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Dispatch Ajax! Podcast
A Geek Culture Podcast - Two life-long Nerds explain, critique and poke fun at the major pillars of Geek Culture for your listening pleasure.
Dispatch Ajax! Podcast
536: The Worst Year Ever
536 CE: What happens when the sun dims for eighteen months and summer never really arrives? The volcanic winter that blanketed much of the world in a cold, bluish haze, and the chain reaction it set off—failed harvests, famine, migrations, plagues, and the quiet rewiring of global power. Drawing on eyewitness chronicles and modern climate forensics like ice-core sulfate spikes and tree-ring anomalies, we piece together how a cluster of eruptions chilled the planet and turned a bad year into one of the harshest periods to be alive.
Yeah. No, I'd rather come upon a person personally, but you know coming upon an open is that that can be nice.
SPEAKER_01:I think those are fundamentally different things. I think depending on your trajectory, it's usually come upon. If you're saying come upon, the the word upon, that's different than coming upon.
SPEAKER_03:It's a fine line.
SPEAKER_01:We're really killing it already.
SPEAKER_02:Gentlemen, let's broaden our minds. Are they the proper approach pattern for today?
SPEAKER_03:It's now twenty twenty-six. And there is always some hopefulness for the new year. Yet I think many of us are apprehensive about the coming year. Obviously, there are many irons in the fire that we might feel like are gonna burn it all down. But hopefully things will be wonderful. But judging by at least the past recent or the recent past, as it were, maybe take that one again. Hopefully things will all be wonderful. But judging by the recent past, it could be a bad year.
SPEAKER_01:Also, this is Ajax.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, this is I was gonna introduce this at some point, but let's let's just match Ajax.
SPEAKER_01:No, I didn't really have a plan.
SPEAKER_03:I was winning that. I was gonna try to fit it in at some point. I didn't know where.
SPEAKER_01:Well, this is a smetch Ajax.
SPEAKER_03:Yes, it is the year 2026. Lately there have been many bad years. 2019 or 2020 was COVID. 2001 was 9-11. 1968 was the summer of hate. That was JFK, MLK, and the Tet Offensive. 1942 marked the peak of the Nazi expansion and the systematic start of the Holocaust's mass extermination. Well, nineteen forty four saw immense overall death tolls across all fronts in eastern western Pacific and bombing campaigns.
SPEAKER_01:Let's not forget 1918. Yes, during World War One, where tens of millions of people died because of direct action of the war, fifty to one hundred million died of influenza.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. If you saw like a little bit down below, right after I was gonna talk about 1918.
SPEAKER_01:Sorry, god damn it.
SPEAKER_03:Sorry, I thought you had the the document open there.
SPEAKER_01:No, my fault.
SPEAKER_03:Very bad years, that was the Great Depression. And then there was this is you, where you insert the 1918 bit which you had done. I think there is one year that is probably the worst of all in the known and recognized history of humanity, with some of the longest and most formative tentacles for the development of our modern world. Imagine. This is where Skip puts in Sicily.
SPEAKER_01:Picture it! Sicily, 1925!
SPEAKER_03:He came upon it, as it were. Imagine you wake up one day and there's an impenetrable fog that has descended upon the land. The fog blocks out the sun, but doesn't it dissipate? No, rather it lasts 18 months. Imagine what would happen with little to no sun. This is exactly what happened in the year 536 AD. A mysterious and impenetrable fog descended upon the land almost everywhere on the planet. It's particularly notable how widespread the reports were. Accounts indicate that the fog was visible over Europe, the Middle East, and even as far as parts of Asia. The Roman politician Casidorus was unearthed where he recounted a startling story of life in the middle of the 6th century. We marvel to see no shadows of our bodies at noon. Zicarius of Mytilene, the city in Lesbos, Greece, who authored a chronicle that contained a section referring to the dark sun between 535 and 536 AD.
SPEAKER_01:The sun began to be darkened by day and the moon by night, while the ocean was tumultuous with spray from the 24th of March in this year, till the 24th of June the following year. And as the winter was a severe one, so much from that, from the large and unwanted quantity of snow, the birds perished. There was a distress among men from evil beings.
SPEAKER_03:Procopius, who was a late antiquities Byzantine scholar and historian, lived at the time, stated, And it came about during this year that a most dread portent took place.
SPEAKER_01:For the sun gave forth its light without brightness, like the moon, during this whole year, and it seemed seemingly like the sun in eclipse, for the beams it shed were not clear.
SPEAKER_03:In his historical work Historia Ecclesiastes, translating as church histories, the 6th century historian and church leader John of Ephesius wrote that The sun became dark, and its darkness lasted for 18 months.
SPEAKER_01:Each day it shone for about four hours, and still its light was only a feeble shadow. Everyone declared that the sun would never recover its full light ever again.
SPEAKER_03:Others' accounts at the time described the sun taking on a bluish color with significantly weakened rays. The sky and its blacking conditions lasted again for 18 months, meaning that the world entered what was essentially a night that lasted a year and a half. What caused this?
SPEAKER_01:Nuclear winter. It was probably nuclear winter. It was probably those dinosaurs that had left Earth.
SPEAKER_03:See, the dinosaurs were dealing with the Atlanteans, and then the Atlanteans were dealing with the Vermanayanas, and they were bombing the people of Shambhala, and uh, you know. This is what happens.
SPEAKER_00:What's the name of that Valeria? Is it Valeria? Is that the name of the Conan's Lover?
SPEAKER_01:No, the fantastic four-daughter of No, what's the name of that fucking other one?
SPEAKER_03:What other one?
SPEAKER_01:That other fucking mythic land that didn't exist.
SPEAKER_03:Didn't exist. Did you hear this non-believer folks?
SPEAKER_01:Important parcel was being mythic.
SPEAKER_03:He's listening to historians and scholars. Yeah. We don't believe them anymore.
SPEAKER_01:And geographers.
SPEAKER_03:What do they know? Trying to tell us the world's a globe? I don't buy it. Please. So an asteroid impact was suggested as a possibility. However, this wouldn't explain the dim light of the sun, and no tsunamis had been recorded for this period, which would have occurred if an asteroid had landed in the ocean. It is believed rather that at least one volcanic eruption was the culprit. Through indirect evidence such as sulfate spikes in polar ice cores, tree ring anomalies, and sediment deposits, they point to volcanic eruptions. It is unknown which volcano or volcanoes, some believe one in Alaska or Iceland, while others offer locations such as Tuvuvir in Papua New Guinea, Ilopango in El Salvador, and Krakatoa between the islands of Java and Sumatra in Indonesia have all been proposed. But it is believed that there could have been three eruptions that coincided in a short period of time, somewhere in 536, and then a few years after that.
SPEAKER_01:The last one would have been 540 or no, no, there were a few after that.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, I think it was like 547, I think, is where they they think. I think we'll talk about that in just a minute. A volcanic eruption results in sulfur, bismuth, and other substances spewing into the atmosphere. This, in turn, forms an aerosol veil that prevents sunlight from getting to the earth. This caused the darkening, yes, but that was only part of the effect. Without the sunlight, a significant cooling occurred. This is known as a volcanic winter. Temperatures plummeted and winter became unbearably cold. The following decade became the coldest on record in 2,000 years.
SPEAKER_01:2,300 years.
SPEAKER_03:2,300 years. The summer of 536 dawned, that despair continued. Any hope of a break from the bitter darkness crumbled as the unseasonable cold continued. The summer temperatures dropped by an incredible 35 to 37 degrees Fahrenheit. The concept of seasons disappeared for 18 months following the eruption. The weather was barely distinguishable from season to season and consistently dreary.
SPEAKER_01:In Rome, that same Casadorius said, Seasons seem to be all jumbled up together. Reports coming in from Rome. I decided to go mid-Atlantic. I don't know why then.
SPEAKER_02:The seasons, darling, they seem to be all but one.
SPEAKER_01:Seasons seem to be all jumbled up together.
SPEAKER_02:Now to baseball scars.
SPEAKER_03:This was the beginning of the late antique little ice age. In China, the experience was a bizarre as there were reports of snowfall in the summer. This anomalous frigidity led to crop failure, signaling an ecological crisis. The ecosystem fell into free fall, and the biosphere teetered on the brink of collapse. The withering of land-based plants and vegetation had the most devastating effects on the herbivore species. Many of them struggled to survive, and population dropped significantly. Smaller species reliant on them for sustenance. Insect populations around the world waned, which reduced pollination and further affected plant production. Even microbial life in the soil suffered. Due to the low temperatures, metabolic processes below the dirt slowed down. The situation bordered on an existential threat for these species, and because of the synergistic nature of the delicate ecosystem, all species. Some animals didn't know what to do with the new world they had found themselves in, especially those that moved around the globe as part of their yearly traditions. The birds' usual migration patterns were turned on their ear when the natural science of the fly south did not materialize. The food chain began to collapse, with creatures in the sea also feeling the impact as those on the land. Marine plankton populations began to shrink, which severed the source of sustenance for many coastal communities. Many larger animals like cattle and deer started to suffer losses in the pollination due to the lack of grass to eat. Hunting animals found themselves with less and less access to prey as wildlife faced this existential threat. Out of hunger and desperation, many carnivore animals, such as wolves, moved into human settlements in a last-ditch effort to find meat. This led to much conflict between humans and predators. This leads also to the human impact, obviously. One Mandean entry, the Mandeans, if you don't know, are a fascinating ethno-religious group. Do go check them out if you get a chance.
SPEAKER_01:Good hang.
SPEAKER_03:They're pretty chill. Probably were existing in the Middle East Persian region.
SPEAKER_01:They reported on the grain shortage, stating, Were you to request a tenth of a peck of grain in the land of Gokwe for five starters? We would look, but it would not be found. It's stated again and again.
SPEAKER_03:We all say that. It's a common phrase, it's an idiom. Tenth of a peck of grain on your head, I say.
SPEAKER_01:I say, I say.
SPEAKER_03:Famine became widespread as crops failed. There were food shortages and the resulting misery reported to all corners of the world, from Rome to Scandinavia to China. Irish chronicles, for example, spoke of three straight years without bread. The world economy stagnated and many smaller local economies simply crumbled. Trade routes between empires were severely disrupted, limiting interactions between regions. Furthermore, many empires could no longer afford to defend their borders and much territory changed hand during this time. Speak on this more in a bit. Incredibly, as we stated before, there were not one but two more volcanic eruptions in the years following 536 event, one in 540 and another in 547. Though not quite as large, they nonetheless prolonged and compounded the difficulties faced by people at the time as subsequent eruptions meant a longer recovery time for the environment and civilizations following the 536 disaster.
SPEAKER_01:How crazy is it that there were that many giant volcanic eruptions in a row? That right there. Doesn't that set the tone for the entire thing? I mean, it's not necessarily that 536 was the worst year. It was the first year that started off the worst decade.
SPEAKER_03:You're not wrong.
SPEAKER_01:I mean, how many times in human history have that many volcanoes gone off in a row within a seven-year span? In a row? That's insanity.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. It's almost a biblical event, which I think speaks to the way people saw it and speaks to the level of result that comes about from all of this.
SPEAKER_01:Isn't it interesting though that there is no actual like religion based on this? Well, some mythology kind of erupts from this and no pun intended.
SPEAKER_03:Has prolonged impacts after that. A lot about this was struggling to survive. There was global upheaval, socio, economic, religious. We're gonna see some of what these impacts from these eruptions and the climactic disasters that came from them. But a little bit more about the 546, 547 eruption, because there isn't much known, but there's a little more on this than the previous one, even if people of the quote-unquote known world didn't witness it. The 540 eruption occurred in Ilopango, El Salvador, meaning it mostly affected the indigenous peoples of the Americas. Evidence has shown that this eruption expelled a whopping 10.5 cubic miles of dense rock across the surrounding lands. The destruction wrought by the Ilopango eruption was unimaginable. Like in the quote, old world, a massive amount of ash, known as Tierra Blanca Yovin ash layer, spread across Central America. Furthermore, the expelled rock devastated the Mayan settlements in the region. The raining debris terrorized locals. Tens of thousands of people perished instantly following an eruption. Those that survived the plastone saw their settlements destroyed, and mass migrations of population followed the incident. The Earth's recovery was slow, and that might not have been the extent of it. The late antique Little Ice Age began in the spring of 536 and didn't let up It's a cute little guy. And it didn't let up for a long time. Even when it did, it was location dependent. It appears to have finally ended in Europe in 660, but the poor souls of Central Asia had to endure another two decades, with it finally ending in 680. People were born and passed away during this period, never knowing an easy life. Historian Michael McCormick summed it up perfectly, calling it the beginning of one of the worst periods to be alive, if not the worst year.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, he was the one that coined the that idea. You know, after all those other volcanic eruptions, you're like, those are probably worse years.
SPEAKER_03:The beginning of the bad.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. What it's the beginning of the worst period in in to be alive in human history. And in it, and the thing that I think interests me the most about this is that it's not Eurocentric. We don't talk about Africa or indigenous North, South, or Central America normally. But this did affect all of those places. All of them. Yes. And on record.
SPEAKER_03:This was a part of the most difficult period in the totality of human history, all across the world. Much of the consequences of these grew from these desolate volcanic ashes. In China and Japan, the event was recorded in great detail. With scarce water, there were massive droughts, and death followed. Hundreds of thousands of square miles became infertile. The Bieshi Chronicles, the official history of the Northern Dynasties, mentions that in the province of Jiang, 80% of the population died, and the survivors ate corpses to survive.
SPEAKER_01:Jesus! That's crazy.
SPEAKER_03:Another possible impact of the disaster is the increased production of rye, which requires less sunlight and resources to grow than many other food crops. It's possible that the 6th century Danish farmers developed rye bread in response to this terrible volcanic winter as insurance against further climate disasters. Now the status quo around the world was upset by this disaster.
SPEAKER_01:According to Brandon Spector in Live Science, the continuing fall of the Roman Empire may have been partial result of the decade of famine and plague that began in AD 3. Jesus Christ, let me take that again. I even read it ahead of time. The continuing fall of the Roman Empire may have been a partial result of the decade of famine and plague that began in 536 CE.
SPEAKER_03:Again, the temperature in summer fell as low as 1.5 degrees Celsius, leading to crop failures and famines across the world, as we've spoken before. But just a few years later, in 541 AD, Justinian's plague killed as many as a hundred million people throughout the Mediterranean. Now the Justinian Plague is named after Emperor Justinian I, who ruled from 527 to 565 CE. Not a great time.
SPEAKER_01:The outbreak began in so it had nothing to do with the plague.
SPEAKER_03:No, no, it's that's you know, sometimes you just get lumped in with that after the fact. The outbreak began in 541 CE in the port city of Pelusian, Egypt, and quickly spread throughout the Mediterranean region, reaching Constantinople by 542. Now plague outbreaks are strongly related to climate changes, particularly a massive cooling may have affected the carriers of the bubonic plague fleas. The flea gut uh clot that forms uh with the contagion only forms below 25 degrees Celsius. Above that, it doesn't form. And the bacterium Yursina pestis, uh the pistilli, is passed in the feces. But when the flea is below that temperature, that clot forms and it can't process food the same way. That's why it just keeps biting, biting, and passing the bacteria to others. Fleas kind of go on and on until they die. I didn't know that.
SPEAKER_01:That's fascinating.
SPEAKER_03:Um, but with these cooler temps, it would have allowed the bacteria that start to bubonic plague to flourish, thus spreading to more and more fleas. Now, it is believed that the plague originated. In Ethiopia. Though there are debates, viral and plague histories tend to lead to that supposition. Central Africa's temperature tended to be too hot for the bubonic plague, but with the cooling temperatures, it became the perfect breeding ground. Roman trade routes would take boats from Africa up to Alexandria, Egypt, and then north to the heart of the Roman Empire. Now what drove this was ivory. In the 6th century, hundreds of tons of ivory was transported up from Central Africa due to the European and Mediterranean greed, which brought the plague into Constantinople.
SPEAKER_01:Shocking, capitalism screws us all.
SPEAKER_03:Yet again, if only we learned this lesson.
SPEAKER_01:And then a few hundred years later, half of Europe dies. I guess we've never learned our lesson.
SPEAKER_03:Nope. Now further compounding this was the severely weakened ecosystem in Europe meant that the plague was most likely a result of higher rodent numbers in densely populated areas. Rats likely spread the disease far and wide among humans. The fatality rate of the pandemic is estimated to be in the hundreds of millions in Constantinople. They would have to dispose of 10,000 bodies a day for months. It was stated by an official that when the death totals in the city reach a quarter million, they just stop counting.
SPEAKER_01:There's a good reference to this in the Star Trek episode Requiem for Methuselah, where the the the character Flint, who is immortal, talks about the rats in Constantinople and the piles of bodies. And then later, Grant Morrison writes a, I think, completely underrated comic called Batman Gothic, where he deals with an immortal who is also there in Constantinople during the the plague rats from when they would set the ships on fire who were plague infested and all that. References for you.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. Taking some of this information and and putting it in context of some awesome science fiction and comics.
SPEAKER_01:Some really geeky awesome stuff.
SPEAKER_03:That's kind of what you're here for.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, it's kind of the only reason we do this.
SPEAKER_03:Now adding to the place's impact in the region was the migration of the Lombards, these are Germanic peoples, and Slavs into Roman territory in Italy and the Balkans due to the cooling period. Particularly devastated was the already politically tense Byzantine Empire, also known as the East Roman Empire. The historians believe that between one-third to one half of the Empire's populations was wiped out by the plague. This disrupted function within the cities, the abilities of the military, the military recruitment, less taxes, less food being available, and less money for troops and mercenaries, thus a collapse. Now these consequences rippled throughout history. The plague persisted for over two centuries, with recurring outbreaks until about 750 CE. Now on the Mongolian plains, the Avars were the dominant power. The Chinese thought of them as just awful and to clean bowls, they would have their women uh lick them clean and like wouldn't bathe and whatnot. But that's also from the Chinese perspective. But as disgusting as the Chinese saw them, these barbarians were extraordinary for being the advanced horsemen, in fact, possibly the best in the world. They are said to have invented the stirrup, and many of the tools that they used in the 6th century are still used today by different groups in the region, and gave them a massive military edge. The horses were essential to their way of life, but with the bitter cold that came and the droughts hitting the Mongolian steppe and lasting for possibly a decade, this severely weakened the Avars. By 552, the Turks attacked. The Turks had previously been the Avars' subjects, but when they attacked this time, they crushed the weakened Avars. Why? The Turks had a more diverse economy. Essentially, they had a lot more cattle as their source of economy and foodstuffs and usage versus the Avars who were just with horses. Cows have a greater efficiency to digest food and a greater ability to eat a wider range of vegetation types, as opposed to horses which are not able to eat poor quality and rank vegetation. Now, in this drought situation, the horse wouldn't be able to eat enough food and wouldn't survive. This devastated the Avars. At the hands of the Turks, thousands of Avars were slaughtered or enslaved. Their leader committed suicide. The survivors traveled westward on a 4,000-mile trek. The Avars cut across what is now Kazakhstan and up the Caspian Sea and settled into what is now known as the Balkans. As they traveled, the Avars recovered, and because their horse technology was still superior, they became a conquering people on their way. Eventually they reached the fringes of the Roman Empire, and within a decade they dominated the Huns, Slavs, and Germans living north of the Danube and turned their attention against the Empire.
SPEAKER_01:How does the Kurgan fit in?
SPEAKER_03:He's just cutting off Highlander heads. He was just he's just mercenary, he doesn't know what's up. He's leading troops into war and everything, they show all that. Yeah, but he's just dicking about. You know, he doesn't have a true plan. He just wants to kill people. Yeah, that's probably true. Now the Avars were a huge problem for the Romans, and they kept having skirmishers around the edges of the empire. But with the Romans unable to militaristically fight them off due to their massive decline, they succumbed to blackmail. The Avars blackmailed the dwindled empire and extracted vast amounts of gold in return for peace. Over a 50-year period, the Avars extorted gold that would be worth over 50 billion dollars today.
SPEAKER_01:That's okay.
SPEAKER_03:No, I mean, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:It's whatever.
SPEAKER_03:It's totally fine. Now, while that was happening in the Roman Empire, during this time there was also the rise of Islam and the expansion of the Islamic caliphates. Now, according to research by a team from the Swiss Federal Research Institute, that's where I get all my information. Always at Bermundsdorf, the fall in temperatures led to the Arabian Peninsula experiencing a dramatic increase in fertility. The boost of food supply contributed to the Arab expansion in the Islamic conquests. The strain on the Eastern Roman Empire and the Sassanid Empire allowed for easier conquest by the Muslims on Levant, the Byzantine Syria, Egypt, and Persia. But there was also a shift in power within Islam. At the beginning of the 6th century, Yemen was Arabia's greatest power and relied upon the Merib Dam, its greatest feat of engineering, an ancient wonder, over 2,000 feet long, feeding into hundreds of miles of canals. But within a few years of the climactic event, there were huge droughts, then storms and flash floods that weakened the dam. There were repairs and rebuilds continuously for years, but the Mera Dam was ultimately abandoned, and this was the end of Yemen's power and viability. Her people migrated to Medina and Mecca, where Muhammad had been born. While the climactic turmoil, which results in the breaking of the dam and migration up to Medina, Medina becomes a seat of power, especially for those already there, Muhammad's family. The Prophet's ancestors had taken it upon themselves to import and provide food for those there. This reputation helped his family take root in a time of drought and famine, which had made its way to the Arabia. By the end of the 6th century, people were looking for an end to the misery. In this time of upheaval, war, revolution, lack of Roman dominance, nobody seeming settled or sure of their future, and it was the ministry of Muhammad that allowed Islam to take root there and expand out. Now, again, there are other things happening all over the world. In South America, 125,000 people lived in Teotihuacan and controlled the Mexican plain. Now, this is the only huge city in the Mexican plateau. The next biggest city had like 2,000 people in it. It was it was like the only place. Now shortly after 535 AD, things went wrong. In the mid-sixth century, a 30-year drought was found by examining lake deposits in surrounding areas. Now examining human remains in the city, it was found that there was a significant worsening in health and earlier deaths in babies, children, and those under 25. There was not enough water, which led to not enough food, which then led to poorer health of the populace, which also had worse sanitation without any rainfall or consistent water. Finally, this led to instability within the society and a rebellion against the city. People rose up and set the biggest temple ablaze. It is believed that the priests not bringing the rains that they had purported to be able to led to a lack of confidence in them and total destabilization of the society, which led to a complete collapse of the city. It would take another 300 years for another civilization to establish itself in central Mexico. Now, granted, there are no official records, and these are the hypotheses of archaeologists, scientists, and other academics, but if true, this climactic disaster of this little ice age seems a reasonable catalyst. Now the lack of sun was a fitting event for what is known as the Dark Ages. But it also had an effect on the psychological damage and myth forming of the people then. The devastated northern Europe, leading to as many as half the population in, for example, Scandinavia perishing. Such a disaster is believed to be imbued in the Norse mythology. For example, talks of Fimblewinter, a sunless period that precedes the end of the world, are clearly inspired by the climate of 536.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, that's awesome.
SPEAKER_03:This led to further material myth expressions. For example, by the hordes of gold buried in Scandinavia at the time, likely an appeal to the gods to bring the sun back. Historians first reading these accounts, however, needed some convincing. When accounts of the era were first discovered, most historians did not take them very seriously. They assumed the reports of darkened skies and an extinguished sun were poetic flourishes and metaphorical exaggerations. But that all changed in the 90s with the evidence about the climate disaster coming into clearer view. Now for much of the world, 535 and 536 served as a watershed moment, tipping the domino to fall and leading to the creation of much of our modern understanding of geopolitics. Such an example can be seen in the heart of the Western world. This is you. Trying to pet my dog too. Um I want a good Merlin voice here.
SPEAKER_01:As he rode docked through the land, he found trees down, grain destroyed, and all things laid waste as if lightning had struck in each place. He found half the people of the village dead, the earth no longer produced when cultivated. From that time on, no wheat or other grain grew there, and no tree bore fruit, and very few fish were found in the sea. For this reason, the two kingdoms were called the Wasteland. Yeah, this is the opening to a sci-fi book written by Matheson. It's called We Are Legend. I've been watching a lot of Twilight Zone with Robert Matheson's story, so it's It's good stuff.
SPEAKER_03:Now, perhaps the facts of 536 led to these legends.
SPEAKER_01:I am legend! Matheson, right there. There it is. That's how he sounds.
SPEAKER_03:According to English and Irish annals, the Ribonic Plague finally reached Britain in 547. It arrived on Roman ships still trading with Britain, known and it was known as Mortalitis Magna, the Great Death, or Mortalitis Prima, the First Plague, and was a completely new horror to them.
SPEAKER_00:Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_03:At that time, Britain was divided in two. In the west, there were the native Celts. In the east, invaders from Europe, the Angles and Saxons. Now they had very little interaction with each other, other than some skirmishes for land towards the center. The Angles and Saxons traded with their homelands, while the Celts traded with the Romans, thus putting them at a greater risk of plague. Eventually, Celts, having been devastated by the plague, are greatly reduced in number. The Anglo-Saxons moved west into partially empty lands. With that, England is formed. Angoland. Angoland. That's literally where that name comes from. Wow, no, but that's how we still say it in the we say it in the south, right?
SPEAKER_01:Angoland. Don't forget about the Normans. The Normans had a big thing to do with that, but I guess it's a good thing.
SPEAKER_03:Norman Roxwell, yeah. He painted the picture quite nice.
SPEAKER_01:So we got a good He painted that one picture. Yep.
SPEAKER_03:Singular picture. Now long-term impacts can be observed and felt around the world, and these are but a handful of examples. Of course, such a bewildering natural sight would be scary and unsettling, leading to deathly consequences personally, but who could possibly see the long-term global influences on society at all aspects? If this were to happen today, who could say how monumentally affecting it would be not only for you today, but your ancestors 2,000 years later? This is why not only was 536 the worst year, but that it was so bad that it radically altered the course of human history evermore. Think about that as you ring in the new year and see the news and think how bad things are and how bad they might be. They ain't that bad.
SPEAKER_01:Ponder that on the tree of woe. There are other years you could say, like skipping over several skipping? Is that what we're doing right now? Are we skipping? Settle down. The years that Europe lost once again half its population to what they called the plague, but was a different infection than the bubonic plague. There are many years where you could say things are bad. Or how about 2016, where we lost Prince and David Bowie and then Trump got elected. It's never been right ever since. You know what? Hasn't been right since. But 536, I think it's the beginning of the worst period ever. 536 would suck for sure, but I guarantee you those years subsequent of 536 were worse. Because of what happened in 536, the multiple volcanic eruptions, the other outbreaks of disease and bacteria, I feel like 536 is just sort of the starting point of the worst two decades, three decades later.
SPEAKER_03:I mean, if it it's it's right in the era of the Dark Ages, which lasted hundreds of years.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I mean, it is sort of the unofficial uh beginning of what we call the Dark Ages. And interestingly enough, when we think about the Dark Ages, we think about like a period of anti-science, anti-knowledge, anti-innovation, where things stagnated, where they were steeped in religious demagoguery and not really advancing the human condition in general. But then there's a weird underserved consequence of this entire thing. So that there was this huge stagnation of the European economy for about a hundred years, actually, almost a hundred years after this period. The way that we figured out how the Dark Ages sort of started to end, economically at least, was an increase in lead levels in the atmosphere. What that indicates is there was a a resurgence of silver mining during this period. Because silver is often found within lead cores. And so the way that a lot of scientists have determined the beginning of the recovery from this period is that they noticed lead and phosphorus and other elements in the atmosphere being more prominent based on these ice cores and these tree ring observations, that they suddenly started mining for silver again, which means the economy started picking up, things started moving forward, at least economically, and there was a slow recovery period. Now, the reason it wasn't an immediate recovery period was because in the medieval time, medieval times, during that period, if you extract silver, which like I said, usually comes from lead cores, that puts lead into the atmosphere. And lead in the atmosphere leads, based on a lot of studies that have been done recently, during this exact period, IQ levels dropped throughout Europe steadily as they were trying to mine silver. They were also stagnating socially and politically. It led to this whole dark period that I think fairly is called the dark ages. That's a horse of a different color. I mean, these horses. It's a dark time, man. Yeah. 536. We we can call it the worst year ever. But it was the beginning of the worst years ever.
SPEAKER_03:But I would say an entire year without sunlight.
SPEAKER_01:Worldwide.
SPEAKER_03:A year and a half without sunlight, and yeah. I mean, until those Scandinavians at the time. The temperatures dropped brutally and they they died in droves.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, that year sucked, but they didn't stop sucking, and they got worse for another decade. Bad times. And then hundreds of years afterwards. Yeah. But don't live in 536.
SPEAKER_03:If you hang at a time machine, if you develop one this year, you and John Titor do not go back to 536. Okay. Choose a different time.
SPEAKER_01:A time lord or John Tidor. Don't go back to 536.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, uh, Doctor, why don't you fix this, huh? Or is this just like one of those fixed points?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, you can't do that. Rose is gonna fuck it up again. Except when he wants to. Except when the plot dictates. I don't know. He let Adric die, and Rose fucked it up, so I don't want to hear it.
SPEAKER_03:That's right, folks.
SPEAKER_01:We don't want to hear it, but he just lets John T Dor do it.
SPEAKER_03:Oh shit, John's here. Well, I'm out. Alright, uh, you got this, John?
SPEAKER_01:What if John T Dor was like a like a rogue alifrean time lord? Hmm. That's interesting.
SPEAKER_03:That's fucking interesting, man.
SPEAKER_01:John T Dor's the other one. Maybe he's the unknown one.
SPEAKER_03:Ooh. The unknown time lord.
SPEAKER_01:Who goes around saying his name all the time. Like James Bond.
SPEAKER_03:It's me. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:I'm a secret agent, I'm James Bond. We can't figure out who he is. Who is this guy? St. Jin Smythe. Wait, no, he's he's James Bond. Nope. Uh that was a reference to uh view to a kill. That's okay.
SPEAKER_03:We hope you guys uh agree. It has its moments. It has it has its moments occasionally. We hope that 2026 isn't the worst year for you. We hope it's not the worst year for us. We hope there's no volcanic eruptions. In fact, a a series of them that subsequently blot out the sun and kill most of us and lead to. Uh plagues, uh downfalls of empires, um mass changes in all of society.
SPEAKER_01:Wasn't there also already a volcanic eruption at in Hawaii this year? You mean already? Like in the past few days? Few days? Yes. I'm pretty sure. You know what? Uh uh kill Kilauea? Kamana Wanalea? Is that what you said? Wow. And uh shout out to a new Kevin Spacey project. He's still out there making the making the rounds.
SPEAKER_03:Let's see. Trump stuff is good. That's all going well. Always gone well. Happy uh 52nd state? 53rd state? Venice new New Venezuela? New Venny, as we're gonna call it now.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, I thought you were talking about Greenland.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, okay, well. Oh no, we'll get that one next. Yeah. We're collecting them all like Pokemon.
SPEAKER_01:Well, that sequel's coming out. We detected Pokemon? Greenland 2. Greenland 2.
SPEAKER_03:So yeah.
SPEAKER_01:How do you have a sequel to that movie? How is there possibly a sequel to that movie?
SPEAKER_03:I do not know. In fact, like I was looking at the trailer for Greenland 2 and was like, did I not remember what happened in Greenland Blood?
SPEAKER_01:A very select people went to Greenland and then it ended because that was the only place you could possibly survive on Earth after the uh disaster.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, but apparently uh the road is happening outside.
SPEAKER_01:Right, yes, yes. Apparently Corn McCarthy is happening outside. Okay, good, great. Well, why did we care about the first one then?
SPEAKER_03:Well, did we? Let's be honest.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. You liked it. It's not bad. Anyway, alright, so we've done this. We did this.
SPEAKER_03:We've done this, yeah. We hope that you all like it. And to all a good night.
SPEAKER_01:This is a new year. It could always be worse.
SPEAKER_03:It most certainly can, but we're not sure this podcast can.
SPEAKER_01:We haven't found the bottom yet. We're searching.
SPEAKER_03:We're digging like hell, folks. We're gonna get there.
SPEAKER_01:We test. What's the uh that well that everybody keeps going to?
SPEAKER_03:Mel's hole?
SPEAKER_01:No, no, no, no. The one where there's supposedly like treasure buried under it, like in it. Oh shit. There's a discovery show about it. Oak Island? Is that right? Oak Island! Yes, thank you! Jesus Christ, it's been killing!
unknown:It's been killing.
SPEAKER_01:And that's us trying to find the bottom. Yes, the Oak Island uh well? Ditch, uh hole?
SPEAKER_03:Uh well, how about we go with mystery? How about that?
SPEAKER_01:Just like Oak Island. We're gonna keep digging until we find the bottom. And if you try to come along with us, you'll drown. Or get caught up in a pyramids game.
SPEAKER_03:There's a well I want to sell you. Uh and if you sell it to five friends, you're gonna make money too.
unknown:That's good.
SPEAKER_03:But again, uh thanks for coming along with us. We hope your new year's great. And we hope you enjoyed the podcast. If you don't mind, like, sharing, subscribing. If you wouldn't mind giving us five Oak Island worst years ever on the podcast app of your choice, ideally Apple Podcasts, the best way of get us heard and thus seen, that'd be greatly appreciated. And again, thank you for coming along with us and starting it, starting a new year off right. That's how that's what we'll say about that. But skip until the the the sun is blotted out and we all die of a bitter cold and the the world turns to shit, even worse than it already has. What should they do?
SPEAKER_01:Oh, you mean week and a half from now or whatever? Yeah, uh well, they should commonly make it's a it's a common. They should probably clean up after themselves to some sort of reasonable degree, make sure they paid their tabs, make sure they have tipped their bar staff, their wait staff, their KJs, their DJs, their podcasters, and make sure that you remember no matter where you go, there you are. Thank you, and good night.
SPEAKER_02:Please go away.