Doomed Expeditions – Part 2

21 Responses

1. Hey Gang!

   Awesome, fun episode. Poor cat!

   btw- Seals are a last resort for Arctic/Antarctic survival because a lot of them have flesh that is highly poisonous; ditto Polar Bears and Walrus. A lot of Seals contain levels of Vitamin A which causes toxic shock in humans…

   1. Vitamin A concentrates in predators’ livers. Don’t eat the liver and you’ll be fine.

      Retinol

2. You know, I think we might have mentioned that in a previous episode. Food, maybe? I’ve lost track.

3. Kevin, you silly man, the Fountain was a fabulous movie. 😉 The interweaving storyline was about a doctor who was trying to cure his wife’s cancer, and made -that- the focus of his life, rather than just spending what time they had left together.

   So the story is basically, “if you waste your life rushing after immortality, well, you’ve wasted your life.” This is, of course, the X-TREEEMâ„¢ cliff notes version. I’d go into more symbolism (and there’s tons), but yadda yadda, this is the intarwebs, no one cares. 😉

4. Joe, you seemed to think that a walrus was no match for a man with a gun – aren’t those things up to several tons in weight? I would expect you’d need to go through a lot of lead to kill one of those things.

   I loved the dog name too, Toren: Mr Coat. 🙂

   Finally, I thought I’d mention another lovely place name in Australia to go with Mt Hopeless is Mt Despair in Queensland (North Eastern Australia) and the township of Despair, also in Queensland, on the Prince of Wales island off the tip of Cape York (tall pointy bit of Australia). I thought there was a Lake Despair, West of Alice Springs where I grew up, but Google Maps couldn’t find it for me.

   I’m not sure you’ve heard of Lassetter either – bit of a doomed expedition, but I guess a lot is not known about it. He was an explorer in Central Australia, back in the day, and came back in once claiming to have found a “reef of gold”. He went back out again looking for it and never came back and noone has ever found him or the reef.

   Finally, I watched a not-bad British-made telemovie a few months ago called “The Deep” with James Nesbitt and Minnie Driver in it which was about a doomed expedition to look for new forms of life under the Arctic ice in a whizzy submarine, following another failed expedition that had claimed (or had it?!) the wife of one of the explorers. Was it an alien life force that claimed them, or Russians hungry to drill oil from the seabed?! It was quite good, I thought. 7/10.

   Finally, finally, there was the film Sunshine, of course, with an expedition flying to the sun to reignite it (lol). I quite liked the film despite it’s ridiculous premise.

   Keep up the great work. 🙂

5. Sorry, forgot to ask what the guy did to the monkeys in the movie you mentioned – you didn’t actually say.

   KTHXBAI!

   1. Aguirre, Wrath of God – watch it, it’s good and crazy.
      He didn’t really do much to the monkeys, it was just unexpected and surreal.

   2. Oh, sorry. I’ve found a Youtube video of the best bit. Mostly he’s doing this crazy rant on the raft and just wandering around as they move from corner to corner.

      Then the included video happens. I have to guess it was just a spur-of-the-moment improvisation.

6. Here’s some Shackleton footage, as promised:

7. i was expecting to hear about Fawcett’s expedition(s) for El Dorado. after reading “lost city of Z” i was sure that was a shoo-in for doomed expedition, after all, it doesn’t exist.

   1. It was on the short list, but since there wasn’t much information beyond “they left and never came back”, we skipped it.

8. This comment should have gone up for the last episode so if someone else posted it I apologize (I’m too tired/lazy to check right now).

   Scientific American ran an article and complementary podcast on the Antarctic expedition mentioned in the your last episode. I recommend both as the cover slightly different material.

   http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode.cfm?id=dying-for-science-the-hundredth-ann-11-05-26

   Also, seriously, a sphere is not a polyhedron. Keep up the good work guys, I love these! 🙂

   1. I realized that after I said it, but it was too late to go back. I should have said “geometric shapes” I guess.

9. The Abyss – more a rescue than expedition.

   Undersea oil rig gets conscripted to help rescue a downed sub. Navy Seal in charge goes batshit, tries to nuke aliens that downed the sub. Hero fella uses pink lung water to go turn nuke off, save aliens. Space aliens save everybody.

   FX precursor to T-1000 in Terminator 2.

   1. Based on an Orson Scott Card book too. Not bad but a bit lengthy.

10. There’s another movie about the Lope de Aguirre’s expedition, although way more conventional than the one made by Herzog:

    http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0095053/

11. Fictional doomed expedition: Star Trek Voyager. Reconaisance/retrieval mission into the Badlands winds up with an Intrepid Class Federation Starship stranded in the Delta Quadrant with some so-so actors with some poorly realized character concepts where one of the most compelling characters is an appliance. (Doomed in more than one way 😉 )
    The ship gets destroyed at least twice only to have reset buttons or surprise endings via…space stuff. Is one of the few doomed expeditions where the Captain does and does not die in the process of getting the crew home, more than once!. (huh, a nosebleed… weird.)

    Oh, and that movie with Anthony Hopkins and Baldwin where they get knocked outta the sky by birds and get hunted by a bear while Baldwin tries to murder Hopkins. I remember it because of one of Hopkins’ lines something like: ‘Do you know what kills men lost in the wild? not hunger or the elements… it’s shame. shame is what really kills them.’

12. Shackleton’s stowaway was Perce Blackborow. The link has a picture of him with Mrs. Chippy.

13. A blast from the past: Tasting Shackleton’s Whisky

14. Great show guys!
    I’ve finally *almost* made it through the backlog! An excellent song to do with expeditions in general is “Northwest Passage” by Stan Rodgers. It’s all about him wanting to retrace the steps of the great explorers, and is just steeped in Canadiany goodness.
    Keep up the good work guys!

15. Follow up on Into the Wild: http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/how-chris-mccandless-died.