The Culture War - Tim Pool - June 26, 2026


DOUBLET Earthquake Caused By SOLAR STORM??! The END Is Nigh


Episode Stats


Length

33 minutes

Words per minute

172.41

Word count

5,805

Sentence count

459

Harmful content

Misogyny

1

sentences flagged

Toxicity

1

sentences flagged

Hate speech

6

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
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00:00:55.380 A doublet earthquake in Venezuela. I'm sure you saw the news.
00:01:00.740 But did you know around the exact same time there was an earthquake in Japan and an earthquake in San Francisco or around San Francisco, Sacramento, California?
00:01:10.100 Many people responded by saying, Tim, earthquakes happen all the time.
00:01:14.480 You're just noticing these, particularly because Venezuela was so big.
00:01:19.300 The doublet earthquake is a rare phenomenon.
00:01:21.400 It happens. Well, it depends. But they say, in this instance, it's a once in a thousand year occurrence.
00:01:29.780 And still, you might just say, these things happen.
00:01:33.640 I know that the earthquake was devastating. The video footage we saw was terrifying.
00:01:38.220 A doublet is when you get two earthquakes. So what happened is in Venezuela, there was a 7.2 and a 7.5 back to back.
00:01:44.820 And this is devastating. Many people came out and said it's got to be some kind of weapon, right? Venezuela, seized by the U.S. not that long ago, earlier this year, largest oil producer in the world, rocked infrastructure economy damaged.
00:02:03.260 And this is going to put oil production way down.
00:02:08.020 Interesting.
00:02:09.140 Considering the Iran war just wrapped up, the Strait of Hormuz is reopening.
00:02:13.780 That's why there are so many people who believe this was probably some kind of attack
00:02:17.380 meant to destroy oil infrastructure the West had seized.
00:02:21.620 And for Donald Trump, shuttered, intentionally or otherwise, the Strait of Hormuz for four
00:02:26.660 months cutting off China.
00:02:28.780 Now, those theories are all fun and fascinating, but there's another.
00:02:31.500 You see, just before these earthquakes, there was a major solar storm, and there have been
00:02:37.160 theories for some time that major solar activity can cause tectonic activity.
00:02:42.980 And thus, when the solar storm hit one hour later, we got earthquakes on both sides of
00:02:49.800 the planet and a doublet, which many people said, that's insane.
00:02:54.220 How does that happen?
00:02:55.760 Now, there have been theories about the weakening of the magnetosphere for some time.
00:02:59.840 A conspiracy, a conspiracy theory called the Adam and Eve theory propagated, in fact, by the CIA going back to the 60s that argues every six thousand five hundred years, the Earth's poles will flip, which means we get about a two week period.
00:03:14.540 I'm probably going to do this a little bit wrong. You get about a two week period where we have no protection from space particles, radiation, and that is going to, let's just say, destroy a lot of technology and kill a lot of people.
00:03:27.400 Now, some say in this theory that the flip will actually cause the Earth to tilt, which
00:03:33.780 will result in massive flooding.
00:03:36.480 Indeed, a great flood every 6,500 years, perhaps.
00:03:40.340 Have you ever seen they'll take like a T-shaped tool in space and they'll spin it and then
00:03:46.340 it just keeps flipping back and forth as it rotates around?
00:03:49.040 It'll flip back and forth.
00:03:50.400 That's kind of the argument being made that when this shift happens, it causes the Earth
00:03:55.060 to tilt.
00:03:55.600 And there's a lot of interesting theories and hypotheses, and let's just call it there is some evidence to suggest that is possible.
00:04:04.420 Notably, mammoths found fully frozen with undigested plant matter in their bellies.
00:04:11.160 How could that be the case if they were in a cold climate?
00:04:14.620 How would they be eating plant matter, and how would they have frozen so quickly that that plant matter remained undigested?
00:04:22.100 Who knows?
00:04:23.360 I'm sure you can just say they ate the plant matter, which for some reason was growing in an area that's frozen and doesn't have plant matter.
00:04:29.340 But others argue that the Earth shifts periodically.
00:04:33.940 And that's why we see we see glaciers on the equator.
00:04:37.620 Now, I don't know for sure, my friends, but let's jump in the news and talk about this theory, which is oh so fascinating.
00:04:44.020 On an otherwise slow news day, with all due respect, I mean, the death toll in Venezuela is absolutely devastating.
00:04:49.880 I don't want to just call that a slow news day, but to the interest of the American domestic
00:04:54.660 population, we're not as concerned about foreign countries to this capacity, though it is big
00:04:59.900 news. The average person's probably not paying attention on a Friday. So forgive me, I'm not
00:05:04.080 trying to be overly disrespectful. There's a lot to talk about. Before we get started, my friends,
00:05:08.260 please head over to TimCast.com. I'm just going to say this. My throat is burning. I work too much.
00:05:13.840 I record like five to six hours a day of content, and I'm probably going to die.
00:05:19.640 I'm losing my voice, so I don't know if I will be hosting IRL tonight.
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00:05:42.240 so that we'll have content up for you guys Thursday and Friday of next week
00:05:45.500 going into the holiday when everybody is off.
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00:05:54.480 but I'm going to get as much done as I can.
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00:06:03.580 I don't want to get to that point.
00:06:04.900 So I'm going to get right to the edge of overheating
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00:06:41.460 We have this from France 24. Why Venezuela's doublet earthquakes were so devastating.
00:06:47.500 The tremors that hit Venezuela on Wednesday evening have killed nearly 600 people and
00:06:52.020 injured thousands. The disaster consisted of a rare phenomenon called a doublet,
00:06:57.100 meaning a quick succession of major twin earthquakes. It was a 7.2 and a 7.5.
00:07:03.740 The estimated number of fatalities for this level of disaster is between 10,000 and 100,000 people, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
00:07:11.960 The event was rare and devastating in more ways than one.
00:07:15.100 The main earthquake, which hit at 6.04 p.m. local time, was the strongest in Venezuela since 1900.
00:07:20.840 Yet the quake was not only striking because of its magnitude, the catastrophe seems to have consisted of a rapid succession of two earthquakes.
00:07:27.920 It's also possible that it was just one complex event.
00:07:32.580 Before we get into the apocalypse, solar activity, grand conspiracy, let's start with an earth-based
00:07:40.260 domestic conspiracy theory.
00:07:42.440 For those that follow me, you know full well about what's going on with Iran and politics.
00:07:46.000 For those that are tuning into this video because you're interested in the earthquake
00:07:48.900 phenomenon, solar activity, and apocalypse conspiracy theories, I want to give you a
00:07:53.240 bit of the political conspiracy theory very, very quickly.
00:07:56.620 And I apologize to all of my core fans who have now heard this 700 times because I even
00:08:01.000 covered it this morning.
00:08:02.580 Quick bit of history for all of you that are unfamiliar with what's going on politically.
00:08:07.220 Trump gets an office, renames Gulf of Mexico to Gulf of America.
00:08:10.480 Kind of silly, but whatever.
00:08:12.060 He's isolated and surrounded Cuba, invaded Venezuela, took out their leader and seized 0.92
00:08:16.220 control of oil assets.
00:08:17.820 Panama is now under U.S. control for all trade.
00:08:20.680 And the Gulf of America has become one of the largest oil exporters in the world.
00:08:24.880 In fact, with the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, it is, I believe, the largest region
00:08:29.680 of oil exporting.
00:08:30.980 Venezuela, of course, is the largest producer of oil in the world, beating out Saudi Arabia by some 20 or 30 percent.
00:08:37.480 Trump is also negotiating with Greenland, with Denmark, over the Northwest Passage, once again, for U.S. trade, largely oil.
00:08:45.260 When you look at what's going on with the war in Iran, Donald Trump, whether accidentally or otherwise, his actions, the U.S. government's actions, result in the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, which is 20 percent of global oil.
00:08:56.220 And it is the principal supplier of oil for the east, which includes China.
00:09:00.400 China gets around half of its energy, its oil imports from the Strait of Hormuz.
00:09:05.200 With the closure of the Strait for four months, the U.S. quickly dominated as the largest oil
00:09:10.760 exporter took over. Now, there is a conspiracy theory that there are tectonic weapons. I don't
00:09:17.360 know that it's true, but the theory, there's many different theories. And I don't know,
00:09:21.720 take it all with a grain of salt. There are theories that using directed energy weapons
00:09:26.540 from space. You can trigger seismic activity. That is to say, you can't make an earthquake,
00:09:31.300 but you can trigger one that was ready to go. So if you're familiar with how tectonic events happen,
00:09:37.920 you've got these two plates that are jammed together. And as they get pushed more and more
00:09:41.760 together, at least this is one way, that energy is all built up. It's kind of like a spring being
00:09:47.120 compressed, but it needs something to set it off. So imagine you have one way to describe the
00:09:53.640 conspiracy theory around geological weapons would be that you have a spring, someone pushed it all
00:10:00.640 the way down, and then they set a little, a clip, just like this on the end, right? It's holding it
00:10:07.900 down, but if you just flick it off, right? No hooks, just flat holding the spring, right?
00:10:13.460 You could, with very little energy, the spring will bang. So the conspiracy theory states that
00:10:19.800 It's the United States, China and other countries have weapons well beyond the capabilities of nuclear weapons.
00:10:25.340 They have weather and tectonic weapons.
00:10:27.940 I don't know they actually do.
00:10:29.000 Again, it's a conspiracy theory.
00:10:30.040 In this capacity, there are people who believe that it may be China or they're the principal antagonist in this regard because we cut off half of their energy for four months.
00:10:40.660 The theory states that China utilized some kind of directed energy weapon, perhaps from space, to trigger a tectonic release in Venezuela twice, causing a doublet.
00:10:52.200 Kind of silly, if you ask me really.
00:10:55.000 Now, others with actual scientific background stated, no, no.
00:11:10.660 Wayfair.ca now.
00:11:12.580 Wayfair, every style, every home.
00:11:14.960 This is what we call, it's an antipode earthquake.
00:11:18.060 I'm probably getting this wrong, but what I was reading is that in the Philippines several weeks ago, there was a major earthquake.
00:11:23.680 And that tectonic activity ripples outward, compressing energy in other areas of the planet.
00:11:29.600 So what we're seeing from Venezuela is an earthquake that just on the other side of the planet in the Philippines,
00:11:35.000 We saw a major earthquake causing tectonic plates to push against each other, which then
00:11:39.800 causes an earthquake in Venezuela, which makes a lot of sense. 0.96
00:11:42.540 Believe what you want to believe.
00:11:43.700 What I will say is that the people who let me pull up this story for you to the people 0.64
00:11:49.520 who say Chinese space weapons.
00:11:51.620 Are you joking?
00:11:52.400 This is insane.
00:11:53.300 No, no, no, no, no.
00:11:53.760 Guys, I'm not entertaining the idea needlessly.
00:11:58.320 Here's a story from Newsweek from 2023.
00:12:00.800 China's green space lasers in Hawaii.
00:12:02.960 What we know, what we don't.
00:12:04.580 So let's reload it so you can watch the video.
00:12:07.740 It is actually true that China has space weapons.
00:12:11.080 So we can see here it's slowed down.
00:12:13.620 China fired this sweeping laser over Hawaii.
00:12:17.860 This actually happened.
00:12:18.840 It was caught on camera.
00:12:19.880 We don't always catch these things on camera, but this time we did.
00:12:23.540 Now, the argument is these lasers do not have the capability to trigger an earthquake or
00:12:27.820 to burn things or anything like that.
00:12:29.920 The amount of energy needed to travel from low orbit, which is what, like 50 miles or
00:12:33.900 something to Earth. Yeah, it's not going to happen, but it can scan the surface. And so
00:12:39.960 topological scans could give them information on military, civilian economics. I don't think that
00:12:46.600 they're using this to burn things. The theory at the time was that China was starting wildfires
00:12:51.640 using space weapons. It is possible to do. The U.S., I don't think it would actually be all that 0.92
00:12:58.900 difficult to start fires by directing solar energy at a focal point. Not with lasers, though.
00:13:03.280 now to trigger an earthquake. That's going to require a lot of energy that I don't I just don't
00:13:09.860 see it. I mean, but who am I? You know, we're all chickens in a chicken coop. What do we really
00:13:13.920 know? Global leaders, they've got weapons. I mean, look, the Manhattan Project was kept secret for a
00:13:18.800 long time. So let's take a look at this. Take a look at this series of earthquakes. You had a 7.5.
00:13:26.060 You had a 5.7 in Japan. You had a 6.5 in the Philippines. When was this? This was
00:13:33.220 that today? Wait, that's today, isn't it? Really? Huh. I think that's today. Yeah,
00:13:40.240 that was today. Japan had a 5.8 in a similar area. Papua New Guinea had a 5.5. 6.9 in Japan.
00:13:49.160 So we've actually seen a series hitting Japan. 0.90
00:13:53.140 There's the doublet.
00:13:54.600 San Francisco, Willits, CA, I'm sorry, it's north of both, I got that one wrong, saw 5.6,
00:14:01.760 and I believe they saw a different one.
00:14:03.720 Now, the important thing to understand is I'm showing you these earthquakes.
00:14:05.780 Guys, earthquakes happen all the time.
00:14:08.740 5.5 Richter scale, not at all anything we care about, seriously.
00:14:15.000 Now, when you're getting into the sixes, it gets interesting.
00:14:17.900 A 6.9 in Japan, that's getting pretty serious.
00:14:23.200 I'm not sure which kind of scale Richter uses, but I know that it's, let's see, what scale is, I'm not a geologist, it's, the Richter scale is, it's logarithmic, that's what I thought.
00:14:40.420 Okay, I just didn't want to say it because I didn't know for sure.
00:14:42.860 So basically this means that, I'll just read what it says.
00:14:46.840 with each increase in the magnitude of earthquake, the amount of ground shaking increases by 10
00:14:51.700 times. And the amount of energy released is 32 fold, meaning a 9.9 is insanely bigger
00:14:59.180 than a 9.8. But a 1.1 to a 1.2, it's not that big. It's logarithmic. So the higher up you go,
00:15:08.800 the bigger the gap becomes. It becomes absolutely insane to the point at which I think if you ever
00:15:14.240 actually hit a 10, the Earth explodes or something insane. I'm kidding, by the way. But take a look
00:15:18.720 at this from Science Daily, Kyoto University, February of this year. Can solar storms trigger
00:15:24.920 earthquakes? Scientists propose surprising link. Really? Solar storms might not just dazzle the
00:15:33.160 skies. They could help nudge vulnerable faults toward earthquakes. Summary. Scientists have
00:15:38.240 proposed a surprising connection between solar flares and earthquakes. When solar activity
00:15:42.140 disturbs the ionosphere, it may generate electric fields that penetrate fragile fracture zones in
00:15:47.080 Earth's crust. If a fault is already critically stressed, this extra electrostatic pressure
00:15:52.540 could help trigger a quake. The idea doesn't claim direct causation, but it offers a fresh
00:15:58.560 way to think about how space weather and seismic events might interact. I also wonder if, you know,
00:16:04.540 again, I'm sure many people know more about this, but tidal effects, I'd imagine the moon plays a
00:16:10.360 roll. Let me just look it up. Moon roll in earthquakes. I mean, if it's going to move
00:16:15.520 water around, what is this? Does the moon's phase cause earthquakes? Really? I actually
00:16:22.380 have an article for this. One researcher, let's pull this in, because I've got some
00:16:28.440 data on solar storms. Like I already mentioned, a solar storm did hit the earth one hour before
00:16:33.240 these earthquakes. Smithsonian says, there's a popular belief that earthquakes are more
00:16:38.760 frequent when the moon is close to full. The explanation is that a full moon has the strongest
00:16:42.860 tidal pull, which supposedly places more stress on the Earth's crust and increases the chance of
00:16:48.560 that a fault may slip. But the two related, as Nicole Mortillaro of CBC says, it's no, just not
00:17:00.740 true. Kind of hard to believe, though, right? We also have this from USGS. Several recent studies
00:17:08.360 have found a correlation between the Earth's tides and some types of earthquakes. Now,
00:17:14.020 ain't that just funny? One study, for example, concludes that during times of higher Earth and
00:17:19.480 ocean tides, such as during times of a full or new moon, earthquakes are more likely on shallow
00:17:25.420 thrust faults near the edges of continents and in underwater subduction zones. Lunar or solar
00:17:30.140 eclipses represent, of course, special cases of full and new moon, but do not cause any special
00:17:35.420 or different tidal effects from full and new moon. Earth's tide, etc., etc. You know, when I see
00:17:41.420 someone saying, no, the moon has no effect, I immediately just think that's silly. Now, I'm not
00:17:45.540 going to suggest that the moon makes earthquakes happen, but it certainly is impacting the earth.
00:17:52.440 And I saw this post online and they said somebody was talking about why doesn't the sun cause a
00:17:59.240 massive tidal phenomenon, but the moon does when the sun has substantially more gravity effect.
00:18:04.340 Well, the issue is the rate at which gravitational forces disperse over large spaces.
00:18:11.620 The moon being substantially closer to the Earth has a much more noticeable effect, whereas
00:18:16.420 the sun certainly can hold the Earth in place and all the other planets.
00:18:21.220 We don't really feel that pull.
00:18:23.840 We just don't.
00:18:25.580 Although I think the way orbit works, we are literally falling straight into the sun, but
00:18:31.480 we are moving around it faster than we're falling towards it.
00:18:34.020 How about that?
00:18:35.420 So, yes, indeed, they do see a correlation between earthquakes and the moon, but it's
00:18:40.100 largely the types of earthquakes.
00:18:41.260 And that makes sense because the water is different, right?
00:18:44.780 Well, here we go, baby.
00:18:46.780 They say this.
00:18:48.420 How the ionosphere could affect fault zones.
00:18:50.600 When solar activity surges, electron density in the ionosphere can rise significantly.
00:18:56.100 This can produce a negatively charged layer in the lower ionosphere.
00:18:59.760 Through capacitive coupling, that charge may generate intense electric fields inside
00:19:04.340 microscopic voids within fractured rock.
00:19:06.880 The resulting electrostatic pressure could approach levels similar to tidal or gravitational
00:19:11.380 stresses that are already known to influence fault stability.
00:19:15.460 According to the team's calculations, ionospheric disturbances tied to the major solar flares
00:19:20.660 involving increases in total electron content of several tens of tech units might create
00:19:25.440 electrostatic pressures of several megapascals within these crustal voids. I have no idea what
00:19:31.440 those words mean, but suffice it to say, they say, yeah, the sun can have an impact.
00:19:36.380 Well, let's roll. From Sun Weatherman, shout out to at Sun Weatherman on X, Ben Davidson.
00:19:44.660 He says he posted this June 23rd, the double whale tail corona hole. Look at that. That's crazy.
00:19:51.840 He said, when the plasma stream struck Earth last night, it was 2100 UTC.
00:19:59.060 Three big quakes were in the 2200 hour.
00:20:03.280 Now, that's fascinating.
00:20:05.000 And then we've got this also from Ben.
00:20:07.740 Solar wind plasma speed has doubled in 24 hours.
00:20:11.480 This is the arrival of the corona, coronal hole stream.
00:20:15.680 He posted this June 24th.
00:20:17.980 The suggestion being, there are two suggestions.
00:20:21.840 some argue, those that do believe that, I mean, I showed you the data, that it may be solar
00:20:27.580 activity influencing tectonic activity. It's possible. So there are some saying what we are
00:20:31.760 seeing now from the solar activity indicates there's going to be many more big earthquakes.
00:20:36.020 Another individual who posted about antipode earthquakes said with the Philippines earthquake
00:20:40.660 and then the doublet in Venezuela, we are seeing tectonic pulses effectively. Those waves of energy
00:20:48.440 go out. So with the doublet hitting, we should expect to see another major earthquake coming up
00:20:55.100 the next couple of weeks because that energy has to go somewhere. Suffice it to say, whichever way
00:21:00.120 you look at it, there are people arguing it's going to we're going to see some big activity
00:21:03.380 coming soon. Now, I don't know. Don't look at me. I'm just a guy reading tweets on the Internet
00:21:08.560 with questions. And certainly I already showed you some people say actually solar activity
00:21:14.640 or the moon does not cause earthquakes. And then we've got another post from USGS being like,
00:21:19.660 well, actually, it does seem to have some effect. So pick your poison. People are going to say,
00:21:24.620 Tim, you're just a guy asking questions. Why are you talking about it? For the same reason
00:21:28.340 that most people want to ask these questions. I'm curious. But when you see a scientist saying no
00:21:33.780 and a scientist saying yes, all we can conclude is, I guess we don't know for sure. Which brings
00:21:39.820 me to this tweet. I love it. Roman helmet guy quote, LOL. People have always thought the world
00:21:46.900 was ending. Yeah. He said entire civilizations have been wiped from memory. There was a 1000
00:21:53.340 year period where only one in 17 men reproduced. There was a 100,000 year period where the human
00:22:00.180 population dropped 99%. The world has ended many times. I want you to think about ancient Egypt,
00:22:07.380 the pyramids in all their glory. What is this saying? Cleopatra is closer to the moon landing
00:22:14.520 than she was to the height of the pyramids when Egypt was powerful, when they were in full swing, 0.90
00:22:23.600 we'll call it. The pyramids were built, what, in like 4,000 BC or something? And now they
00:22:30.540 are largely just big piles of rocks. And we have questions we don't understand. And
00:22:35.880 there's theories about underground water chambers and structures going well, well below the pyramids
00:22:42.500 based on these scans. We just don't know. Isn't that kind of crazy? I mean, right now, we have
00:22:47.540 detailed blueprints for every major building in almost every major city. Almost every, nothing's
00:22:55.140 absolute. But for the most part, you go to New York, you can find the public records for most
00:22:58.900 buildings and see the blueprints and know, right? We are not curious. It's just on record.
00:23:06.660 What if 2,000 years from now, there is just rubble of steel structures toppled over and
00:23:12.440 humans come in and say, I wonder what they were doing here. And they come to Wall Street
00:23:16.080 and they say, look at these buildings. Now, here's the scary thing.
00:23:20.700 All of our records are digital. You know what that means? If our civilization were to collapse,
00:23:27.620 maybe a great flood, thousands of years later, there'd be no record of anything we did.
00:23:33.300 I know there's books.
00:23:34.760 That's it.
00:23:35.800 But most of our information and most of our news is digital.
00:23:40.960 I have an idea for a TV show.
00:23:42.920 Maybe one of you guys want to make it on AI.
00:23:45.440 And the idea is that, there's a couple ways you can do it, but the idea that I had, and
00:23:48.900 I pitched this, I half pitched it, I tell everybody about it, like, hey, somebody should
00:23:51.780 make this, it'd be fun.
00:23:53.580 The idea is, actually, maybe I should pitch it to my guys, I've got a production company.
00:23:59.280 There's one city left on earth, about 10 million people in the major metro.
00:24:02.880 As far as humans can tell, all other cities on the planet wiped out.
00:24:08.800 They lie in ruins.
00:24:10.400 The people in the last city have gradually expanded over the past 50 to 100 years and
00:24:15.740 built up a large population, and they've begun to travel outside of these areas.
00:24:20.480 But as it is largely economically pointless, they're not going and establishing new colonies
00:24:25.600 or anything like that.
00:24:26.840 The technology level of the last city is comparable, slightly above where we are today.
00:24:31.120 The year is something like 2134. Nobody in the last city, in government or otherwise, knows what happened and why civilization collapsed and how it came to be.
00:24:42.980 They just have a bit of histories on their computers and their networks and their newspapers and magazines about how a long, long time ago, around 2070, records seem to have stopped.
00:24:57.080 News seem to have evaporated, and only information they have comes from the last city.
00:25:03.480 So let me roll with this.
00:25:05.240 I'm trying to keep my voice down.
00:25:07.480 So they look back and they find records from like 2079 and 2080.
00:25:11.440 simple zines and publications and a website for the city they live in, but nothing about anything
00:25:17.080 else. Nothing in their records talk about a collapse of human civilization. So no one knows
00:25:21.700 how it came to be, but they do know there was a great civilization with billions of people.
00:25:25.980 How could you go from 8 billion to 10 million? It doesn't make sense.
00:25:29.880 Now, for most of the industries in the surrounding area of the last city,
00:25:34.200 it is a large swath of land. Let's say it's something comparable to like the state of New
00:25:38.160 York and Pennsylvania, right? They've got lots of farmland to feed these people and they've got
00:25:42.920 industry and they mine goods. But for the most part, it doesn't really make sense to send out
00:25:47.820 and set up big, big cities elsewhere. There certainly are pockets of humans in small towns
00:25:52.600 in the surrounding areas. But the last city sends out scouting patrols, small military groups to go
00:25:57.760 and they go on expeditions to the tune of hundreds to, you know, thousands of miles in the United
00:26:02.860 States. The last cities in the U.S., by the way. We'll say it's somewhere in like Nebraska.
00:26:09.440 One day they come across strange humanoid figures wearing all white, white jumpsuits with chrome
00:26:16.920 helmets that attached, fixed to their suits. And when they call out to these creatures,
00:26:23.420 whatever they may be, they don't get a response. And when one guy puts his hand up and he's holding
00:26:28.120 his gun. And he says, I'm going to tell you one more time. Stop what you're doing and identify
00:26:33.180 yourselves. And the creature points its finger and the dude explodes. Boom. He's just gone.
00:26:40.900 Or we can be a little bit more. That's a little weak writing. When the guy aims his weapon and
00:26:45.140 says, identify yourself. That's when the creature points at him and he explodes.
00:26:48.820 Whatever this thing is, a battle ensues. One survivor. He comes back to the last city. He
00:26:54.440 gets in the chopper. Get out of here. These creatures wiped everybody out. The theory is
00:26:59.880 then maybe these creatures are the reason civilization collapsed. Are they aliens?
00:27:05.460 Some kind of breakaway. So like, what is this breakaway civilization? Aliens came and wiped
00:27:09.620 everything out. They've got advanced technology. The guys are shooting at them and the bolts are
00:27:13.180 just bouncing off like force fields. What is happening? And so this is the principal conflict
00:27:18.960 of the show. And then what happens is, you know, you do a Game of Thrones kind of thing,
00:27:23.600 power struggles corporations. They want answers. One scouting mission comes across these creatures
00:27:28.960 again, all white jumpsuits with like chrome helmets. And in the fight this time, something
00:27:33.620 different happens. They're in an old abandoned junkyard. And while they're fighting, there's one
00:27:38.760 of those big magnet lifts or crane or something, and it's holding a vehicle. And as the creatures
00:27:43.280 are just telekinesis and like firing energy blasts, a guy bleeding from the mouth crawls
00:27:50.240 into the thing and he hits the red button. It drops a car and smashes and flattens one of these
00:27:54.280 creatures. The rest of them back off and scatter and leave. The remaining scouting patrol goes up
00:28:00.580 and finds this half flattened creature and they rip the helmet off. And what do they find?
00:28:05.860 A pale, hairless, human, gaunt looking, maybe like how we describe a vampire.
00:28:12.580 Strange. They bring it back and they find out it's human. It's DNA. It's human. So what is this?
00:28:22.500 And this is where the conflict expands. And here's the big reveal for the story.
00:28:29.700 The humans eventually, of Elacity, eventually track down these creatures fleeing into what
00:28:35.680 appears to be some kind of camouflaged hidden entrance to an underground station. And upon
00:28:41.780 infiltration, they find millions upon millions of these things in pods. And here's the big reveal.
00:28:50.040 In the 2070s, Neuralink technology started to become prominent and it begun to be adopted by
00:28:57.560 largely at first the wealthy for ease of access to information and communications and the internet.
00:29:02.960 But eventually the technology became ubiquitous and cheap. And so people who are largely poor
00:29:08.440 found it easier to go in the pod with the Neuralink for most of the day and experience a world inside
00:29:14.960 a digital, in a data center where they could be whatever they want, whoever they wanted.
00:29:19.560 And when they're getting nutrient IVs in this chosen matrix reality, they could eat steaks.
00:29:25.940 They could be whatever they wanted. One by one, people just chose to stay in these things and
00:29:31.180 not leave to the point where eventually this technology all over the world resulted in the
00:29:36.260 same thing. Cities largely became abandoned. Nobody was in houses anymore. People weren't
00:29:41.780 having kids. They were living inside these machines. And with the medical technology
00:29:47.400 and their brains being plugged in, they lived for very long times.
00:29:52.240 But what about the last city? The humans that were poor, religious, the Mennonites, the Amish, 1.00
00:29:59.560 they never adopted this technology. And they stayed in their small towns, but they had lots 0.99
00:30:04.040 of kids. And so, why did the record of all history cease? It didn't. The people who went
00:30:12.000 into the Neuralink matrix kept writing their history. It never stopped. But their history
00:30:18.000 was no longer on the internet for anybody to read. The internet was no longer written down
00:30:23.220 in newspapers. It was just in these data centers for which those that chose never to go in had no
00:30:30.080 access to. So over a long enough period of time, let's say it's 50, 60 years, maybe it's a little
00:30:38.340 unfair to say you get a city of 10 million in 60 years, we can call it 70 or whatever, but writing
00:30:42.060 holes to be filled. The people there searching the ruins of the old cities find newspapers where
00:30:47.460 everything just stops. Why? Because nobody was printing newspapers anymore. The stores become
00:30:53.260 abandoned. But not only that, the stores become abandoned well before humans actually abandoned
00:30:57.960 the cities themselves. No one's buying newspapers. That means the newspaper stopped getting printed
00:31:02.800 in 2070. Humans remained in these areas until 2075. So these newspapers just sat for years
00:31:09.660 until eventually humans went off, went underground and went to the matrix permanently. And those that
00:31:14.960 chose not to coalesced had kids, but were removed from that chain of information. And so I tell you
00:31:22.260 this because I conceptualized this whole story around things like this. When I was thinking
00:31:27.080 about what would happen if a meteor hit earth and this flood just wiped everything out.
00:31:30.700 If aliens came to earth, could they find what we believed and the news of our civilization? They
00:31:36.060 can't. 99% of everything we believe, everything we talk about is digital, unreadable. So if the
00:31:44.320 servers go down and the aliens or the new humans don't have access to read this technology,
00:31:50.540 it leaves with us. Written, carved in stone, it can last a long time.
00:31:58.300 On a computer, it's gone when we're gone. So what happens? If the solar storms get worse,
00:32:05.560 the magnetosphere weakens, the earth flips, the oceans wipe everything out. 99% of humans are
00:32:11.440 destroyed. But a few survive. They live largely in the wilderness, in the rubble in the ruins.
00:32:18.420 they write a book describing what was and what should be. They pass that book down.
00:32:24.740 But after a hundred years, the understanding of this technology becomes magic,
00:32:28.600 becomes lore, legend, myth, and eventually people stop believing in it.
00:32:34.080 And then people hear stories of ancient civilizations like ancient Egypt,
00:32:38.660 but there's nothing to read. All of the storage of information is gone, save artistic sculptures.
00:32:45.200 indeed. Well, who knows, my friends? Fun stuff. But I'm going to wrap it up there. I got to rest
00:32:51.680 my voice because I got to work tomorrow, the next day, and all through until next Thursday,
00:32:55.140 where I'm actually working Thursday morning. If you do support the work that I do and you
00:32:59.020 appreciate it, that I will grind my fingers to the bone, please join us at TimCast.com. I can't
00:33:04.280 do it without you. Thanks for hanging out. Follow me on X and Instagram at TimCast, and we'll see
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