Work Text:
[slide: Black and white photo of the slagged and melted remains of Suiryoku Hydroelectric Power Plant Generator #24]
Justin: OK, I'm recording locally. Pizzaboy, put that down!
Nova: Aw, what's he got?
Justin: My spare microphone.
Liam: He wants to participate! Let him speak!
Nova: Hehyeah, unsung member of the podcast, Pizzaboy Skitty Roczniak.
Pizzaboy, distant: Nyaaaa!
Justin: Yeah, sixth member right after Devon and the Activate Bill-DOS Logo. No, actually, I can't make him a member of the podcast because I have him listed as a dependent on my taxes, and if he becomes an employee that'll fuck everything up. And I'll have to sit through a whole bunch of paperwork.
Liam: Make Dev do it.
[Caption: wow fuck you too]
Justin: they already edit the podcast, though. Asking more of them on that front seems like a bad idea. And speaking of bad ideas- hello, and welcome to Well There's Your Problem.
Nova: [laughter]
Justin: -it's a podcast about engineering disasters. With slides. I'm Justin Roczniak, I'm the person fighting my Skitty right now (let go, man, come on) my pronouns are he and him. Ok, go.
Nova: Wow, real nice segue there, I am November Kelly, I am the person talking right now, coming at you live from, soon to be, NOT the Crown Tundra, because I! am! finally! moving! My pronouns are she and her, Yay Liam!
Liam: Yay Liam! Hi, I'm Liam McAnderson, I'm the person talking right now, my pronouns are he and him, and what the fuck happened to this machine I'm looking at.
[Caption: hi I'm Devon, I'm the podcast editor, my pronouns are they/them]
Justin: let's start with "a lot of things." You know, there's an old joke about how being a Collectivist takes all the mystery out of life?
Nova: Oh, yeah, you look at anything and you say "this probably wouldn't have happened if the bosses hadn't been squeezing the world for profit" And 9 times of 10 you'll be right?
Justin: Yeah well, welcome to number 10. And number 9, but- well, we'll get to that. Today we're going to talk about the Great Kanto Blackout. But first we have to talk about: The Goddamn News.
[Fanfare]
[Slide: Ghetsis Gropius being arrested: the image has a banner underneath the picture that says FUCK YOU WE WERE RIGHT]
Nova: Yeah so, anyone who got mad at us in the comments of our Ecruteak Towers episode, saying we were being stupid contrarians for saying Team Plasma were fascists, you all owe us ₱500000. We were right, we fucking told you it was going to be something like this, and the fact that the Unovan state finally cottoned on only because a teenager doing the gym circuit made a friend is a fucking disgrace.
Justin: Yeah so, Team Plasma, the guys who were asserting that all human interaction with Pokemon is inherently abusive? Yeah, turns out they were a cult aiming for world domination. Or a front for a cult? The reports are a little unclear on that part.
Liam: It's apparently a split of people who actually believed what they were saying and people who were just indulging their inner bully, which hey! Enjoy splitting, assholes, now you know how we feel!
Justin: So the guy who was born Natural Harmonia Gropius, the alleged leader, was raised from birth for this, turns out to have been a puppet the whole time- he's turned State's Evidence and is now fully cooperating with the International Police-
Nova: yeah any time you have someone "raised from birth" to do ANYTHING, is a big big big red flag. You could have someone raised from birth to pick their nose and I'd be trying to free that kid.
Justin: -He's cooperating and a whole bunch of the rank and file are on house arrest, while his dad, Ghetsis Harmonia Gropius, is awaiting trial over his attempts at seizing power in Unova. Questions of who was funding them are being avoided for the moment, but it's bound to start coming up.
Liam: Yeah, the last time I went to Castelia, he was there holding a rally and I'd like to say I knew he was bad back then, but no I'm not that great, I just thought he was a fucking lunatic. You know you get those kind of guys every now and then, it's like the guy in a sandwich board claiming the Church of Yveltal is going to kill Time and that's good, actually, and the guy's mostly harmless but if anyone actually listened to him we'd be in trouble? Yeah that's how I felt about N three years ago. I'm not calling him by his birth name because that's just fucking cruel. Who names their kid that?
Justin: This guy, apparently. I'm just gonna say I'm glad they never really came to Anville, because I know some really insufferable people who would be even more insufferable if they had a fascist preaching at them.
Liam: Yeah, me.
Justin: No, not you, you're my friend and I love you very much.
Liam: Love you too.
Justin: Anyway, the trial is set for a couple months from when this episode is being recorded, and they're going to be trying to determine who knew what and how much. N Gropius is out on parole, and the Plasma Sages are apparently still at large and wanted for questioning by Interpol.
Liam: If they have any brains- big if, they were fascists, but if they do- they'll have changed their names, probably fled the region.
Justin: In any case, that was The Goddamn News, so let us go from a big IMplosion to a big EXplosion. But let's start with some context and ask: where do we get electric power?
[Slide change: several images of smokestacks, wind farms in Unova, the Kalos solar power plant, Drake's Well is still there somehow tucked in a corner very small]
Liam: I see that, you fucker.
Justin: It's relevant.
Liam: I don't fucking care, I don't want to think about Edwin fucking Drake!
Justin: Well fine, don't then. So, power generation comes from a lot of places depending on the resources available, right? Unova worked with a lot of coal fired power plants for a long time, until we started building wind farms up in the mountains and realized this meant we didn't have to pay miners so much anymore and a bunch of little mine towns in the Anville area basically vanished overnight.
Nova: Yeah, like. You still dig coal, but mostly for steel foundries, right?
Justin: Yeah that's like the main productive industry here anymore, forging and shaping steel for the Castelia metro area. Aside from podcasting, that is.
Liam: Eventually enough mills will close and then WE'LL be the driving industry in town.
Justin: God I hope not, that's too much pressure. I can barely support this town's steak sandwich industry, I can't cover the whole economy. Anyway, after electrification spread most places used coal or oil power plants, until about the 20s, when there started to be widespread demand for something less smoggy.
Nova: yeah, there's towns in North Galar that were under so much coal smog for so many years that all the red bricks are just stained black. And it's been that way for so long that people forget about it until someone decides to use a high pressure water attack in Old Wyndon and leaves a big smear of clean brick right across the side of a building.
Justin: One of the ways that people tried was Solar power, as it seemed to work for basically everyother living thing on the planet, and from there we get most famously Kalos’ supermassive solar plant. Which is great, but mostly works as well as it does due to central Kalos being basically perfect climate for solar year-round?
Nova: Yeah, you could NOT have this work so well in Galar, is all I'll say.
Justin: Which is why Galar gets most of its power from Kalos now, I guess. Other options include moving to natural gas, which is what Hoenn did - there's big deposits under the Chimney highlands, though they also have tidal power plants in the works between Slateport and Mauville-
Liam: Future friend of the show, New Mauville Underground City.
Justin: ...Yeah, something is gonna happen down there and when it does, we will say: We Told You So.
Nova: The Well There's Your Problem Guarantee!
Justin: But one place that didn't move away from coal for a good while was Kanto. And the reason for that is a human problem, and that human problem had a name.
[slide change: Giovanni looking his most sinister, surrounded by yes men and Persian]
Justin: Giovanni Sakaki, and the Rocket Industrial Clique.
Liam: BOOOOOOOO!
Nova: most punchable face in the world.
Justin: Yeah, so before he was the Gym Leader of Viridian City, and before he got convicted on various racketeering and organized crime charges, Giovanni was a coal guy! That's how he originally made his money, the gangster stuff was basically his way of retiring.
Liam: Really says something that the way you relax as an industrial magnate is doing organized crime.
Nova: All the fun bits of being a robber baron, with none of the regulation, what's not to love.
Justin: Modern geological estimates say the Cerulean Plateau has basically enough coal to last a couple centuries at the old rates of consumption, though Giovanni A: didn't know that and B: suppressed any kind of similar sentiment any time it came up, because he was always pushing the idea that it was about to run out, y'know, to keep prices up. Though most of that is now inaccessible for OTHER reasons-
Nova: yeah go back and listen to our first episode, about the Cinnabar Island Explosion -
Justin: But back then, you know, geological science was still in its infancy, and you could just say whatever the hell you wanted. But this backfired on Giovanni, because every time he cried wolf about how much coal was left, it raised some hue and cry about renewable power sources. He was able to control that for a while by bribing public officials, but that only lasted him so long. So under public and government pressure, Cerulean Coal Energy and the Rocket Clique wound up agreeing to fund renewable power, in principle, quote "as soon as a viable alternative was discovered" end quote. Which they immediately began working against.
Liam: Yeah, the first iteration of Team Rocket was basically born out of the various hatchetmen and thugs Giovanni had going around sabotaging things and blackmailing surveyors.
Justin: But again, that could only work for so long. Eventually, enough surveyors and engineers managed to avoid getting in "accidents" and public decency scandals to agree that the Suiryoku River north of Lavender town was basically ideal for a run-of-the-river hydroelectric project and construction began with CCE and Rocket money, workers, and management.
[Slide change: the waterfalls upstream of the Suiryoku river, where it flows out of Mount Moon. The cameraman has captured the midday rainbow off the waterfalls mist, and the full moon is in the background.]
Nova: sorry, Roz, raising my hand here, I live on an island, what is Run of the river?
Justin: oh, that means a hydro plant with no dams or water storage involved. The idea is that instead of building a huge dammed reservoir-
Liam: Heh
Justin: -which is expensive, takes forever, and is ecologically disruptive, you can just hook your driving turbines into existing waterflow. Like, for example, the Suiryoku river, which flows fast and cold out of the Moon Mountains. The name actually means "Powerful water" in Kanton. And unlike a lot of Run-of plants, the Suiryoku has steady flow basically year round, which makes it even more attractive for hydro power- to anyone who isn't standing to lose their vertically integrated coal power profits, anyway. So construction on the above ground facility, and the necessary generating structures under the waterline, began in fall of 1522.
Liam: ah, and I'm sure the project was completed quickly, safely, and on budget. Right?
Justin: well. You know, Liam? As it turns out- No.
Liam: [deadpan] oh no what a surprise how could this happen.
Justin: The project was plagued with delays ranging from the believably accidental to the blatantly intentional. Going through all of them would have us here for even longer than normal, so we're going to skip past those a little bit and get to the day it was completed, five years late, millions over budget, and having soured basically all the good will Giovanni ever had from supporting the project. But it did get completed, the twenty eight turbines allegedly generating 2000 MW into the regional electrical grid, and began producing power on New Years day, 1543, and ran without incident for fifteen months.
[Slide change: the Suiryoku hydro plant upon completion, a ribbon-cutting ceremony with all the gathered workmen grinning in satisfaction and all the managers scowling or stone-faced.]
Nova: oh great! Episode over, great success story of renewable power everyone, our next episode is on the -
Justin: April 4th, 1544!
Nova: FUCK!
Justin: Day shift engineers at the plant start their shift going around doing regular maintenance and performance checks, and the guy checking turbines 27 and 28, one Shojiki Sakamoto, reports a strong smell of ozone coming from the generator. He radios this to the chief engineer, who consults his manager, a guy from one of Cerulean Coal’s pet engineering firms. Now he says not to worry about it, it's a known effect of the amount of energy being generated, he should know, he used to work on the Fuschia coal plant. Nothing to worry about. Don't worry about it. Don't worry about it or you're fired. Everyone involved gives each other funny looks, but mostly just shrug and get on with their day.
Nova: Right. Because that's not suspicious at all.
Liam: Yeah but this is a Rocket guy in 40s Kanto, those engineers probably knew where they'd end up if they worried about it too loud.
Justin: Yeah they work on top of a big rushing river famous for being fast, cold, and rocky. They probably preferred being on this side of it.
Justin: So they try and put it out of their minds, and go about their days. Until about 8 o'clock, when turbines 23 and 24 report the same thing. And then turbines 21 and 22. And so on, down to turbine 15. And by this point all of the workers basically know for sure Something's Going Wrong, but no one's quite sure what.
Nova: Yeah, the little Absol in the back of their heads is screaming at them, but not in Kanton.
Justin: Exactly. So they start calling for a plant shutdown, retract all turbines, get the sluices closed until we figure out what's going on.
Liam: Sounds smart.
Justin: And that was when half of the generators exploded.
Liam: Oh.
Justin: Because, as it turns out, a pair of Zapdos had elected to move into the area.
Liam: Oh good.
Justin: So to explain that, let's back up a little. Back to the most punchable face in the world.
[Slide Change: close up of Giovanni and his stupid smirk. Justin draws a twiddly little mustache onto it.]
Justin: So remember back when I described the Suiryoku plant as allegedly delivering 2,000 megawatts of power?
Nova: I did notice that, but I figured that was just you being a contrarian. Or that maybe the documentation wasn't available.
Justin: Oh no, the documentation is available. It's just that it's garbage. Because according to this publicly available construction documentation 2000 megawatts is indeed the rated power. For a plant with 14 turbines.
Nova: But- but Roz, I was paying attention, I know for a fact that you said this plant had 28 turbines.
Justin: Yes, because Giovanni, trying to remain relevant, altered the plans and fudged the plant documentation. So this plant was actually generating 4,000 megawatts of power, and nobody knew, least of all the construction crew. But that was 2000 megawatts that still had to be generated with Cerulean Coal, so he could still make money.
Liam: So, where was the other half of that power going?
Justin: Oh come on, Liam. Giovanni's pet engineers aren't stupid. They put it in the safest place possible. The Ground.
Nova: Oh, of course. Seems safe. That's where you want the electricity to go when you're not using it.
Justin: Except of course, if a Zapdos takes notice of this. See, the thing about Zapdos is that normally they never land, they soar around the world following and also generating storm systems, and basically spend all of their time in the lower stratosphere. Except for-
[Slide change: Zapdos nest on the side of Mount Coronet, taken by insulated drone]
Justin: When nesting. See, they like areas that are heavily bombarded with lightning. High mountain tops, tall forests, that sort of thing-
Liam: Or a power plant that's been discharging half of its output into the ground as part of a price fixing scheme.
Nova: So you're telling me that Giovanni Sakaki, the worlds most ethical man, entirely by accident, made the Suiryoku Power Plant into a prime Zapdos fuck house at low altitude.
Justin: Well. Yeah. So a mated pair of Zapdos come down from the stratosphere, seeing what looks like the ideal place to fledge a baby Zapdos, and, well- we're all at least vaguely aware of the effect Zapdos have on electrical energy in their vicinity, right?
Liam: The words "amplified fourfold" sound familiar.
Justin: Right, so- 40s generators weren't exactly built to have that kind of power going through them, especially not all at once. Generators 25 through 28 had already been shut down as part of the emergency maintenance procedures, which is the main reason the main building of the facility is still intact. But generators 15 through 24, well, they arc-flashed and exploded.
Nova: That. Hm. Don't like that word "arc flash."
Justin: An arc flash is when a shorted electrical circuit generates so much heat that the metal, uh. Flash evaporates. It's usually only a risk for electricians working on live panels, but even relatively low voltage flashes are capable of injuring at three meters. Each of these generators was, Uh. Much bigger than your average industrial electrical panel.
Nova: I like that description even less. I don't do my own electrical work but I'm certainly never doing it now. You're telling me we can get metal into a gaseous form in perfect range of someone's lungs, but only by accident? Horrible.
Justin: The entire industrial floor on the lower levels was basically trashed due to being bombarded with vaporized metal. But Generators 1 through 14 were all hooked up to the regional grid, which was able, at least in theory, to accept that much extra load without exploding. So they were mostly okay. Still melted themselves, but they didn't explode. But the thing about the regional grid is that nothing downstream of this power plant is going to be ready for four times it's possible current.
[Slide change: regional map of Continental Kanto in the 40s.]
Liam: They were straining to handle the half output as it was, right?
Justin: Ehhhh, hard to say. There's a lot of boasting and not a whole lot of safety consideration in the primary sources I have about the construction of the grid, and electrical workers from back then are either not talking or talking a lot about how they definitely knew it was dangerous, to make themselves look good. But anyway, the downstream substations generally started blowing transformers, which would knock out subregional power- I think Viridian went first and then it cascaded outward from there- and then the transmission wires started going down because they were melting themselves on the poles. Which is actually good, because as that started happening, the Suiryoku power plant started having more and more current draw through the remaining wires, which melted them down faster, and eventually all 24 active generators were either vaporized or slagged. Either way from the moment the shutdown began to the point the last generator melted was about... 20 minutes.
Nova: Arceus.
Justin: Emergency services were quick on the draw, and the Lavender Fire Department sent a crew up the river in speedboats equipped with pumps- according to contemporary sources, they'd actually been expecting something to happen ever since construction began, and they had literally run drills for "we have to go to the power plant NOW." So they got there pretty quick, and all the workers who were still alive by that point were successfully evacuated.
Liam: Yeah but like. That much power getting thrown around, what's the survival rate here?
Justin: Well. The plant had about 35 mechanical workers per shift, and about 12 non-technical staff- custodians, cafeteria chefs- and also the manager from Rocket was there. About 10 mechanics had been on the lower floors supervising the shutdown and beginning their troubleshooting, as well as the manager, who was trying very hard to keep them from finding anything incriminating when the first generator went. Two plant engineers, Shojiki Sakamoto and Matthias Surge, had been standing at the stairs trying to reach a tool that had rolled underneath. And they are basically the only primary sources we have on the events downstairs.
Liam: Somehow that's worse than no primary sources being available.
Justin: From Mr. Surge: "it was basically the worst thing I've ever seen. I've seen flashovers before, but this was on an entirely different level. Like looking, for the briefest instant, at the surface of the sun and nine men who found themselves trapped there. The air throbbed once, with the force of that first explosion. I grabbed Sho and hauled him up the stairs as fast as I could. I could feel my skin blistering even as far as we were- anyone closer was as good as dead. Better off dead. At the top of the stairs I hollered that everybody has to get out now."
Nova: Well. When a man's right, he's right.
Justin: From Sakamoto: "The minute the first generator went up, all I could do was blame myself. I had given the first warning, and all these men were down here at the say so of a junior like me. And now nine men were dead. Matt dragged me out of there and every day I'm glad he did because I'm not sure I would have left on my own."
Justin: so that's on-site casualties, but knock on effects cascaded outward. The hospital in Celadon only lost power for about 5 minutes, thanks to backup generators, but the rest of the region was basically knocked out for weeks at best. The Pokemon League mustered a massive volunteer response for rebuilding the wider grid, but after the wounded were evacuated, the Zapdos had already made themselves heavily at home, and so the site became protected as a nesting site under even the frankly anemic environmental protections of the early Indigo League.
Liam: Which is a good thing, I guess. Can you imagine having to try and drive off not just one, but two Zapdos in their nest? Couldn't pay me enough.
Justin: That was... probably part of the calculus here, yeah. I'm gonna go grab another drink.
Liam: Same here.
Nova: oh fucks sake, leave me holding up the podcast, why don't you. Um. Hi, gang. Uh. How you doing? I'm great, thanks for asking. Ok so since I'm moving out of Galar soon I'm just going to read out this list of actionable threats against Champion Leon, and see where that gets us-
[Devon: Ho don't do it]
Justin: I'm back
[Devon: Phew my phoney baloney job is saved]
Nova: Oh, I was just about to get us all in trouble. What're you drinking?
Justin: A listener sent me and Liam a case of various hard ciders from their local cidery and asked that we taste test them on air at least once.
Liam: Yeah and because it is in fact free alcohol otherwise, we are gonna do that for you, listener.
Nova: Free ad read for Dick's Bullshit Cidery. What happened to The Only Ad You Hear On This Podcast Is The One For The Podcast?
Liam: You're just mad you can't get the stuff that gets sent to the mailbox yet.
Nova: YES I AM.
Justin: So I've got a Croissant Mountain Cidery "Alola Sunset" hard cider, and it's...[sip, pause, sip] really sweet. That is straight up candy and sunshine with not a lot of booze at the end. You got this solid, reassuring Leppa flavor but there's a tangy sort of mago-passho pop on top of that, little citrusy, and it finishes with a faint hint of sour and booze, but leaves that leppa sweetness. It tastes more like a craft soda or mocktail. Very tasty, thank you.
Liam: I grabbed the same, and yeah this is some dangerously tasty stuff, especially when it's this 7% cider. I could knock back three of those, easy, and not feel it ‘til I tried to stand up. Cheers, listener.
Nova: Alright, now that we've finished selling out...
Justin: So. Let's talk aftermath. Most of Kanto lost regional grid power for about a month. The quick response from the Indigo Pokemon League meant work started on rebuilding stuff... basically immediately, and a couple big construction firms from Johto donated material and expertise for free or at cost, you know, as a PR move, because right now everyone is still thinking this is a weird freak accident, right. Cerulean Coal, and therefore Giovanni, starts spinning up their propaganda machine about how this is a clear sign of the dangers of renewable power, while also spinning up the mothballed Vermilion coal power plant.
Justin: It's not until people start sneaking past the Zapdos and into the lower levels to do investigation that the problems with generators 15-28 become apparent. Because not everyone is just going to accept "Giovanni says it was unavoidable" as an explanation for why nine people died. But the fact that the Zapdos even started nesting there, and the discoveries of the investigation teams, made it fairly clear what had happened.
Justin: So. Consequences. Who got sued?
Liam: I'm going to go with "those two surviving engineers on the lower level"
Justin: Oh, Rocket Group tried that. But a threat of a solidarity countersuit on the part of the Vermilion Electrician's Guild and sympathetic reporting by the Times of Saffron kept that from ever getting anywhere. They also tried suing Lavender Fire and Rescue, who had done the original building inspection, but that got thrown out by the civil court on standing issues. A few more lawsuits were drafted, but... Those got quietly abandoned as public opinion started solidifying and upper management-
Nova: Meaning Giovanni.
Justin: -elected to move to damage control. Not that it helped much- the disaster actually provoked a big investment into regional infrastructure oversight by the Indigo League, and under a lot of scrutiny he wasn't fond of, Giovanni Sakaki would officially retire as chairman of Rocket Group's board of directors a few years later.
Liam: After which he would get into international Pokemon smuggling, gambling rackets, and extortion rings for a decade, before getting his whole operation torn apart by a gang of teenage Trainers.
Justin: All I can say is, life comes at you fast. The engineer, Matthias Surge, used the public fame and the backing of the electrical guild to run for mayor of Vermilion, but after defeating him in a run-off election, the incumbent mayor appointed him Gym Leader out of respect.
Liam: I think he's still there to this day, right?
Justin: Yeah, he's old as balls now.
[slide change: The modern-day wreckage of the Suiryoku not-quite-a-dam seen from the air. The partial collapse of the underwater structure's roof is visible through the crystal clear mountain water, forming a dip in the surface of the fast flowing water.]
Justin: The Suiryoku eventually eroded it's way through the concrete turbine bunker about 15 years after the accident, so the entirety of the lower levels are flooded now. Nobody was exactly checking the building for cracks anymore, you know? But, once the Zapdos finally moved out in 67, after fledging, it was declared protected habitat once again, because a whole bunch of Magnemite had moved in, due to the abundant scrap metal food supply and the inherent protection of living near a Zapdos nest. But the site is still accessible to foot traffic, and the underwater portions are now a rite of passage for scuba divers in the Kanto area.
Liam: oh, like Old Sootopolis.
Nova: So not just once but twice, hydroelectric power on the Suiryoku river is defeated by the environment.
Justin: Yeah, seems like it's just straight up not a lucky spot. Kanto eventually moved over towards wind power, off the Cerulean Cape and the Indigo Highlands.
Liam: So what was Cerulean Coal Energy up to during that?
Justin: Uhhhh, exploding Cinnabar Island? There's actually speculation that witnessing the power of Zapdos secondhand is what drove Giovanni into the weird genetics research of the Mew project. Like, as an intended deterrent.
Liam: Fucking dipshit, just become a Trinitarian like a normal person, asshole!
Justin: But also, once Giovanni took up felony full time, the various above board parts of the Rocket Clique sorta chilled out, and a few former Rocket engineers managed to avoid getting incriminated long enough to secure themselves cushy consultancy jobs on the wind power projects.
Nova: Right, Corruptions Georg has stopped officially associating with us, please trust us with your regional infrastructure.
Justin: ... Yeah, basically. So. What did we learn from this?
Liam: Don't trust a rich man who breeds Persian for fun to build infrastructure?
Nova: Do not use electricity to write a big sign that says Zapdos Love Hotel Here if you don't want Zapdos to fuck there?
Justin: Yeah so this is another one of those disasters where if an outside expert had looked at what was being done for five seconds they could have predicted everything almost down to the minute? Because the nesting behaviors of Zapdos were known to science by the turn of the century- probably before that, honestly.
Nova: The Trinitarians probably had that shit figured out centuries ago and just didn't tell anyone.
Justin: Yeah that sounds like the kind of thing we'd have in one of the heresy vaults. Alright. We have a segment on this podcast called: Safety Third.
["Shake Hands With Danger!"]
[Slide change: Photo of Veilstone port quarter. A ship, with the carrier name blacked out, has run aground into the side of the harbor, sending the stern swinging around and into a pier. Three of six large piers are blocked by the wreckage.]
Justin: So this one comes to us from Sinnoh. "Greetings WTYP crew and possible guest-"
Liam: Nope! Wrong! Get fucked!
Nova: I love how you can basically carbon date when we got these by whether they call me November, Alice, or try to hedge because they know I'm changing my name but not what it is? this one was sent within a specific span of two months within the last year.
Justin: Or they're just being concise?
Nova: Oh. Well. Yeah that could be it too I guess.
Justin: Did I ruin your bit?
Nova: Kind of.
Justin: Sorry. "Greetings WTYP crew. This is the story of the day I quit my job, the day I nearly killed a man, and the day someone I cannot legally name blocked off half of Veilstone Harbor. At the time I was working for a shipping company based in Veilstone. As you may or may not know, Veilstone, due to physical isolation, does most of its transport to other cities by sea."
Liam: Tends to happen when you dig a city into a sea cliff.
Justin: "It's a rule often repeated and rarely followed that pokeballs need to be well secured when on the deck of a ship, with all activations cleared with the captain and whoever is at the helm. Partly this is due to the risk of losing a beloved companion in a heaving sea, and this is the reasoning most people think of when considering the origins of the rules.”
Nova: Understandable, you don't want Zeke the Zigzagoon who you've had with you your whole life to suddenly find himself in Davy Jones's Locker.
Justin: "but the other reason is for the safety of the ship. A helmsman who spots a pokemon he isn't expecting may make some rapid decisions that... Precipitate more rapid decisions."
Nova: Oh no. Ohhhh no.
Justin: "I was sailing on a small freight ship carrying fruit into Veilstone. It was midnight shift and we were getting ready to pull in to the harbor. Everyone's exhausted and wants to get into port as soon as possible. And someone, who I can't name but will call D for Doofus, supposes that since his part of the voyage is done, and the captain had let him do it once before, he can hop on his Wailmer and head into port on his own, probably to visit the Game Corner."
Liam: Dude. Fuckin- seriously? You can't wait a half hour?
Justin: "What D failed to remember is that his Wailmer had evolved while on this voyage."
Nova: [hysterical laughter] HOW DO YOU FORGET THAT?
Justin: "so instead of a man-sized splash off the port side bow, he instead made a massive wave. And you remember what I said about clearing all outside Pokemon use with the officer of the day? Well, D hadn't. So the helmsman, right at the border of Veilstone harbor, sees a Wailord the size of his own ship rising from the water, and makes the panicked, but quite sensible decision of trying to get away. He guns it into the harbor. Meanwhile four men, including me and D for Dumbass, have been washed overboard by D's Wailord, and all three of us were bawling him out for being a dipshit, and beloved dear sweet precious Wailord, who has not been huge long enough to come to terms with his size, rushes over behind the ship to try and defend his human against the slings and arrows of three pissed off and wet sailors."
Liam: Aw, buddy.
Justin: "This generated even more waves from his wake, which washed into the ship, sending it into the harbor much faster than is safe. The helmsman at this point is now trying to back off, but that's not going so well. Ships don't actually change momentum that fast on their own, and it's all he can do at this point to turn the bow away from the other ships at dock. He succeeded in this and perfectly ran the ship into a stretch of bare sand just outside the harbor. Nobody was hurt aside from some bumped heads and serious bruising from the impact."
Nova: Oh good!
Justin "But-"
Nova: Oh no.
Justin: "- the ship is still in motion- still has waves pushing it into Veilstone. So the bow of the ship has now become a pivot point sending the whole ship into the piers- sideways. The result can be seen in the picture.”
Justin: "Though the cleanup was relatively quick and no one was hurt beyond bruises and a broken bone or two, I thought this made a good story of how Safety Rules Always Exist For A Reason. Love the show, thank you for what you guys do."
Justin: Okay. I think that's a podcast.
Nova: Yeah. Good show everyone. Except for D for Damned Idiot.
Justin: Our next episode is on the Great Pacifidlog Reef Collapse, does anyone have anything they want to plug?
Nova: I'm on a couple other podcasts, go listen to them. Or don't, I'm not your mom.
Liam: This fucking cider is good.
Justin: Oh, yeah, if you live in Unova and can drink, try and look up Croissant Mountain cider. It's tasty.
Nova: Yeah I'll get right on that in a couple weeks.
Justin: See you at the airport, Nova.