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A Mushroom Cloud Over Small Town America | Adam B. | Ep. 441
08 Apr 2026
Chapter 1: What is discussed at the start of this section?
Okay, got the red smoke. Gun runs north and south, west of the smoke, west of the smoke. Okay, copy, west of the smoke. I'm looking at danger close now. Come on, win it, baby, give it to me, I need it. Yeah, it's just a straight up conversation. Any particular place that you would feel more comfortable starting?
Maybe open with what you were saying about how you want to be very clear that perhaps you're not the PAO or spokesman for your organization. Into the mic though. Maybe start with that. Yeah, we're good to go? We're already going. All right. Well, just to be clear, you know, I'm not the spokesman for my agency. Anything I say, obviously, it doesn't represent, you know, my agency.
But, you know, I do have my own opinions on a lot of things, so. Yeah. How big is your agency? It's small. I work for a small agency. You know, I worked for a couple big agencies. My friend Rob that you met, him and I worked at the same time for a pretty good agency. Where'd you go through the academy? Cleveland Heights, east side of Cleveland. Okay.
Which, that actual department, it's pretty big, very busy. Quite a bit of crime, but it's run really well. So I went there. Pull that mic with you. Yeah. You don't have to leave for it. Don't apologize. As you go, just pull the thing with you. Just try to keep it about a fist away. Yeah, you got it. We're going to get there together. I hope so.
Chapter 2: How did Adam B. transition from military to law enforcement?
Or maybe we won't. It's hard to say. Yeah. It's a brave new world. That's funny. So yeah, that's a bigger agency. And I went to the Academy there. And then I relocated down near Canton, City of Alliance, that area. Why'd you guys decide to move? So I was actually single at the time. One of my actually, my military buddies lived down there and he asked me to, you know, move down.
You were military before or just a military buddy? I was army. Okay. What year were you in the army? I was active duty was 2007 to 2000, I guess 11. I did the tanks. I was a tanker. What part of the tank? Abrams. So actually when I was active, I was a driver, loader. Yes. Yeah. And I was a gunner for just a little bit, but I ended up being a gunner in the National Guard afterwards.
What's the best role in an Abrams? Where's the best seat? Most comfortable seat would definitely be the driver's seat. Michael, this is actually worth looking at. Pull up the interior of an Abrams. Have you ever seen the inside of a tank? Oh, it's incredible. Michael? No. Okay. Standby. Your mind's about to be blown.
Actually, I was going to ask you before you pulled up the image, what position do you think the driver is in? Because they're pretty laid back. So you're pretty familiar. Yeah. Okay, cool. Oh, they've helped me up there before. Oh, they're sweet. Yeah. Today's episode is brought to you by me, Andy. Yes, today I get to do an ad read for something for myself. And here it is. I wrote a book.
It's called Drown Proof. It comes out. six days from when this episode releases. And I am trying to do everything possible to make this book successful. Not because I care about any of the lists or a monetary gain that could come from that, but a lot of people put their name on this book with me and a lot of people have supported me behind the scenes.
And I want to do everything that I possibly can to make it successful. Now, I said I don't care about the lists, and those are true. The one list, though, that seems to be the most prestigious is the one that I'm the most unlikely to make because they feel that I do not align with them from a politics or moral perspective. And that is The New York Times. It is not a sales list.
It is an editorial list. So they get to pick. And the only way that I have a chance at it is to be undeniable. How do you become undeniable for them? you sell enough copies that they can't ignore you. And when it comes to that list, hardcovers like this one right here are what they count the most of.
So I would humbly ask, if you have gotten anything out of this podcast since its inception, please do me a favor. Head over to Amazon or Barnes & Noble, whatever it may be, and pick up a hard copy. Every pre-sale counts plus the first week after the book comes out. And that is all that I can ask. I hope this book is meaningful. I hope that it's helpful.
And I hope it finds its way into as many people's hands as possible. For those of you who economically can't make a purchase right now, I totally understand. Please do me a favor and help me spread the word. The goal is to be undeniable. I want to force them to put me on that list. Back to the show. Yeah, so that's the driver right there.
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Chapter 3: What experiences shaped Adam's views on domestic violence?
Hit the image on the right, Michael. See if you can make it bigger. So that's actually the hatch. No, not that one. So that's the tank commander. On the right. I meant on the far right of the screen. Hit that one. Now go far right. See if you, yeah, visit. Okay. So it looks like the hatch is actually open. Okay. So he can like lift his seat up and kind of sit out, you know.
But if it's closed, what is he looking through? So when it closes, there's like. It's sitting to the side. See that little switch on the right? If you go to the right there, that little, like, handle? Yep. So that, like, pivots, and it shuts the hatch up top. Okay. And then you pull it down and seal it, and there's, like, little periscopes that you actually look through. I mean, it's incredible.
How about at nighttime?
uh what's that called dvr the so you're looking at a screen yeah so you put like this little night vision screen in there that's incredible i mean what kind of gauges we got on the left are we looking at tachometers speedometers um what is the top end speed on that i think it's 42 well i think it goes to like 60 but it's like a driver's goal to max one of those things out okay um you're not a tank driver until you do that but i think it's 42 is the max speed
What? Okay. So, and your job is legit straight driving. I was a driver. Yeah. It's a Colonel's driver. And, Michael, see if you can find a schematic, like an overhead image of all the seats in an A bracket. Because how many people are in there? Four. Four people. Okay, so you got driver. Who else you got? So the driver's, you know, by himself down there. Front left?
If you're looking at... Front center. Okay. Front center. He's in the turret. Or, I'm sorry, in the hull of the tank. Okay. Then you have the turret. You got the tank commander. You have the loader. And you have the gunner. Okay. Loader is probably what it sounds like. Loading the shells. Yeah. I mean, it's a job. Yeah. Yeah. You got to... I mean... It's just crazy.
You've never been in one of these tanks. Yeah.
So, okay.
Yeah, that little on the center of the bottom screen, the bottom tank. Yep. Go down just a little bit. That seat right there is where the loader sits. Gotcha. He'll pull his rounds out. Excuse me. He'll pull his rounds out from the right, put them in the main gun. Um, what do we do with the brass? Isn't there, it's a large shell casing, isn't it? Oh yeah. It's about 120.
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Chapter 4: What happened during the East Palestine train derailment response?
Yeah. I think, and that doesn't bother me. What starts to irritate me a little bit and then I kind of just let go of it is when people refuse to acknowledge anything that is actually going well or like you said. Absolutely.
Yeah.
no, this country has a history of fill in the blank. And so therefore everything about it sucks. It's like, yeah, everything, everything sucks. You have been places. Sometimes I just want to look at people and just call the balls and strikes, but like, Hey, we're doing amazing things here, but also over here, we're an absolute train wreck. We should probably dedicate some time there. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. One of the things in my family that kind of plagues us, I would say more with my, my wife's family is, you know, obviously politics, but And sometimes, you know, I get frustrated because I think like where I came from, you know, where I've been in the world and like I see people out there who are really struggling, like really. I know that feeling.
And somebody might complain because I don't know, they got they're late to work or, you know, this or that or the coffee's not hot enough. And sometimes I just want to stop and just. you know, go off the deep end on them, but I don't know.
I, do you think it helps you as a police officer in with the context and empathy that you probably can have when you see other people that are just, yeah, there's, I have run into, I'm very good friends with a lot of law enforcement officers and you'd be hard pressed to find somebody more supportive than law enforcement than myself. But I'm also honest about some of the the patterns that I see.
And one of the patterns that I see is that because of the, we'll call them population groups that officers often deal with, deal with and the nature of repeat customers. I'm not here to sugarcoat things. Yeah. But absolutely.
What they end up, it seems like, and this is an outside perspective, I've never walked a foot in anybody else's shoes, but it jades them towards almost all of society because of the amount of time that they spend in that. And that also, I think, can be very dangerous as well. Absolutely. My friend Rob that you met, we met on the SWAT team together and
He was a Marine, and him and I have a lot of the same opinions on these things. I noticed that cops that are veterans, especially combat vets, you know, in the combat arms mostly, you know,
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Chapter 5: What challenges did Adam face during the chemical release in East Palestine?
Don't wear protective equipment because it might scare others. Yeah. And I don't think they wanted pictures of troops and masks and yeah. So right away I was like, geez, um, so that sucks. Um, so we had gone there and we were kind of stationed around the town with police, local police or, you know, sheriff's highway patrol. You guys just working essentially a perimeter. A perimeter. Yeah.
Um, actually at one point I was pretty deep into the town. Um,
i remember people would it's almost like they snuck in you know and they'd be like hey my dog's in there like can i get my dog like dude go get your dog like you're a grown man yeah go get your dog you know go get what you need i'm not here to you know trample on anybody's rights like yeah yeah but anyway so i think after the second day or i can't quite remember they made that decision to release these chemicals and that list of chemicals i sent you like
From what I was told, only about half of those came out to the public. I can't confirm that or not, but some of those chemicals were used, I think, in World War I as, like, some kind of, like, chemical agents or something. How did they release them? Like, what's the mechanism to do that?
Chapter 6: How did the chemical exposure affect Adam's health?
I think they had explosives. I think that blew holes into the train. I can't quite... So somebody went up, if they used that, somebody, either a robot or somebody had to go up and implant those. Oh, absolutely, yeah. Holy cow. Yeah, yeah. So... As they made this decision to release these chemicals, there was probably like 20 policemen and 20 guardsmen standing maybe 200 yards from this site.
And I actually drove, I got lost at one point, and we drove right next to these trains before it was released. I think I sent you that video too, of the train wreck right here. And we're like, what the heck? Because we weren't allowed to be there, so we were kind of scared. We turned around anyway. How far had they told you to stay away from it?
They never really told us how far to stay away from it.
Chapter 7: What are the long-term implications for the East Palestine residents?
They made it clear that this was not good. Okay. So anyway, we're about 200 yards right before they make this decision to release. We got all these policemen and these guardsmen standing there, and we weren't ready. Like, we thought it would be a little longer before they actually released it. Next thing you know, we watch this mushroom cloud just go up in the sky of this black smoke.
And this mushroom cloud, I mean, it looks like just thinking about it, seeing pictures of it. It's like, find this mushroom cloud. If you can, Michael, I sent some good pictures from my personal phone too. If you have, you can airdrop into him as well too. Yeah. I mean, it was awful. Um, find them in the airdrop.
I mean, if you can, cause we can pull people, see, we'll help paint the visual picture. Yeah. Let me turn this back on when they released them. I mean, are we talking like fireball mushroom cloud? Um, so, Oh, Michael, go to the second video on the right. Yeah. Like a mushroom cloud of Ohio trade derailment explosion sparks the start of controlled. Okay. Perfect. Yeah. See the explosion. Okay.
So that was not accidental. This was a controlled. Oh yeah. Control explosion. Um, I wonder if you can see where we are at this point.
Chapter 8: How does Adam view accountability from the train company?
Um, Yeah, I don't know if you can see. Yeah, there you go. There's the black mushroom cloud you're talking about. So I watched this happen live from maybe a couple hundred yards out. Look at that thing working towards the trees on the left-hand side. Holy cow. So, I mean, imagine seeing this with your naked eyes like in front of you. So we see this, right?
30 seconds later, we get this, just this taste of chemicals. And the only thing I can really compare it to Do you remember being a kid, did you ever put a quarter in your mouth or something? Yeah, did you ever look at 9-volt? Yeah, right. Michael, have you ever looked at 9-volt battery? Yeah, actually, that's pretty good. I just want to make sure that children are still the same.
We have no respect for warnings or reasonability of any kind. I'm glad to see that your generation hasn't evolved past my own. I'll be honest with you, I don't know how to airdrop. That's all right. Actually, I mean, we found, I think, probably an even better example of that. Yeah. Who owned this train? North Folk Southern. So this is a private company. Yes, a very, very large private company.
Transporting chemicals, obviously. Through, yeah. Where was the destination for this? I mean, I know some chemicals obviously in combination, yeah, they can become really dangerous. And of course, nobody ever expects this to happen. But this is like a normal thing. This wasn't like some DOD assigned train taken. Yeah, this was just a private company transporting these chemicals.
Did they set the explosions? I believe the train company hired contractors or whoever to detonate this. But I've also heard, and like I said, I don't want to like, I wouldn't say this unless I had some pretty good sources, but like I heard things like, They did it without telling the city or, you know, without coming to an agreement. Yeah. And so, again, what were they butting up against?
They thought it was going to explode anyway. Yeah. So it was better to have it be a controlled debt instead of a catastrophic, which is fair if that's really the case. Well, that's also assuming, though, that your controlled debt nation doesn't expand accidentally to an uncontrolled one. I mean. Absolutely. I have. a little bit more experience with explosives than most people.
It's an art form more than a science. Yeah. It's crazy. Just looking at it. I mean, it's that mushroom crab was unbelievable. Oh yeah. So, so we watched this cloud go up, right. And then we get this taste and they had told us basically the hold the line there. Yeah. So I'm assuming you guys had to have been downwind.
Oh, I mean, I don't think it mattered at that point because it was going everywhere. It went everywhere. Yeah. Um, so we get this taste and I remember like, it's like putting a, we're looking at a nine volt battery. Um, and everybody at the same time was like, you know, um, you got this taste and your eyes started to burn, your skin was burning. Um, And somebody made the decision.
I think it was a trooper, like, we're not staying here. We're leaving. Because they had told us to kind of hold that line. Yeah, it might already be too late, though, man. Yeah. So... And were you still operating in a National Guard capacity? National Guard, yeah. Okay. Because this was 20... 23? But you were co-located with law enforcement? Yeah, it was like a joint mutual aid kind of thing.
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