in a mood for more
41:54
Speaker 1: recordings like this I can recommend my Unit 731 video
41:57
Speaker 1: or my video about the horrors of the Sonderkommandos of Auschwitz.
42:02
Speaker 1: I'll put a link to those in the archive now.
42:05
Speaker 1: Thank you once again for watching and until next time goodbye.