Premium Episode 239: The Key Bridge Collapse (Sample)
Nowadays, when a horrific tragedy occurs, you can pretty much guarantee that conspiracy theorists will flood the channels with wild narratives and flat-out disinformation. This week, we’re breaking down the various theories surrounding the collapse of the Key Bridge, including a completely AI generated 911 call. Later in the episode, Jake finds a conspiracy theory influencer with such a funny name, he just had to do a story starring him.
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Music by Pontus Berghe, Nick Sena, and Jake Rockatansky. Editing by Corey Klotz.
https://qanonanonymous.com
Welcome, listener, to Premium Chapter 239 of the QAA podcast, the Key Bridge Collapse episode.
As always, we are your hosts, Jake Rakitansky, Julian Fields, and Travis View.
In the dark early morning of March 26, the MV Dolly, a 948-foot container ship registered in Singapore, struck the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, Maryland.
The collision caused significant sections of the bridge to break apart and plunge into the Patapsco River below.
This disaster prompted a large-scale search and rescue operation as several vehicles fell into the chilly waters.
Two people were rescued from the river.
One had no injuries, while the other was transported to a hospital in critical condition.
Six members of a maintenance crew working on the roadway died in the incident.
The dispatch calls from the Maryland Transportation Authority Police show just how close the Key Bridge collapse came to being an even worse disaster.
The MTA only had a few minutes to shut down the highway as a massive container ship barreled towards the bridge.
One of you guys on the south side, one of you guys on the north side, hold all traffic on the Key Bridge.
There's a ship approaching that just lost their steering.
So until you get that under control, we gotta stop all traffic.
We're on the route to the south side.
I'm holding traffic now.
I was dragging but we stopped prior to the bridge, so I'll have all out of the traffic stopped.
10-4.
Is there a crew work on the bridge right now?
10-9-1.
Do you want me to stop traffic on that site right now?
Yeah, if we can stop traffic, just make sure no one's on the bridge right now.
I'm not sure where Uh, there's a crew out there.
You might want to notify whoever the foreman is, see if we can get them off the bridge temporarily.
The MV Dolly, which is operated by the Synergy Marine Group and owned by Grace Ocean Private Limited, was en route from the port of Baltimore to Colombo, Sri Lanka when it suffered a complete blackout, causing it to drift out of the shipping channel.
Despite the crew's efforts to control the vessel and a mayday call being made, the ship struck the bridge's southwest pier of the Central Trust arch span at approximately 128 AM.
Leading to the rapid collapse of several spans.
According to some reports, the bridge, completed in 1977 and designed to accommodate the shipping needs of the time, did not have the modern protection systems that newer bridges are equipped with, such as enhanced fender systems or island barriers.
This vulnerability, coupled with the dolly's large size and the absence of redundancy in the bridge's design, contributed to the scale of the disaster.
According to a New York Times report, one ballpark estimate of the amount of force exerted by the dolly when it struck the bridge is 142 million newtons.
By comparison, the amount of force exerted by Saturn V, the rocket that first took man to the moon, was 35 million newtons at ignition.
The collapse not only resulted in immediate human tragedy, but also severely impacted the region's infrastructure and economy.
Approximately $80 billion worth of cargo passes through the ports of Baltimore annually.
As a consequence of the collapse, shippers were forced to reroute cargo to other ports.
Now, what is the cause of the total power and propulsion failure of the cargo ship Dolly?
The truth is that no one can say for certain at the moment.
The National Transportation Safety Board is still in the beginning stages of its investigation into the crash, but officials confirmed at a press briefing that they would look into whether watered-down or contaminated fuel played a role in the ship's total system loss.
But until we get more details about what precisely caused the disaster, we are left with an information void.
And where there's an information void, there are conspiracy theories and misinformation that is, you know, not supported by the evidence.
It's so messed up that, like, even just when anything like this happens, like, horrible accident or, you know, massive, you know, infrastructure destruction, we just know now.
Like, we know, oh, well, of course there's gonna be conspiracy theories about, like, an accident can no longer be an accident.
And it would be surprising if, you know, if this happened and there weren't swirling conspiracy theories around it nowadays.
It's just, it's pretty discouraging.
Oh, yeah, they've been obsessed with this on our conspiracy and just in general.
I mean, it did not help that people were tweeting about all kinds of stuff very rapidly.
Some of them, you know, having served deep in the government where they would, I guess, find out better information or know better than to do this, but of course not.
Well, I mean, it's because it's very, very easy to speculate and make things up.
It's very, very hard to Get an accurate assessment of what happened.
It isn't like this.
It takes time and investigation and analysis to get a complete picture.
Whereas making shit up, you can just do that immediately at your keyboard.
Yeah.
But you'd think that there'd be like a slight difference between someone who served in the DOD or the army and Andrew Tate.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, I don't know.
Michael Flynn had a long career in the army and that does not prevent him from being a conspiracist loon.
Exactly.
It's like when Teddy is sitting at the window and a human walks by across the street.
He doesn't even take a second to pause to see if, you know, there's another dog with that human.
He just starts barking and that's what all the conspiracy theorists have done.
They don't even take a breath to offer condolences to the families of the victims or, you know, all of the people in the area who are affected by this horrific accident.
But he, Teddy does believe that there is a sweeping conspiracy that other dogs do walk by our window.
And Teddy did take the QAnon pledge.
Yeah, he is eyeing a VP pick.
Now this tragic incident gave us an example of AI-generated misinformation, which I'm sure we're going to see a lot more of in the coming rest of our lives.
Oh, based on last episode, the fact that I re-listened after it all and still thought, that sounds like me speaking.
Um, I am, I'm, I'm really not, uh, yeah, I don't have the most rosy outlook on that.
Mere hours after the bridge collapse, a minute-long video was posted to TikTok.
It just contained a still image of the bridge and the ship.
However, the audio is supposed to be a 9-1-1 call between someone who fell into the water after the collapse and a 9-1-1 dispatcher.
However, it is totally fake and AI generated.
And there are lots of clues that's fake and AI generated.
Number one is the awkward, inconsistent tone of the person making the call.
There's also the panicked and unprofessional demeanor of the 9-1-1 dispatcher.
In every 9-1-1 call I've ever heard, the 9-1-1 dispatcher is always very businesslike and calm.
There's also the fact that there's no reason to believe that this call would be public in the first place.
I mean, you can make a FOIA request for a 9-1-1 call recording, but that information usually takes a couple weeks to get released at minimum.
There's no way it would be released in hours.
That's not a thing that happened in the early morning.
There are more clues it's fake, but just listen to this and bear in mind that this video got 360,000 likes.
9-1-1, what's your emergency?
Hello?
Oh my God!
Please help me.
What?
What's happening?
I'm underwater.
I'm drowning.
I'm so scared.
What?
My car is sinking.
Okay.
Where are you?
I'm under the Baltimore Key Bridge.
The bridge collapsed while I was driving.
What?
What do you mean the bridge collapsed?
I don't know.
It was like something hit it.
My car is filling up fast with water.
Help me!
Now please help me!
Listen to me very carefully.
You need to try and open the door or break a window to get out.
Can you do that?
*The door, it won't budge. It's jammed or something. I'm gonna try the window. Uh, broke the window. Water's rushing
in faster now.* *Excellent, keep talking to me. Tell me when you're out of
the car.* *Okay, I swear I'm out. I'm holding on to a piece of the
bridge. Oh my god, the bridge is destroyed. He is gone.* *Oh my god, you're right. I see it on the news. Okay, hold
on tight. I send the signal. The help is on the way.* *Okay, thank you so much.*
I sent a signal.
I am holding on to Piece of Bridge.
Leonardo DiCaprio is rapidly sinking.
There is no space for him on Piece of Bridge.
This is insane.
Oh my gosh, I see all the noobs.
The fact that you're drowning in water while making a phone call, that's a funny image.
It's like they didn't even write a script for the AI.
They were just like, you come up with it.
Yeah, chat GPT, guy sinking under bridge and car.
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