Karen Silkwood
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Welcome to Theories of the Third Kind. Welcome to Theories of the Third Kind. My name is Aaron and I am one of your hosts. There are three other hosts that are joining me today, of course. Hans. Yeah. Daniel-san. Ayo. And Anna. What's up? So before we start today's episode, I just want to say, like always, we do not run any ads or take any money from any corporations. So if you'd like to help us out, well, there's a few ways that you could do that.

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So today's episode is over Karen Silkwood. So how this episode will go today is that we'll talk about who was Karen Silkwood, what happened to her, the strange facts and findings surrounding her and her incident, the theories around it all, and of course wrap it all up with our own personal thoughts and theories. So that being said, let's get into today's episode.

In 1974, an employee of a plutonium processing plant started voicing concerns about the health and safety issues at her job. Shortly after that, she started to become mysteriously contaminated with radioactive particles. Because of this, she started secretly collecting important documents that showed the company's cover-ups. On her way to deliver these important documents to a newspaper reporter, she died in a tragic car accident.

Many mysteries surround not only her death, but many weeks leading up to it. Was it the company she worked for that was trying to stop her from whistleblowing? Or was it part of a much larger conspiracy reaching from the Atomic Energy Commission to the FBI and the CIA? Now to better understand this story, we of course have to first talk a little bit about who Karen Silkwood was. So Ana, can you start us off with that? You know I'd love to.

So Karen Silkwood was born on February 19th, 1946, near Longview, Texas. She was the eldest of three daughters, belonging to Bill and Meryl Silkwood. Karen had a normal childhood. Growing up in high school, she was a straight-A student and took quite an interest in chemistry. She excelled in chemistry and received a full-ride scholarship to study medical technology at Lamar College in Beaumont, Texas.

After high school, Karen spent the summer with her grandparents in East Texas. While visiting them, she met a 17-year-old boy named Bill Meadows. He was visiting from California, and him and Karen immediately hit it off, and it turned into, you know, the summer romance. We all know what it's like. Of course, when summer ended, they had to part ways. Bill headed back to California to finish high school, and Karen headed back home to start her freshman year of college.

Now, a little side note. They did keep in contact through snail mail, you know, the post office. Letters, handwritten letters.

Yeah, I miss those letters. All right. So fast forward a little bit. In 1965, it was the end of Karen's freshman year in college. And Bill returned to Karen and told her, hey, I got a really good idea. And she's like, what are you doing here? And he's like, pay no attention to that. Let's just go get married in Louisiana. And of course, Karen thought it was a great idea.

So they both decided to leave town without letting anyone know what was going on other than Bill's grandfather, who had dementia and didn't even know who Bill was. So he was like, I don't even know who you are. And he's like, I'm going to go get married, Grandpa. Okay. When they arrived in Louisiana and tried to get married, things didn't work out too well. No one would marry them since neither of them were 21.

So they decided to return back to Texas and lie to their entire families and tell them all that they have gotten married anyways. Of course, Karen's parents weren't too thrilled about it and weren't happy about her throwing away a scholarship to a college to basically become instead a full-time housewife and a soon-to-be mother.

So, Bill and Karen's first year together was an adventurous one. They moved to Corsicana, Texas, and Bill got a job as a machinist for Mobil Oil, and Karen got a job as a clerk for a hat company. In November of 1966, Karen gave birth to their first child, Christy. Then two years later, in 1968, she gave birth to their son, Michael. Around this time is when they moved to Duncan, Oklahoma.

Shortly after their move in 1970, Karen, at the age of 24 years old, gave birth to her last child, Dawn. Now, remember back in the day when Bill and Karen ran away to Louisiana, like Aaron was saying, to get married? It didn't really work, but they decided to tell everyone that they were legally married, but they weren't. Well...

Even though they didn't get legally married, they still qualified for common law marriage, which is pretty much marriage without having to register for a marriage license. When they tried to get the stuff needed for the state to recognize the common law marriage, they had some issues. Arguments, you know, that kind of stuff. Because of that, Karen ended up leaving and moving back home for a while. She probably left because they were living in Oklahoma. Place sucks. Yeah.

Duncan does. I've been there numerous times. During that time, Bill was calling Karen and telling her that things would be different if, you know, she moved back. Oh, babe, I promise. I won't. I won't do it again. I changed. Yeah. I put the bottle down. Jesus. I'll stop handling the snakes at the Baptist Church again. Sorry.

She ended up giving in and moved back in with him. Things quickly became worse as they not only started arguing again, but they were financially struggling. They ended up having to file for bankruptcy. So Bill grew tired of Karen and was pretty much never home anymore. He worked a second job at a motorcycle shop. And while working there, he met a girl named Kathy, who, of course, he started dating.

Karen found out about this and demanded a divorce from Bill. But he was like, look here, I'll divorce you if you give me the kids. Of course, Karen was hesitant at first, but she thought about it for a little while. She knew that at this time, she wouldn't be able to support herself and the kids, but knew that Bill could. So she ended up leaving the kids with him.

On a Saturday morning in 1972, Karen told her five-year-old daughter, Christy, to keep an eye on her three-year-old brother and 18-month-old sister, that she was going to the store to get some cigarettes. Karen never came back. Oh my God. Dude, that is so bad. A five-year-old watching. What is the age that you leave a child at home by themselves? 13, 14? Uh.

Like three months dude, they can't do anything. Yeah, okay Yeah, just stay in the crib Just feed them just feed them before you leave, you know, they'll sleep it by the time you get it just feed them before you leave put like one of them hamster water bottles in there so they can roll over and I Don't see how anybody could do that leave their three kids at home. It was the 70s, dude That's you know when people still have their doors unlocked and stranger danger wasn't a thing. Yeah Lachkey kids

Yep. So she got in her car, hopped on the highway, and drove almost 100 miles north to Oklahoma City. Karen was no longer a housewife or a mother of three kids, but she did need to find a job to support herself. At this time in 1972, there was an energy company called Kerr-McGee. They were one of Oklahoma's largest employers, and they were looking to hire lab technicians at their Cimarron River Plutonium Process Plant.

Karen saw the job ad and thought, you know, she loved chemistry and this could be a real good opportunity for her to follow her dreams and her career choice of science. Karen was hired and in August of 1972, she started working at the plutonium plant located in Crescent, Oklahoma. Now this is where the story of Karen Silkwood starts to get interesting.

At her job, Karen only received minimal training but was assigned to the metallurgy lab. Now this was her dream job, you know, doing scientific work. She would work with nuclear fuel rods that were packed with radioactive plutonium pellets.

She would polish them as well as inspecting them for any faults. Now, a little side note. While handling these materials, they would be encased in what they called a glove box. This glove box is supposed to be a securely sealed container box with openings on the side, then additional openings where gloves were attached securely...

for someone to use to work with hazardous materials inside without being at risk to themselves. Just something to keep in mind as we go forward. Yeah, so when we're

talking about that you know it's got like imagine like a box and then it's got a big door on the front of it and you open it up and you put whatever you want to work in inside the box and you close it up and it's got these gloves that you can stick your hands into that go into the box and it's got a window so you can see inside of it so they would put the plutonium pellets inside that they would close it and then she would put her hands inside the gloves and then there would be a polishing machine inside of it that she'd use to polish it and

And it would have a HEPA filter and a HEPA hose hooked up to it so it would suck through. And then the radioactive particles that were coming off of the polishing of the plutonium pellets would go inside the HEPA filters and be filtered through that. And they had that sectioned off with a lead-lined thing. I'm very familiar with this process. Do they have to have that lead-lined? I thought it was just like a plastic thing.

Well, so the filter, it depends on what you're working on. Sometimes a lead line, like they'll build like a lead line.

something over it depending on how hot it is or sometimes they'll just have a meter hooked up to it like a remote meter like a RO7 or something and they'll have like a remote monitoring thing to where it's like once it reaches this this dose rate of like I don't know 80 MR an hour then they'll be like okay we need to change out the filter and put a new one in just all it all depends on what they're working on yeah anyways knowledge nuggies nuke knowledge nuggies

Alright, so when Karen started working there, she met a co-worker by the name of Drew Stevens. Drew helped her at the plant and, you know, started chatting with her quite often during breaks. Now this Drew guy, well, he was currently going through a divorce himself. And of course, Karen was, you know, just getting out of a marriage of just randomly leaving her kids and her husband. And they kind of supported one another through this rough time, quote unquote rough time.

So not even a month later, Drew and Karen officially became a couple. Now, why do we mention this Drew guy? Well, he plays a role in Karen's story. So Drew was very concerned about the safety issues at the plant. He convinced Karen to join the local union, which was Oil, Chemical, and Atomic Workers Union, OCAW, O-C-A-W for short. Yeah. OCAW! OCAW! That's what I was going to say, like, OCAW. Can we say that the rest of the show? Oh, no.

but OCAW for short. Pretty soon after joining, she participated in a nine-week strike for better wages and safety conditions at the plant. The company Kerr-McGee didn't give in to the strike, and it ended with more loss than gain. It caused a greater wedge between non-union workers and union workers. Karen's resolve had been toughened from being a part of the picket line. She was one of the few to not abandon it. She stood up for what she believed in.

Shortly after the nine-week strike, Kerr-McGee started to fall behind on a contract that they had with the federal government for supplying them with nuclear fuel rods for them. Kerr-McGee was like, oh shit, we gotta play catch-up, boys. We cannot deliver. So, the workers started doing 12-hour shifts seven days a week. Yep, screw that. Those sucked. I hate those. Yeah. So they kind of screwed themselves by doing that picket.

Wait, the unions screwed themselves? Yeah, since it failed, now they had to do 12-hour shifts seven days a week. That's like Kermadee. Yeah, that is. The strike failed. What a shitty rep. They fell behind on schedule for delivering these fuel rods, and Kermadee was like, we gotta get ahead. So y'all are doing 12-hour shifts seven days a week. Fuck, dude. No. After so many weeks of this brutal schedule, many of the workers were becoming exhausted.

This caused many mistakes to be made. For example, they started having airborne radiation leaks. You know, radioactive particles in the air. Not a biggie, right? Because... yeah. Because they had these radioactive airborne leaks, they had to wear respirators during those 12-hour shifts as the plant continued to try and catch back up on the schedule. Just preparing people for corona all the way back then. Ha ha ha ha ha!

All right. Damn it. So during this time, one of the workers were quoted saying, I never felt completely protected by one because of the way it seals around your face. What? What type of respirators were they given? Yeah, because I know at least me and Aaron have. Hans, I'm pretty sure you worn a respirator, right? Yeah. Anna, have you? No.

Do you want one? I got you, fam. Well, you never know what kind of apocalypse they're going to throw at us. Better add it to my go bag. Yeah. There you go. Teach you how to breach and seal it. Yeah, but I mean, I thought those things had pretty good seals on them. Because, you know, seal all the way around. You had to, like, get rid of your beard and everything.

You don't really need to get rid of it. You just take Vaseline and you rub it. If you have a beard and you want to put a respirator on, you want it to fit fully, you don't got time to shave, take a bunch of Vaseline, just lather it on where your seal goes. That thing will get a fucking seal. Perfect. Yeah. Yeah? Yeah. I feel like someone take advantage of all that Vaseline on my face, but you know. Oh no. Oh no, I'm so slippery. What did I do? I mean...

I mean, the way to check if your respirator is sealed, you know, you all know how to do it. You exhale and then put your hand over the filter. Feel like you're suffocating for a second. Yeah, because they usually, you know, fit test at the plant. You know, you put it on there, you check it and all that. Then you have to like stand there and read, do these little weird exercises. Yeah. All right. So let's fast forward to July of 1974.

This is when Karen was contaminated with radioactive particles for the first time.

So while she was working, her air sample filters in her lab started going off for airborne radioactive particles. So she had like this air sample that would constantly monitor the air around her workstation. And whenever it detected airborne radioactive particles, it would alarm. So just a little FYI. All right. So during this time, she was the only one.

on her shift that had been exposed to this plutonium because these radioactive particles were plutonium because that's what she was working with.

She went to the health physics area, and they told her that her levels were low, but that she still had to do a weekly urine and fecal sample. She still had to do weekly urine and fecal samples for testing. You know, this was done basically to make sure that she was excreting the plutonium from her body biologically, and that it was all coming out. So, yeah. Shit in a bag and piss in a cup and bring it to us each day. Ugh. Yep.

Now, Karen's mother and sister heard about this incident and they started to get worried. But Karen reassured them that everything was okay and that the plant had just a small leak and not to worry about it. Even though she told them not to worry, the incident did concern Karen a lot. She believed the company was putting profits before safety. So she decided to get involved more in the union and became part of their three-person bargaining committee. After she got this role, Karen began to look into the plant's health and safety procedures.

She would go around the plant with a notebook asking certain questions about certain incidents at the plant, like when was this spilled, when did it happen, you know, type questions. These safety concerns were still being neglected at the plant, and Karen was very vocal with the company about them getting fixed.

It is worth noting that some of the workers felt that if they reported these issues to Karen, that she would make a big stink of it, which in turn would piss off the company even more, which then they thought would put their job in jeopardy for telling Karen. Because of this, it caused her to kind of become an outcast at the plant, and it even caused a strain on her relationship with Drew.

Around this time, Karen became depressed and had trouble sleeping, to which her doctor prescribed Quaaludes. Fuck you. Fucking, all I can think of is Wolf of Wall Street when I think of Quaaludes. Oh, dude, I was getting fucked up with Quaaludes, dude. Quaaludes, to help her sleep. But with the safety issues in the back of her mind, this kept her up.

Karen and two of her co-workers flew to Washington, D.C. to the union's headquarters to speak with some union officials about a long list of safety violations at the plant. The union officials told Karen and two other co-workers about the exposures of plutonium, how dangerous it is, and how it could be very life-threatening. Yeah, so at this time, none of the workers there knew about this.

The company Kerr-McGee never explained that handling plutonium could put them at risk for cancer. So in total disbelief, Karen decided to bring up another concern that she'd found. This one was about x-rays of the fuel rods. These x-rays showed dangerous hairline cracks in the fuel rods and that the data had been purposely altered to make them pass through inspection.

This quality control data was being purposely tampered with, which if you didn't know, fuel rods, these are in nuclear reactors. So you got your nuclear vessel, right? And you take these fuel rods, they're like long squared rods, and they're filled with these plutonium pellets. And there's like 198 of them, or it depends on how big the reactor is, but let's just say 198 of them inside of this each reactor.

nuclear reactor, right? And they can't have any hairline cracks or nothing. They gotta be like fit fam, right? So yeah, if they have anything like that, that's a big deal. If they're faulty, it could be a huge problem, like a nuclear disaster just waiting to happen. Of course, this was a giant deal and the union officials wanted proof of this because when Karen just told them, she didn't have any proof. You know, she didn't have the data to say, hey,

They were altering this data to make sure these things pass. So Karen said, you know what, union officials, I will get you this proof of this data being altered. A few weeks later, the union called a meeting at the Kerr-McGee plant. They brought in medical experts who explained to everyone about the hazards of plutonium. Karen was recorded at the meeting saying the following.

If there is something going on, if we are going to be susceptible to cancer, we're not going to know about it for 20 years. Then something's got to be done. She then proceeded to start writing down many notes and steal company documents. Which, you know, that's a big no-no, but she did that anyway. It's funny that they tell them the hazards after they've been working on the material. Yeah.

doesn't that remind you of the radiant radon girls yeah yes the radium radium girls yeah i would dip their their uh yeah and then they're like oh my god look at me dude i'm glowing we need to do a story on them holy smokes yeah would you fuck me would you fuck me i glow i learned about them from my favorite murder me too did you really

Girl, I told you I listen to that stuff. Not anymore, because I'm over here cussing people out 90% of my day. I haven't had time for them for a while, but they were still my jam. All right, let me get us back here. So what the union was planning to do with the information that they got from Karen was to leak it to the New York Times reporter, David Burnham. This reporter already had his eyes on nuclear power and was looking for what he called a chink in one's armor.

Would you call me? That's what I was going to say. Oh, my God. And by the way. Stop the Asian hate. Yeah, stop the Asian hate, Danny. Even though you're Asian, for anybody who doesn't know, if this is your first time listening to us, Daniel is Asian. Stop the Asian hate. He's more Asian than I am. You know, I had to make sure that was spelled correctly when I put that in there. I was just like, there's no way in hell that it's spelled like this. I was just like, I guess it is. Okay. See, I thought it was a kink in one's arm or both.

Yeah, I looked it up. It's chinks in one arm. I'm like, ooh, okay. Blood pressure rising. I can't put this down. I was called that in middle school. Cancel it. I never knew what it was. Well, Karen was going to be able to provide just that for this David guy. Over the next few months, Karen started documenting everything.

She found spill document falsifications, lack of proper training, many health regulation violations, and so much more.

With these discrepancies she found at the facility, Karen wanted to expose the Kerr-McGee facility for the mistakes and health risks running on employees. She made a call to her union contact, Steve Wodka. Wodka. Steve Wodka. Yeah, Wodka. Yeah, Steve Wodka. Okay, Steve Wodka.

On October 7th, 1974, in which he recorded part of the phone conversation with her, Karen said, and I quote, In the laboratory, we got 18 and 19-year-old boys, and they didn't have the schooling. So they don't understand what radiation is. They don't understand, Steve.

So around this time of Karen collecting this information and documents, she started to become fearful of being caught. She ended up calling her family, asking for them to start collecting job applications because she was going to give her two weeks notice at the plant. Right before she could do that, she made a huge discovery. She found that Kerr-McGee wasn't keeping complete inventory of how much plutonium they had.

She also discovered something terrifying, that over 40 to 60 pounds of weapon-grade plutonium was missing. This amount of plutonium was enough to make three to five nuclear bombs that could destroy multiple cities. No big deal, right? No big deal. Yeah, dude. Come on. Everyone has plutonium.

Shortly after that discovery, on the evening of November 5th, 1974, Karen was working in a glove box in the metallurgy lab where she had been grinding and polishing plutonium pellets that would be used in nuclear fuel rods. At 6.30pm, after finishing the work, Karen grabbed the alpha monitor that was mounted to the glove box to monitor herself to make sure that she didn't have any radioactivity on her hands.

She had no thought that she would not find any since she had done this quite a few times and never got any radioactive particles on herself since it was all contained in the glove box. However, that was not the case. Not only did she have highly radioactive material on her, but she had 400 times the legal contamination amount of plutonium-239 on her hands and arms.

Fuck. That's all you can say to that. Marvin Marshall would be fucking getting hard over that. Like, hmm, P239 plutonium. Ooh. So because of this, the right side of Karen's body read 20,000 disintegrations per minute, or about 9 nanocuries.

mostly on the right sleeve and shoulder of her coveralls. She was taken to the plant's health physics office, where she was given a test called a nasal swipe. This test measures a person's exposure to airborne plutonium, but might also measure plutonium that got on the person's nose from their hands. So this nasal swipe showed an activity of 160 decenerations per minute,

That's a positive result. The two gloves in the glove box that Silkwood had been using were, of course, replaced. Now, something strange to note is that the gloves that Karen was using were found to have plutonium on the outside surfaces that were in contact with Karen's hands, but no leaks were found in the gloves. Hmm. That's pretty strange.

No plutonium was found on the surfaces in the room where she had been working, and filter papers from the two air monitors in the room show that there was no significant plutonium in the air. This means the radioactive particles came from somewhere, but from where? Yeah, they weren't in the room with her. She didn't get them from where she was working at in the glove box. That's crazy. So she brought that shit in with her, boy.

And it was on her right hand and right shoulder. Yeah. Shaking. Putting hand on the shoulder. Yeah. All right. So by 9 p.m. that night, Karen's cleanup had been completed. And as a precautionary measure, she was put on a program in which, of course, again, her total urine and feces were collected for five days straight for plutonium measurements.

She returned to the laboratory and worked until 1.10 a.m., but did no further work in the glove boxes. As she left the plant, she monitored herself and found nothing. No radioactive particles or anything. This is 70s, baby. They were having to collect doo-doo and pee-pee. We don't have to do that now. We got those machines. You just step in and they tell you. They read everything inside your body. Yeah, so thank God for those fast scans and those gym counters. Thank God for them.

Yeah, could you imagine you had Taco Bell the night before and that's the shit you have to present to the person in the bag? I would not be working my job if I had to do doo-doo and pee-pee. No way. But I'd do it if I had to do the swab on you, though. I'd be like, come here.

You want to test for COVID? Put that swab in the butt? Yeah, you want to test? Yeah. This feels bigger than a swab. It's my swab. And I'll do what I want to. That's right. Nobody's going to believe you. No one's going to know. No one's going to know. Somebody's going to know. Weird. All right.

The next day, Karen arrived at work at 7:30 a.m. She examined the metallographic prints and performed paperwork for one hour, then monitored herself as she left the laboratory to attend a meeting. Although she had not worked at the glove box that morning, the detector registered alpha activity on her hands. Health physics staff members found further activity on her right forearm and the right side of her neck and face. This time it was even worse than before. The health physics staff members

had to decontaminate her, and Drew decided to help with it. Dirty bastard. You wanted to rub all up on her? You dirty girl, let me clean ya. Ew. So they scrubbed so hard that her skin was raw by the time they were done, having to use powdered detergent and bleach to make sure they got all of the contamination off. And just a quick side note, Drew told her not to cry because the salt from her tears would burn her skin.

Like, damn, man, you're dating her. Like, can't you have a little bit more compassion? I don't like the skin. Let me eat that Kentucky Fried Chicken. So while they were decontaminating her, a health physics tech took an alpha monitor and checked her locker and automobile, but didn't find any radioactive particles. Once they got done decontaminating Karen, she was sent home.

God, that has to suck. The next day, on November 7th, Karen went into work and reported to the health physics office about 7.50 in the morning. She gave them her bioassay kit, which contained four of her urine samples and one fecal sample. The health physics decided to do a nasal swab on her, in which they discovered that she had significant levels of alpha activity.

1,000 to 4,000 DPM on her hands, arms, chest, neck, and right here. That radioactive monster was like, let me get that here. Get that real good.

Then they decided to run an examination on her bioassay samples, which showed extremely high levels of radioactivity, 30,000 to about 30,000 to 40,000 counts per minute in her fecal sample. Yeah, she, alpha is like the worst stuff to adjust to. Because like gamma, beta, that shit will just go right through you. Those particles go right through you. You got alpha inside you.

Like alpha can't penetrate your skin, but if you swallow it, it acts like a imagine like a pinball machine. Right. And your body's the machine and the pinballs, the radioactive particles of alpha just hitting off all your cells and everything in your body and just bouncing around, unable to escape until you shit it out.

So it's more like that Pong game where it's the one paddle and it hits the blocks being your cells and stuff, comes back down, hits again, and then eventually you miss it and it goes down into the whole different game. Yeah. I like that game. It's a fun game. Brick Breaker. Yeah, Brick Breaker. That's what I'm thinking.

Alright, so after they found out her shit contained a lot of radioactivity in it, they decided to check her locker and automobile again. And, of course, no radioactivity was found there. Everyone was confused as to where the hell all of this radioactive particles and radioactivity was coming from. The health physics techs were running around the sink and, what the hell is going on? The RPM, radiation protection manager, was like, I don't know what's going on. The NRC's breathing down his neck, tell me where it's coming from, I'm gonna cut your fucking head.

Then the health physicists are yelling at the decontaminators like, you're not doing your fucking job. Clean better. Yeah. Just grow harder. So they decided to go to Karen's house and check it. The Kermagee health physicists accompanied her to her apartment, which she actually shared this apartment with another laboratory analyst at her job, who was Sherry Ellis. So they started to get to work on surveying her apartment.

Significant levels of radioactivity were found in the bathroom and kitchen, and the lower levels of activity were found in other rooms. In the bathroom, about 100,000 dpm were found on the toilet seat, 40,000 dpm on the floor mat, and 20,000 dpm on the floor.

In the kitchen, they opened the refrigerator and monitored a package of bologna and cheese, which had 400,000 DPM on it. They also found 20,000 DPM on the cabinet top, 20,000 DPM on the floor, 25,000 DPM on the stove sides, and 6,000 DPM on a package of chicken. Now in the bedroom, between 500 and 1,000 DPM were detected on the pillowcases and between 500 and 2,000 DPM on the bedsheets.

Now, even though all this was found in her apartment, no plutonium was found outside of it. Her roommate Sherry did have two areas of low-level activity on hers, though.

And Aaron, can you explain DPM a little bit better? Okay, so DPM, disintegrations per minute, right? So you have a source. And when I say source, imagine, so there's radiation and contamination. Radiation is like the heat you feel from the sun, right? Contamination would be like dirt, like fire, right? If the fire from the sun, right?

If the sun caught something on fire, right? So the contamination you can't see, radiation you can't feel. So what happens is, is you pound something with so much radiation and it becomes radioactive. So you got these very small particles you can't see that become pounded with radiation that become radioactive. Since you can't see these particles, but they fly around everywhere, that's contamination. So the contamination emits energy, which is radioactive.

Radiation, right? So the contamination emits energy, which it's disintegrating because it's emitting this energy, which is disintegrations per minute. The higher the amount of energy, the more contamination is in that one single spot. So 400,000 DPM, 400,000 disintegrations per minute tells you that that small particle that's radioactive has a lot of fucking radioactivity in it. There's a lot of it.

So something like that, that was found on her bologna and cheese, that is a, I mean, not only that, but you're talking 20,000, even 500 DPM found on her pillowcases of plutonium-239. That's crazy. But to have 400,000 in her house and all throughout her apartment and it not be...

outside of her home or in her car. That's crazy. I mean, Dan, you know a lot about decontamination. How crazy is that for that not to travel into her car or outside of her home? It's really crazy because, you know, it's

To have a car to be completely clean, outside of the house be completely clean, and only her and then the inside of her house being contaminated, all I can say is that sounds planned. It does. It's so weird because the shit, it goes, once you get contamination somewhere, it spreads easily so fast. It does. Imagine it like blood you can't see. It just spreads everywhere.

Like, yeah, like only way I can really describe it is like, you know, dirt. So if you think it's inside her house or apartment, if she opened that door just to wind gust from that, you know, worry the particles outside. Yeah. So it would carry some outside. But there was nothing outside. If it was in her car. Strange. Yeah. She even had it on her what her arms and stuff and driving into work. What the fuck? Why didn't none of it fall off?

And it's weird because she doesn't have a lot in her bedroom. I feel like what's in her bedroom is residual that was on her person. So when she goes to bed at night, she leaves leftover radiation on her pillow and her bed sheets compared to the rest of the house. Like the common areas where Sherry also had access to, there seems to be high levels there. But her personal space, there isn't. Yeah, there's a lot in the common areas. So, hmm.

Weird. Very weird. But thank you for that, Aaron. Oh yeah, dude, that was a really great explanation. A Kerr-McGee decontamination team was then sent to her apartment and started collecting and decontaminating everything. They put all the items in 55-gallon barrels marked with radioactive tags. At this time, Karen was outside watching the whole time, just bawling her eyes out.

She ended up calling her family and told them that she would be coming home soon. Karen also called her union contact, Wodka, which he voiced his concerns about the amount of radiation that she had been in contact with. Man, it sounds like a good way to get rid of a bunch of evidence in somebody's house. I imagine the decontamination team, like the one from Monsters, Inc., just busting in, Oh, get it, get it, get it! Everything.

Karen ended up leaving and going to visit her boyfriend Drew. When she arrived, she was shaking and hysterical, saying over and over again that she was going to die. She believed that the company would do anything to stop her from digging any further and delivering the information that she had.

The union officials caught wind of what was going on with the radioactivity at Karen's apartment and started believing the same thing. I mean, who wouldn't? So they hurried up to set up a meeting with a New York Times reporter.

Before this meeting could take place, officials from the Atomic Energy Commission and company doctors of Kerr-McGee suggested that Drew, her roommate Sherry, and Karen should all head down to the Center of Nuclear Research to be examined. Her boyfriend Drew and roommate Sherry were sent to the Los Alamos National Laboratory to have tests run on them to determine the extent of the radiation contamination.

They both came back clean. Unfortunately for Karen, they told her that somehow she had ingested plutonium, but the doctors assured her that her radiation levels were low enough that they are within governmental safety standards. Side note, I was offered a job at Los Alamos National Laboratory in 2010. But did someone touch your penis? God, you didn't take it now. 2011. Oof.

Don't go there, dude. It's not worth it. No. It's in the middle of frickin' nowhere. Middle of nowhere, crazy, like, stipulations. I'm sure, you know, there's obviously rules you gotta follow, but man, when we would have to take stuff there in the army, dude, they had you escorted with a bunch of armed guards everywhere. Of course, she didn't believe that at all.

Karen had called her sister and was telling her about how she had all these tests done and that they had told her pretty much that she was married to cancer. After that, the union officials asked Karen if she still wanted to proceed with collecting all the information she could for them, and she agreed to keep doing so. I would have said hell no, but yeah. She's already committed this much. You kind of have to. Yeah, she's already going to die. Yeah.

So then on the night of November 13th, she went to a union meeting at a coffee shop where she talked with a co-worker by the name of Wanda Jean Young. She had told her that she was exposed to enough plutonium that she would die. Karen had all the materials and was flipping through it with Wanda. She was going to blow the whistle on the Kermagee that night. But sadly, she would never get the chance to.

A half an hour later, she was heading to deliver the material to the reporter of the New York Times, and Karen was found mysteriously dead in a car crash that only involved her vehicle in Crescent, Oklahoma. Dun, dun, dun. The first officer on the scene of Karen's crash had found two marijuana cigarettes.

and some Quaaludes in her purse. Come on, dude, it's the 70s. Back off. Jesus Christ. Damn, dude. Everybody, yeah, everybody. Come on, they were probably his. He's like, oh, God, look at that. Are those marijuana cigarettes? Reefers. How many of those did she inject? Five. Yeah. The devil's lettuce. Papers with Kerr-McGee letterheads were scattered across the ground, and he picked up what he found and put them in the car.

Drew, Wodka, and Burnham, the reporter, were at a hotel waiting for Karen to show up. Around 10 p.m., they ended up receiving a phone call from the police. Wodka had to let Drew know that his girlfriend was killed in a car accident. They had driven to the site where she crashed, and the only thing they could find was a paperback novel covered in her blood.

At around midnight, the car was taken to a local garage, and officials from the Atomic Energy Commission and Kerr McGee himself, the owner, searched the car. The next morning, Drew, Watka, and Burnham had their chance to search the car, but none of the information that Karen had collected was found.

Authorities concluded that Karen was under the influence of drugs, stating that she was either unconscious or in a state of stupor when she had driven off the road and hit the wall of the underpass. The union claimed foul play and hired an accident reconstruction expert and her family hired an investigator.

They disputed the official findings. The medical examiners found high levels of quaaludes in her system, but the family's investigators said that she was conscious just moments before impact. The investigator also found that the rear bumper of her car had fresh dents. He claimed that there is enough evidence there to indicate that another vehicle may have hit the back of her car. Months after Karen's death, government reports verified many of the accusations Karen had made against the plant.

Then in 1976, two years later, her family filed a civil suit against Kerr-McGee with willful negligence and allowing Karen to be contaminated with plutonium. It took three years, but a jury finally awarded $10.5 million to her family. That's in 1976. That's a lot of money even back then. Mm-hmm.

But however, on appeal in federal court, the judgment was reduced to only $5,000, which was the estimated value of Karen's losses in property at her rental house. Yeah, that was her rental apartment. That was the $5,000 she lost in the goods that they had to decontaminate or throw away from when she was contaminated. What the fuck? That's wrong.

Wrong, wrong, wrong. So nearly 10 years later in 1984, the U.S. Supreme Court restored the original verdict and Kerr-McGee settled out of court for $1.38 million, admitting no liability. I would have came at them with interest 10 years, you know, making it. No, like that doesn't even make up for the $10 million they didn't get. Yeah. I mean, no money can replace somebody, though. Never. Never.

That's true. Very true. So that's the strange story. And things just, they're going to get even more weirder when we start going into strange facts and findings right now. It, it, it, oh man, you think that's weird. You think that's weird. Hans, tell us about the strange background of this company and our first strange fact and finding.

Yeah. All right. For a quarter century, Kerr McGee had assets around a total of $1.5 billion. That's billion with a B. And had been a leader in the nuclear industry. The company founder, Robert Kerr, was governor of Oklahoma.

and ran for the president as a Democrat in 1952. And at the time of his death in 1963, was one of the most powerful men in the United States Senate. Dean McGee, his protege and successor as head of the corporation, actually advised President Kennedy on defense policies and President Ford on energy policies.

They got connections. Yeah. Yeah, they do. They're connected deep. So deep. Deep, deep, deep. That's crazy. And, oh, that's just one of the weird, strange facts and findings. The one that probably made me say, oh, that's why, why, and just really didn't set well with me is this next one. And it's about the missing folder. Okay. With all the information. So get this shit.

So when the union heard about Karen's death and the missing folder of all the information that they collect or that she collected, they decided to hire an auto accident specialist, A.O. Pipkin, a former Albuquerque, New Mexico policeman.

and his job duty was to check for foul play. So on November 19th, Pipkin announced he had discovered substantial evidence, which was a fresh dent in the Honda and Karen's Honda's rear bumper, inconsistencies with the highway's contour, and skid marks at the scene. This all indicated that there was a hit-and-run assailant that had forced Karen off the road.

Now, if that wasn't strange enough, get this. That same day that Pimpkin made that announcement about her Honda being kicked off the road and everything that he had found, the company Kerr-McGee got their security chief, James Redding, start compiling a dossier on Pimpkin, which if you don't know what a dossier is, it's basically when somebody tries to dig up any information that they can to try to use to discredit someone.

which is pretty sketchy, right? Very. Why would they need dirt on Pimpkin to try to discredit them? Wouldn't they want him to find out, like, hey, if there was foul play and she was ran off the road, we want to find that her employee was murdered. We want to find out that stuff. Mm-hmm.

Anyways, the security chief, that James Reddink, he was trying to get all the dirt he could on Pipkin. So he decided to call a cooperative police captain in New Mexico State Police Intelligence Division, and they hired Pinkerton Security to investigate Pipkin, who was, Pipkin was trying to find out if there was foul play on Karen's death, which...

Shouldn't Hermagee be helping out Pimpkin? Anyways. So the investigation into Pimpkin only showed that he had IRS problems in 1955, which pretty much meant nothing. Side note. So the Pinkerton Security, they are a long, long established private investigation firm that's gone back to like the 1800s. So like...

They they're not like one of them cheap like PIs. You're like, yo, dude. And he looks like, you know, he owns a bunch of gas stations with the golden chains. Like these people are like super serious. Like I just looked into him once and like just for them to do a simple thing. It was like twenty five grand. I'm pretty sure I listened to my favorite murder episode where a Pinkerton security guard attacks a woman in her home and rapes her.

Oh, so are they like Blackwater? Um, no, they're kind of like, they used to be cops, but yeah, I guess it would kind of be like a private contracting. I mean, that's what they do, but like, they're just very well known for getting the job done. Like they don't have like a bad track record. They are just known for getting results. And they were mentioned in Agatha Christie's murder on the Orient express and

Don't worry about it. You should read it. Not saying that you should or shouldn't, but it's a good read. Gun to your head, read the book. Yeah, I'd do it. All right. So what do y'all think of that? I mean, why would the company be trying to find out dirt on the investigator? Wouldn't they want to be helping? Sounds like they're protecting their own behinds. Yeah. Agreed. All right. So what's this next strange fact and finding we got?

So the next one we got is about one of the witnesses and I guess you could say one of the investigators. So Karen, she was supposed to be a whistleblower and testify in front of the Atomic Energy Commission in Washington, D.C. with two other fellow union members. So one was supposed to be Sherry Ellis and I'm not sure about the other one. But of course, you know, Karen never got the chance to do so. But she wasn't the only one.

Supposedly, one of the other key witnesses ended up killing herself. And not just that, but one of the investigators disappeared under mysterious circumstances. God, they're so obvious. Yeah. Super obvious. So, that's a little sketchy there, too. It definitely sounds suspicious. Key people dying, whether by a car accident or suicide. Yeah.

Maybe we should have looked into that chick's death too. Yeah. This next strange fact and finding we have is titled, Who Can Get Hot the Quickest? So with the employees not knowing the harm that plutonium was doing to their health, they often played a game called, Who Can Get Hot the Quickest? This game was to see who could get contaminated with plutonium first. Because when you do, you get scrubbed down. Then you get to go home early. Woohoo!

This was stated by multiple people that were working there the same time Karen was. What kind of game is that? Seriously? That is like the dumbest game. All right. So I don't know. You don't have to say that first part. Driving? No, no, no. Might as well. Might as well. You know, it was the 70s. Yeah, it was the 70s. Strange fact in finding Hans. Let's talk about her driving.

Alright, it was the 70s. You know all the misconceptions about women back then. She's a woman. Oh, she can't drive. Well, think of Gen Mofos. Her boyfriend Drew actually got her into racing and motocross. Send it, bro.

They said she was actually a really skilled driver. So, you know, take that. The people that said that, you know, women can't drive. Look at Karen Silkwood, motocross enthusiast, sending it since 1974. Yeah, I think that Honda of hers was actually a modded one for racing. Oh, hell yeah, dude. She got all hopped up on Quaaludes and drifting. Tokyo. Tokyo. All right.

So the next strange fact is about her kids. She would make frequent calls and visit to see her parents and siblings. But after she left her kids, she never called them or even tried to see them. The one time that she did was right after she got contaminated and thought that she was going to get cancer and she was freaking out. So that was the only time she really called them, which I mean is a pretty common

shitty call she made a phone call and talked to her ex-husband and told her what had transpired and then a couple days later three belated birthday cards arrived for her kids that she had sent so it's like hey i know i haven't talked to you guys in like years but uh i'm your mom and by the way i got contaminated at work i'm gonna die

By the way, I still haven't found those Marlboro 100s, so I've been coming home for a while. They're out of stock everywhere I go. Yeah, damn it. They keep putting filters on these damn things. Oh my goodness. Yeah, I thought that was kind of messed up. But, uh, we'll see. So our next one is, our next strange fact I'm finding, Flasher. So, Drew mentioned that Karen was a bit of a flirt and kind of provocative at work, that

She had many crushes at work that, you know, crushes on her. And, but one of them was kind of like a little stalker. He would follow around being like a little puppy dog being in the nuke industry. We know about them. I don't know if you know, Aaron. Oh, I do know. Yeah. It's like the nuclear industry is like 98%, 99% males that are all away from their wives and they all want to fucking stick their wiener in anything. So.

Dude, I'm coming up there right now. Oh my God. But yeah, this one crush of hers, or one guy that had a crush on her was following behind her, and they entered into what, you know, plants have as an airlock. Well, she cornered him inside one of the airlocks, and for some odd reason decided to flash him. Wait, he did that or she did that? She flashed him. It's just like... Okay. It's like...

Dude, that's hot. I mean, yeah, but it's kind of weird. Maybe one of the, well, we'll save that for theories. Maybe one of the stalkers that she flashed or one of the stalkers contaminated her. You can't have Drew. Ooh. Or you can't have Karen Drew. She's contaminated. I want her. She showed me her titties. And I like them too. Yeah.

All right, Dan, tell us about this last strange fact I'm finding. All right. So the last one is about drugs. Okay. So after she started dating Drew, that's when she started to party more, go to orgies and whatnot. Just kidding about the orgies. Oh. Like they're just like, they have those? No, she started to party more and she was, you know, introduced to marijuana. So she did frequently smoke and drink and party.

So I figured that was just another explanation of possibly why there might have been marijuana cigarettes. You think that like maybe the flasher thing of her being provocative and a flirt and like the whole drug thing was made up by the company to kind of discredit her? But the flasher thing was actually to look bad.

Oh. Well, maybe he was the one contaminating her. I mean, that's true. Yeah, he was mad. You're not showing me enough nip at home, honey. Yeah, you showed that one guy, but you're not even dating him. I gave you a marijuana cigarette. So, that's the end of Strange Facts and Findings. We're going to get into theories now. Alright? Anna, you want to start us off with theories? Yeah, this first one that we have is, you know, that Karen caused her own death.

After her death, alpha activity measurements were taken on her body and it was found that she had ingested some of the plutonium particles. Still, no one could figure out how. Kerr-McGee suggested that Karen was purposely ingesting the alpha particles to make the company look bad. If Karen was doing this, she made herself become a martyr for the acquisition of bettering their safety policies. I don't know, man.

I don't know. You find it on the baloney. You find it in her kitchen everywhere. Even the monitors, if she was adjusting it, okay, even the monitors would still go off. How would she get it off of her hands? Exactly. Obviously, because then, like, you know, she'd be, like, touching her car. And so, I mean, it's not uncommon for people to do these kind of things in general, you know.

to prove a point but it's kind of weird when it's not found anywhere else maybe she was wearing gloves gloves while she ate well no like from work for adjusting the plutonium no like say you couldn't find it outside the house or in her vehicle and all that stuff so i mean maybe when like she left the house she put gloves on i don't think so man i couldn't see it even if

I don't know, man. You'd still, she'd be walking everywhere and getting every, it don't explain why she's like, it's all over the countertops. It's on the baloney. It never said anything about it on the floor. Cause if it was on the floor, she'd be walking. It was on the floor. Put her shoes on. It was on the floor. Like in the bathroom. Why the hell wasn't, did she track it through everywhere in the house? Like why didn't she walk outside and track it outside? Shoes? Well, no, she probably wore shoes in the bathroom too. So yeah, I don't know. I don't know. I mean, this thing's weird. What's his next theory we got?

So, this next theory is the pretty obvious one, that Kerr-McGee killed Karen. So, at the scene of Karen's car crash, seemed like a, you know, a classic car crash. When her autopsy was performed, there was mass amounts of Quaaludes found in her system, you know, the sleeping drug. I heard that there was, like, barely any Quaaludes, like half of a Quaalude pill that was prescribed to her that was in her system.

I don't know. Fact check that, listeners. Yeah, you know what? Call the medical examiner. Say fucking gun to your head how much quaalutes were in her system. Daddy Aaron said so. Yeah, we call the medical examiner on the Stanley Meyer Patreon episode. So be prepared for that. Oh my God. So the authorities set the cause of her car crash due to falling asleep at the wheel.

An accident investigator, you know, at the scene found the skid marks and the dents on her rear bumper. So, you know, the investigator's theory was, you know, there was obviously somebody else. And who would that somebody else be? A Kerr-McGee hired gun. You know, because it's just what happens. These big corporations, when you start running your mouth and talking about whistleblowing, you magically die.

So this next theory we have is kind of like what I believe what truly happened. And it makes sense to me. So, I mean, why would Kerr-McGee kill her just over some safety violations? Unless they had something, they were covering something up. Or...

There was a group that was doing something at the plant and framed it as Kermagee being the bad people to get the eyes off them. And that's what this kind of theory is kind of revolving around. This next one. And this one's called Secret Ring Exposed.

So remember that we mentioned about like Karen discovering that 40 to 60 pounds of plutonium was missing? Yeah. So what if she had collected some of the documents and these documents had uncovered a nuclear smuggling ring at the plant?

Smugglers that work there at the nuclear plant are at the processing plant who knew that the company kept poor inventory records of the amount of plutonium. These smugglers purposely poisoned Karen to scare her and keep her quarantined.

But when Karen was heading to meet the writer, they heard about it and ran her off road and took her folder. Knowing that if they would be caught in smuggling out this plutonium, knowing that they would basically get caught, you know, with these doc, they would from these documents showing that these people were smuggling plutonium.

Now, I know what you're thinking. What the hell are they doing with that much plutonium? Well, let me hit you with a few knowledge nuggies. Because there's a few things that I know about in life. One is conspiracies, and two is shit to do with radiation, okay? So plutonium is a very valuable contraband.

It was first discovered in 1940 during the search for the atomic bomb, or for the search of the atom bomb, and usually occurs as a yellow-green powder or like a slushy gray liquid. Only 12 pounds of it is needed for a bomb that is capable of destroying a medium-sized city.

So now, the grade of the plutonium that was being processed at Kerr-McGee has a price set by the government of $70 a gram. But on the black market, you could sell that for 5 to 10 times that much. And if we're talking about 60 pounds of it, that could be worth $5 to $10 million of plutonium that was missing. Wow.

So what's to say there wasn't a group of the workers there that was smuggling out this plutonium. They heard about Karen getting in her business, in their business, and they said, we can't let this get out and know that, you know, that we're smuggling this out. So they knew Karen was going to take this stuff and Kermagee was going to start an investigation and say, oh, some of the employees had this secret ring. They would get arrested. So they kill her. They run her off the road.

What if it wasn't the employees? So it's during the Cold War. This is spy versus spy. What if these were just converted employees into, you know, Russian moles? And then, you know, everybody has those deep state, you know, agencies.

You know, you don't have to make an atomic bomb. You can just make a dirty bomb just where it blows the particles up. It doesn't cause an atomic blast, but just spreads the particles over decimating cities for centuries. Yep. Sleeper agents. Well, who was... Yep. Who was waiting for her at the hotel room? Wodnak, the union guy, the New York Times reporter, and Drew. Okay. Okay.

feel like Drew is undercover somewhere here because it does feel that way. Yeah. He's like, don't cry. It's going to burn. He just doesn't seem to have like a lot of compassion for her that maybe they started dating because like maybe I don't know if the timeline goes up, but that they started dating to keep an eye on her. Like Drew was the mole.

And when she said, hey, I got information and I'm taking it to this reporter. We need to do it now because they're coming. Drew was like, hey, guys, she is starting this plan now. And then on the way over, they killed her. And Drew didn't look like an accomplice to the murder because he was in the room. He if you remember correctly, whenever she started really digging into the safety stuff and getting documents.

It causes strain in the relationship. This is true. Very true. That's true. So what if... What'd she die from exactly? Like, just blunt force trauma? Yeah. Okay. What if she just didn't die on impact and the Quaaludes were injected into her? So she wasn't dead. Like, or she was slowly dying, but she wasn't dying fast enough. So they're just like, you know, here's, you know, an ejection of liquid Quaaludes into her body that just knocks her out, you know?

Cell phones weren't, you know, available back then, so it took a while for cops to come to a scene, especially if you're on a damn highway out in the middle of Oklahoma, because there ain't nothing up there but cows and nothingness. And, you know, who knows how far it was to the next gas station. And that time, her heart, you know, she slowly falls asleep, and sleeping meds take effect.

Yeah, I can see that. Killed her in the county that they had control over that corner and made sure he was able to doctor the death report. Autopsy. Gun to your head. Or they did what, you know, Richard Kuklinski was known for doing. The Iceman, the infamous hitman that worked for the mafia, got a spray bottle of cyanide and just sprayed it in her face. And she died. Suffocated. Damn.

That was a tactic that he would do. He'd walk up to people in the club and act like he sneezed and spray them with a spray bottle and then walk away. He never had to, like, stab them or shoot them. How would he not breathe that in? Because he would have his face covered up. Oh. Like, he sneezed. He'd be like, and then walk away. Damn. He was like the princess bride where he was slowly taking doses of it so that he could take a lethal amount for somebody else, but he would survive. Oh, yeah.

Yeah. That's such a good movie. You know. It is. I need to rewatch it. Or, you know, Kermagee hired the mob to kill her. Who knows? In Oklahoma? The mafia had their fingers in everything back in the 70s. So what is y'all's belief? What do you think happened to her? The union killed her. The union? The union. Go on. So she was like a spy for the union. Okay. She was going in trying to collect information and stuff.

But stealing documents from a nuclear facility or like, you know, the processing plant, that's a federal offense. Taking anything out off the property. If she was going to give that to the reporter and they were going to try to use that to out them and whatnot, if that ends up going to court, that all that evidence will be thrown out because she, you know, it's a federal offense to be stealing all that. So it's going to get thrown out more than likely with, I think the union,

ended up realizing that the way she procured this evidence was illegal. They wanted proof, but they didn't know how she was going to get it. So it being thrown out, they ended up knowing that was going to happen. They ended up killing her and setting it up to make it look like Kerr-McGee ended up doing it. Because after so many years, or after what, a couple months, they ended up investigating the plant and finding out that all this shit did happen. Then it actually took action.

But I think that if she did turn this stuff in, most of the stuff would have got thrown out and it would take a way longer process to actually fix the safety regulations and shit. Yeah, Kerr-McGee is no longer operating. It shut down in the late 70s. Even Westinghouse, the one who would procure the fuel, the fuel rods from Kerr-McGee, said that they quit buying from them because their quality was shit.

So, yeah, then, of course, like the reporter, he was already going he was already going after like the nuclear industry. He said that the nuclear industry was soft, pretty much, you know, safety regulations are bad. They're not doing the right shit. He was going to go after him anyways. This was just another way to do it. But I don't think he had like a plan, like a hand in actually getting rid of her. But I do believe it was the union that did. Okay.

Interesting. How do you explain the baloney? The baloney? The baloney with 400,000 DPM on it. Drew. And all the contamination. Because Drew was part of the union. Okay. Because if you look back, Drew was the one that introduced her into joining the union. That's true. And then, you know, when she started going like deep, deep into it, oh, it put a strain on the relationship. I don't think it put a strain in it. I think Drew knew like, okay,

What she's doing, they're going to end up, you know, it's going to mess stuff up. So he started getting like, what is a stepping back from her, stepping away, trying to put a space in between her and him. So he wouldn't get too involved, I guess. Try to say what's the right word for it. They wouldn't come after him after this is all said and done that they'd be like, all right. So he he was close with her. You know, he helped us out.

But yet he wasn't going to do what she was going to do with the information exactly. So, like, honestly, he could have been a mole, mole for the union side. Yeah. I mean, your theory fits. What about you, Anna? What do you think of all this? Yeah, Dan, that is a really good theory. I feel like Drew is connected with her murder in some way. And I say murder because I do think she was killed because she was trying to expose these problems.

But yeah, why, what would make them want to kill her for safety regulations? And like I was saying earlier in the episode, where she tested positive was on her right hand and her right shoulder of her overalls. And that just reminds me of that handshake when you go in, like, hey man, good to see you. Like that shake and then you put the hand on the shoulder, the other one on the shoulder. I don't know if maybe one of the other people who died died.

that were involved with this with her could have been in part there to put it on her. Because obviously if they're touching it and she has this much, this high of levels, they're going to, unless they're wearing gloves, which I think she would have recognized that going in for a handshake or something.

Or they were like, oh, I got a cut on my finger, so I just have a glove on. Anyways, the details that don't matter. I think ultimately it was killing her to cover up exposing the nuclear plant. Your smuggling theory is really good because that is a lot of money. A lot of money. Everybody's had that job before.

Where you have a very lax boss. And then you take a donut from the donut counter. And you know they're not going to say nothing about it. You get a free drink from the fountain. You know, no big deal. And then you get a... You take 40 to 60 pounds of plutonium. No big deal. Exactly. So, I don't know. I would go with she was killed. Because she was trying to expose him 100%. Whether it was by Kerr-McGee or the union, I'm not sure.

It's too up in the air for me. The only thing I feel most certain about is that Drew was involved. Dude, you made it click in my head again. The union in Drew, man. So you're saying how she had it on her hand, her shoulder, but she also had it on her neck and face. Then you said about gloves. Dude, Drew got her into motocross. Don't you wear gloves in motocross, Aaron? Yeah. I'm just saying. It's starting to fit. Because if Drew and...

Karen, we're in a relationship. More than likely, you know, after motocross, you know, touching, touchy-feely on each other, hands on the face with gloves on probably still. You know, just smear that on that face real quick. Oh, I'm just giving you some little love touching. I'm just saying. Adjusting her helmet and stuff, taking her helmet off, moving her hair from her face whenever she, like if it was on her own gloves and stuff. Oh, damn. All right, what about you, Hans?

So, hold on a second. Just a side note. Why is it they tell you to call in again the union on that first day? To show your support. To show your unity. To show that you support the union and the union supports you and that the company's not going to fuck with you. So...

So what they did was they showed the union that they can't be fucked with. That's what Kermagee did. Now, I feel that the government killed her. Now, hear me out. In the 70s, there was the big protest over atomic energy. No one knew how clean it was. Nobody knew anything about it. And everyone's like, oh, radiation, it causes deformities. It'll do this. You know?

And obviously there's a lot less security back in the 70s. So with her discovering all these discrepancies that the company has, because obviously they have to be certified through the government to be an atomic energy consultant or whatever.

What if this would have just fueled the flame, yeah, fanned the flames for the shutdown of all atomic energy? You know, it's not clean by any means, but it produces more energy than coal does. It provides so much energy to the nation.

And with that being shut down, what is the government supposed to rely on to power the United States? Majority, you know, major parts of it. Coal. And, well, coal's dirty and it's expensive.

You know, it's easy just to, you know, I don't know how easy it is to make this stuff and just put it there because it lasts for years and years and years instead of just, you know, hours where you have to keep adding more. So the government was like, the government was like, all right, well, she's about ready to expose some stuff. So, you know, let's just perform the pit maneuver.

And, you know, take her out. Yeah. Damn. I hate to say that. We've got some good theory. Man, we really went deep on our theories today with this. All right. To add to mine. They're all viable. To add to mine. More to mine. Keep thinking. All right. So only reason I still think the union is the fact that the union people are the only ones and the reporter are the only ones that knew she had the evidence other than the lady that she met at the coffee shop last night, which she's part of the union.

And she showed all the evidence that she had to her. And that was the validation of like, yep, take her out. Yeah, because she had it with her that night and she was going to head to the hotel to go meet them to give it to the reporter. Now, how would the Atomic Commission people know or how would Kermit Gee know that she had all this information? So why would they go to the site that night to collect all that information? I'm thinking, you know, the union knew she had it.

And all of a sudden it's all missing, but hey, look at that. Kerr-McGee and the atomic people were there. They must have taken it. Now, not saying that Kerr-McGee did not have a hand in it. He probably wanted to take her out, but someone got to her first. Possible. All right, that's all I have. I don't want to, I don't think I have any more. Oh, that's good. You just keep adding to it and giving it more foundation, more base here. Yeah. All right. Does anybody got anything they want to add to this episode before we roll into on the scene?

Just kidding. No. No. All right. Well, that's the end of today's episode. Hit us up on email or social media and let us know your opinion on what do you think happened to Karen Silkwood? You know?

Alright, so now we're going to roll into On the Scene. If you're not familiar with On the Scene, it is where an individual around the world goes out into the public and gets their opinion and interviews them on current conspiracy and happenings. Anybody can be our On the Scene reporter each week. If you want to be, you just record a less than 120 second recording of you interviewing somebody on the street, asking them questions about what they think about current conspiracies.

Submit it to us via email, which you can find our email addresses at theoriesofthe3rdkind.com and click on the contact button. And just attach the audio file to the email and shoot it on over to us and we will feature you. So for this week's On The Scene, we have Aubrey, part two. If you remember her from, was it last week or the week before? The week before. Yeah. So we're going to take a listen to that right now.

This is Miss Aubrey back with her pre-K class asking them about some more conspiracy topics. My first question is, do you think that Tupac is still alive? Yes. Okay, so you think he's still alive. Where do you think that he lives? Florida. You think he lives in Florida? Do you think he lives on the Gulf Coast? Gulf Coast. Okay, thank you. Do you think that the moon landing was fake? No. No.

Okay, so you believe that we really landed on the moon. What do you think the moon is made of? Cheese. Okay, do you know what cheese? Like cheddar, pepper jack, gouda, blue cheese, any type of cheese? She's looking at me with a blank stare, so probably any type. What do you think lives in Area 51? Monsters. Anything else?

No. Okay. Thank you. That's all we have for here in Central Ohio. Thanks, guys. Tupac is still alive. Praise be. Hail Mary. And the cheese on the moon is whatever you want it to be. I like that you could hear her say, I don't know. Yeah. I don't know.

That was adorable. I absolutely love these on the scenes with her and her kids. I was not expecting Tupac to be the question. I know. No, I was not either. Dude, I was waiting for like a little kid to say, no, but I know about Biggie. That's why they call me Big Papa. I was like,

You better pass that kid. Send him to kindergarten right now. That's a player right there. Love it when they call me Big Papa, but you're only in pre-K. Who you looking at? Yeah, put your hands in the air, Miss Aubrey.

All right. Thank you for that. Awesome on the scene, Aubrey. It's always a pleasure to hear you and your children. We love you all. And we're proud of every single one of you. Yes. Much love. I love it. I love just the, the peer answers. What do you think those kids tell their parents? What'd you learn at school today? Miss Aubrey asked me what if I believed in Tupac? I hope you don't get in trouble for asking those kids. Cause you know how some parents are. Yeah, I really hope so.

Oh, I know. They're like, oh my God. Why are you teaching my kids? That is not part of the school curriculum. If somebody asked my kid that, I'd be like, did you tell them you believe? Yeah. Dab it up. That's right. Oh my God. So we're going to move on to shout outs. Dan, do you want to start us off with this week with Facebook shout outs? Yes, I got a couple. So let's see. First one goes out to Munchie K. Shout out to her and her boyfriend, Anthony. It's his first podcast that she got him into and he's, he really likes it. He's,

Pretty much binging it. And he's a huge supporter of our candidate, Bigfoot. Bigfoot24. Our next one is Hugo L. If y'all haven't gone onto Facebook and looked, he has tried DMT and he wrote down some of his experiences on there. So pretty interesting.

And he recommended us listening to an artist called Kay Reno. I don't know if you all ever heard of him. No. But a lot of his songs pretty much just go over topics that we discuss. But he supposedly has like 30 albums out. Oh, dang. So yeah, supposedly really good. Next one is Josh J. He sent me a message on Facebook saying that he witnessed a UFO about 10 to 12 years ago and would like to share it with us one day. Then the next one is to Katie L.,

She loves the critical thinking that we bring and for making it cool again. Also to Anna, she loves you and loves your mind and essence as well. Oh, thank you. I appreciate you. Then TJ from Michigan said he started listening to another podcast but wanted something different and stumbled upon ours and has been hooked ever since. So thank you for that. Then Marcus K suggested the topic of the Bisley Boys.

The conspiracy, the Queen Elizabeth I died as a child and the handmaids feared the king and decided to replace the dead princess with a boy who looked just like her. Ooh. Which, that's pretty interesting. I've never heard of that before. I have not either, but supposedly it's a thing. Then our next one is Gavin T. He joined our Patreon because he listened to everything on Spotify and he still needed more. We got plenty. So welcome to Patreon. We've got it, dude.

Yeah. Then the last one I got is Corey E. He said he listened to our Pizzagate episode and he was kind of just, I guess a little disappointed, but he pointed out that Bieber had a tweet that features his Yummy song that kind of involves Pizzagate, which I will link that to y'all right now. I remember us talking about his song Yummy.

Yeah, we talked about it, but this tweet's a little weird. Yeah, we didn't talk about tweets. He pointed out because, you know how the pizza symbol for Pizzagate? Yeah. With his yummy song, which we talked about before. But then in this tweet, there's lots of pizzas. So that was, he figured that was a reference to possibly Pizzagate with Justin Bieber.

I could see that. There's the resemblance. I mean, it's just kind of weird about the dog. Yeah. Twerking, but. Dog's ass. That's what I'd be more concerned about. Because they don't look yummy. No. That was it. That's all I have for Facebook. All right. Anna, you cool with me going real quick? Sure. All right. So a couple of shout outs on Instagram. Shout out to Ritditditdo. Hey, guys. I have a Patreon account.

And none of the podcasts are showing up. Is anyone else having this problem? And they messaged me immediately right after that and said, never mind, it's working. I was pissed. I work at a grocery store. I had two huge pallets to break down and no edibles. And Patreon was being a bitch. But never mind, I got it working. Well, thank you, RitDitDo. That seems to be a common problem. I keep getting messages from people saying that they have Patreon, but none of our episodes are showing up. So...

Also, obviously double check that your card is up to date because if it gets declined, you won't have that access either. And that seems to happen a lot too. People get new cards. You know, I had a problem like a while ago. It just wouldn't let me log on to Patreon. It kicked me off of it, but it was like, oh, your account has been suspended. I said, for what?

It's just them trying to silence us. That's right. I want to shout out to this Prism Tarot. They wrote us a message. Thank you guys so much for putting out the content that you do. I stumbled on your podcast by mistake and I've been hooked ever since. That seems to be like a common theme of people stumbling across our podcast by mistake. That's okay though, as you make happy mistakes. And that mistake was excellent. Divine guidance.

Yeah, there are no accidents. Just happy little mistakes. They go on to say y'all are absolutely awesome. Y'all are raising the vibration and dropping hell of knowledge nuggies. And I love it. And you guys, thank you. And then they said, by the way, Anna, you're my Virgo sister. And we're both on Life Cycle 11. Your spiritualism is just what the people need to hear. Never tone it down.

So shout out to that person. Thank you so much. I appreciate you. I love getting compliments that are deep like that. Those ones hit me. Yep. Thank you. All right. Shout out to Santana R. Said, love the podcast. Can you do a rundown on Freemasonry? We'll add that to the list. I'm sure it's already on the list, though. Oh, yeah.

Shout out to Kyle. Shout out to Jesus S. Good show. Keep up the good work. Have you looked into CERN? We actually just did an episode on CERN a couple months back on our Patreon. If you sign up to our Patreon, you can get that episode. It's a really good one. We go deep into CERN. Shout out to Sean. Hey guys, can I please have a shout out? I prefer to be called Blip Blop and I reside in the DMT realm.

I like what y'all are doing. See you in your sleep. And oh yeah, Aaron, please brush your teeth. Which, obviously, Sean, you don't know me too well. No. Because I brush my teeth. He's got dentures. I got dentures. No, I brush my teeth every fucking day, multiple times a day. I've got multiple different toothbrushes. So, you don't know me, son. No, I'm just kidding.

It's kind of weird to be saying brush your teeth. What are you doing? Is he giving me mouth-to-mouth in the DMT zone? Is that what I'm hearing? So McKenna said, wanted to say, Aaron, I love your voice, and thank you for the podcast this week. Ana, thank you for talking about sea spears. I just gave up seafood because of that. Love y'all. Hey, you don't have to give it up completely. I can come over there and catch them by my hand and feed them to everyone.

All right. Bianca called us a bitch and then said, just kidding for calling you guys a bitch. I heard my shout out on today's episode. Thank you. Bitch. Revenge. Shout out to Maram. Shout out to Chance and Hades. They said that they were having issues with their card and it finally worked on Patreon. Shout out to...

colon shout out to melanie jay tyson marina tori nathaniel alan dalton az and there's one that i wanted to read specifically oh uh shout out to velen and nathaniel

telling my girlfriend, hey, I've been telling my girlfriend about you guys for a while now, and once she hears our name, she'll have to start listening to make you guys start listening to make you guys more. What? I don't know. Anyways, love y'all. Hope I make you proud. You do make me proud, Nathaniel, and Velen, you need to start listening. If not, Nathaniel's going to kick you out of the house. Just kidding about that last part.

But for real, though, you better listen. All right. Got a couple more shout outs on through some emails. Just a few. Not that many. Shout out to Ryan said absolutely love the podcast. I have to say that the addition of Hans and Anna have added a great dimension to the show. I credit you for knowing when to add good talent. So thank you for expanding the show under your leadership. Not a leader, but you're welcome. I'm dying to hear an episode about MKUltra.

We got that on the list to do that in the future. Shout out to Veronica. New listeners. I just found you guys. But I have an idea for an episode. Star Children. We're going to have to add that. You guys are awesome. P.S. I know people love Anna's voice, but Aaron does it for me. You can tell me conspiracies all night long, Aaron. Grr.

Damn. It's the same for all of us. It is. It is. When we were up in Maine, he would read us our personalized bedtime stories. Yep. Mine was live action. Yeah. Shout out to Brinley for sending some great links about the bloodline of the Nephilim.

Did get a image from Daniel Hughes Said hey your show is excellent Obviously because you have a Dan in it. We're a weird species ourselves I drew this a day after listening to your podcast Let me know if you want some background art and he sent us this image that he drew which is pretty freaking cool It's like a totem. Yeah, dude. I was totally gonna send that to you guys I have it ready in the group chat right now, so I'm glad he sent it I actually have it up on my screen right now Okay, it's coming um

Brad G, you sent me an email that said recording one. So I'm actually going to send you one with me and kneecaps next week when I'm in L.A. But you never attach the recording. So good job on that. And then my last shout out this week goes to Julian S.M. He sent us a video that was him.

listening to us telling us to put your work down you know say f the man and he screamed at the man through his tools you know and i wrote him an email back said you are my damn hero you make me proud i love you and i'm proud of you so shout out to you and that's the end of my fucking shout outs this week that video amped me up watching him do that oh it was so good 100 percent

All right. Can I add two shout-outs real quick? These ones are from Discord. This is a shout-out, but not a shout-out, to JustCallMeDave. He said he wanted a shout-out, but not to be a shout-out. Sorry, Dave, there's nowhere else to put you in other than a shout-out. And the second one is Mr. G requested this one for Jessie BF. Wanted to tell her that she's amazing and she's not on the Discord anymore, but...

You know, miss her. She's amazing. And that was with love from Mr. G. Chicken and waffles. Okay. Oh, I love that. We miss you, Jesse. Yeah, we do. So Twitter, I have a lot. So I'm just going to go down the row here. We're going to start off with Rachel Shanks, John Ashford, Mr. Parbus, RNW with me, Wolfie McG, here's your shout out friend.

Mr. Sven. Sven. Sven. Here is your shout out, sir. Thank you for your patience. I appreciate you. Then we have Pippa W. AJ. Sia. Gave you a great offer there. Dan. Sia did. Or it might be C. C. Simpson. I don't know.

I'm going to need to see a dating profile. I need you to fill out this girlfriend application I have. Yeah. Yeah. You also have to be approved by the other three of us. That's right. It's very stringent. Yeah. They're very strict. It's like a leasing program. Leasing program. Yeah, because he still is with us. Yeah. This is our polygamous relationship, and we all have to approve anyone we add into it. That's right. There's nothing wrong with polygamy.

Get your fucking dick sucked. These are my husbands and I love them all. That's right. My husband and wife have to approve you. Hell yeah. I'm sorry. All right. Bell with a rose. You know who you are. Garth Crosby. Wake up. Well, not you. Wake up, Garth. That's the next person's name. Jay Hood. Chris C. And Alex Mendoza. Those are my Twitter shoutouts.

As far as emails go, I have, you know, Brenly as well, Bebop, Rome. I had a really big smile by Craig B. I just got an email, probably one of my favorite emails. He just literally messaged me and said, be blessed, bitch, with a heart emoji. And I just said, I wish I got more messages like this.

And then he wrote me back with a joke. What did the yogi say to their alarm clock in the morning? Namaste in bed. That's a good one. I really did like it, actually. You know me, I love my dad jokes. So then I'm going to shout out Ryan Moore, our godmother. I appreciate all the links you're sending.

And honestly, I'm super busy, so I don't really have a lot of time to do side digs unless it's like other things in my personal life. So definitely continue to send them. And as I have time, I'll dig into them. But just so you know, I'm not ignoring your messages. Just a lot to dig into. Aaron, she has a message for me to give to you. What is it?

She's like, tell Aaron that brake fluid is actually ether, which is used in the process of manufacturing methamphetamine. It is used to clean the contaminants out of the pseudoephedrine pills. That's why that guy was buying all that brake fluid. Okay. Oh, when he looked at the store, he would come in there by the box. That skinny dude. Oh. When he was just like, just talking about him. I got you. That makes sense. Okay. I was wondering why she was saying that. I'm just like, hmm, that makes sense now.

So it's like, dang, Aaron trying to make some meth over here. No, fuck, no I'm not. I know a dude. Hey, remember, I think it was the Taco Bell in Zaird that got busted because it had a meth lab underneath of it, Aaron? Are you trying to buy that place out? I'm so addicted to these fucking chalupas. Man, Taco Bell's so good. I'm losing weight. God.

And then my last shout-out that I have goes to Ben Reynolds. He referred me some Gaia links, because I talked about watching some stuff on Gaia, which I love that program. Thank you, Rabbit, for letting me use it, because it definitely is great, especially for the topics we go over. They're like the woke. They're almost like the bitch shoot of Netflix.

You know, they post the things that people really want to be listening to, like alien stuff, conspiracy things. You want to learn more about Atlantis or Nephilim, um, giants, Gaia is where to go. This is not an ad for Gaia, but if you want to, I'm just kidding. This is not an ad for Gaia. But yeah, shout out to Rabbit also for seeing a UFO possibly today, last night.

jealous i've been asking them to show up for me and they just don't they said bitch we coming for you if you ask us to coming to show ourselves we're gonna take you back home nice all right hans what do you got for shout outs well i'm gonna hop on here i had like a couple people send me some things um shout out to a murphy on the discord you know uh she commented on our uh

I think it's, yeah, the predictions episode. He just wanted us to know that we did a good job. You know, we try. We try our best. Shout out to Young Agumon, Slickers. Next shout out is a special one. This shout out goes to somebody from the Discord, the Aussie with the big clit, a.k.a. Miss Minx.

Love the tattoos. Love it all. It's just so gosh darn amazing. We've had some good conversations, and here's your specialized shout-out that you requested, my dear. Hell yeah. I love the boldness of the name that you want to be known by. Own it, sister. Yep.

All right. Well, that's the end of the show today. I want to thank you all for joining us. And again, thank you for all your support. You're amazing. Every single one of you. So with that being said, Hans, Anna, and Dan, you want to roll us out? Yeah. It's okay to be out of this world with your thoughts. Because you're not alone. Boom.