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How BASE Jumping Works · Stuff You Should Know

0:00
Speaker 1: Welcome to you stuff you should know fromhouse stuff Works
0:04
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
0:13
Speaker 1: There's Charles Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry. We are dancing on
0:16
Speaker 1: the ceiling. Whoa, what a feeling. That song holds up
0:21
Speaker 1: by the way, I heard it recently. Oh yeah, why
0:24
Speaker 1: don't Richie holds up? Man? Yeah, sure, that's the Commodore's
0:29
Speaker 1: great stuff, great great stuff. I think like two of
0:32
Speaker 1: the most underrated bands of the seventies were earth Wind
0:35
Speaker 1: and Fire in the commod Wars, Gareth Wind and Fire
0:39
Speaker 1: was underrated. They were super well group underrated as far
0:44
Speaker 1: as like today, Like, I don't know, you don't hear
0:46
Speaker 1: a lot about that kind of thing. It's all like
0:49
Speaker 1: about the big rock bands. Yeah, oh you mean like
0:52
Speaker 1: bad Finger and Foreigner and yeah, is that what you mean? Yeah,
0:58
Speaker 1: maybe they weren't underrated. How about this, Two of the
1:00
Speaker 1: best bands from the seventies were the Commodores and earth
1:04
Speaker 1: Winn and Fire. I agree, Man rated it just perfectly.
1:07
Speaker 1: I've said well, and I don't mean to be argumentative.
1:11
Speaker 1: I mean I've said that before, Like I wonder if
1:13
Speaker 1: earth Win and Fire is possibly the greatest band that's
1:15
Speaker 1: ever been. They're pretty amazing. They are amazing, and the
1:19
Speaker 1: different sounds that they took on like it was never
1:22
Speaker 1: just like you know, we hit it and we're gonna
1:25
Speaker 1: stick with it. They were not like a C d
1:26
Speaker 1: C in in other words, and a C d C
1:29
Speaker 1: is great. Man, they got their thing, but they figured
1:31
Speaker 1: it out from song one and they're still doing it today.
1:34
Speaker 1: Simple rock riff played over and over and over. Yeah,
1:38
Speaker 1: but it works for him. Earth Win and fire Man
1:40
Speaker 1: they tried it all. Yeah, and please don't write in
1:43
Speaker 1: about the complexity of a C d C. I love
1:45
Speaker 1: a C d C. But they will even admit that
1:48
Speaker 1: they do one thing well, yeah, which is rock. Yeah,
1:52
Speaker 1: it's a blues riff. I used to think they were
1:54
Speaker 1: heavy metal when I was a kid, which is very
1:56
Speaker 1: funny to think about. Yeah, you know, for seving metal
1:58
Speaker 1: it at all? Who was? I always here Black Sabbath,
2:02
Speaker 1: but I suspect it goes back before that. Sabbath is
2:05
Speaker 1: usually kind of counted as the first, but it's all
2:08
Speaker 1: sort of variations of the blues still, right, you know,
2:12
Speaker 1: all comes down to the blues. That's right now. Nobody
2:16
Speaker 1: live here without singing the blues. Can you name that movie?
2:20
Speaker 1: Is it Crossroads? You would think, no, it's the opposite
2:24
Speaker 1: movie of Crossroads, Adventures in Babysitting. That's the opposite of
2:28
Speaker 1: a cross road. That's funny. Yeah, I remember that part.
2:32
Speaker 1: Uh So, bass jumping has nothing to do with the
2:35
Speaker 1: Blues unless you die, right, unless you're one of the
2:39
Speaker 1: base jumping fatality and one of the dudes, which I
2:42
Speaker 1: will touch on later wrote on a big base jumper
2:45
Speaker 1: wrote an article like like how to Get Started tom Allo,
2:50
Speaker 1: and one of his frightening things he says this, if
2:54
Speaker 1: you are not ready to die base jumping, then you're
2:56
Speaker 1: not ready to basse jump. Yeah. I ran across that
3:00
Speaker 1: on a sentiment too, um, like, the dangers are so
3:05
Speaker 1: vast that you can anticipate being injured almost certainly at
3:11
Speaker 1: some point if you do a lot of base jumping.
3:14
Speaker 1: That's right, That's absolutely true. I mean like it's pretty
3:17
Speaker 1: much the next step in danger is to just jump
3:20
Speaker 1: off a cliff without any parachute at all. Yeah, And
3:23
Speaker 1: I think one of the that's if you, like, I
3:26
Speaker 1: don't think a lot of people base jump once. Then
3:28
Speaker 1: they're like that was kind of neat, yawn like it
3:32
Speaker 1: kind of because it's your like it becomes one of
3:34
Speaker 1: your driving forces in your life. Base jumpers are all in. Yeah,
3:39
Speaker 1: that's the best way to say it. Um, And I
3:42
Speaker 1: remember kind of like came up in the nineties, wasn't it.
3:45
Speaker 1: It was like it became a big deal in the nineties.
3:48
Speaker 1: That's when I became aware of it. But it's it's
3:51
Speaker 1: way older than that. Well, it's a couple of decades older.
3:54
Speaker 1: It's about a decade older than the nineties. It's from
3:57
Speaker 1: the late seventies. I guess it's another way to put it. Well,
4:00
Speaker 1: before we get into history, let's at least say what
4:02
Speaker 1: base jumping is, because some people might live under a
4:05
Speaker 1: rock and they don't know what base jumping is. It's
4:07
Speaker 1: actually an acronym. It is was it stand for uh.
4:11
Speaker 1: It stands for buildings, antenna's spans, a K bridges, and
4:18
Speaker 1: earth a K cliffs. Buildings are probably quite a rush
4:24
Speaker 1: to jump off of, but they're tough to get in
4:27
Speaker 1: and you're most certainly doing something illegal. Yeah, you're there's
4:31
Speaker 1: pretty much not a building in existence you're legally allowed
4:33
Speaker 1: to jump off of. No, unless you have a special arrangement.
4:37
Speaker 1: I'm sure you've lined the mayor's pockets with cash. Yeah,
4:41
Speaker 1: or if you're doing you know, imagine some of like
4:43
Speaker 1: the Red Bull team arranges for a famous jump and
4:47
Speaker 1: Red Bull lines the mayor's pockets there you go. Uh.
4:51
Speaker 1: Antennas are super popular, um because they're not as heavily guarded,
4:56
Speaker 1: but they're still really tall and usually out in the
4:58
Speaker 1: middle of nowhere. Right. That's very feeling less risky, um,
5:02
Speaker 1: not death, but less for being caught, right and for
5:05
Speaker 1: um causing injury to other people, which is a big
5:08
Speaker 1: thing with buildings. Yeah. Yeah, antennas. It's like you're gonna
5:11
Speaker 1: injure a cow that you run into. You know who
5:14
Speaker 1: cares uh spans Uh. These are very popular, not only
5:20
Speaker 1: because it's fun and gorgeous to leap off of a
5:23
Speaker 1: bridge like the New River Gorge Bridge in West Virginia.
5:27
Speaker 1: Doing that connects this podcast to bridges, um, but because
5:33
Speaker 1: sometimes it is legal, like the one day of the
5:36
Speaker 1: year that they have bridge Day there. Yeah. Um, there's
5:39
Speaker 1: also one in Idaho where it's legal year round. Oh
5:43
Speaker 1: really with that without a permit you can just go
5:45
Speaker 1: and jump. There was actually a fatality there, Like guy said,
5:48
Speaker 1: his parachute on fire is part of a stunt and
5:50
Speaker 1: oh I pulled that article. That was just a few
5:53
Speaker 1: weeks ago. Was it that recent? It was in late May.
5:57
Speaker 1: I had the impression it was a couple of years
5:59
Speaker 1: back or whatever. He said his parachute on fire and died. Yeah,
6:02
Speaker 1: it's seventy three year old, guys, right, yeah, yeah, yeah,
6:05
Speaker 1: unless it was just a version, then it is old.
6:09
Speaker 1: But it's new unless it's but yeah, he set his
6:13
Speaker 1: parachute on fire with the aim of throwing another parachute out,
6:19
Speaker 1: and it's just not a very smart thing. No, his
6:22
Speaker 1: his flaming parachute I think continued on without him, and
6:25
Speaker 1: I guess his other parachute. I think he just came
6:28
Speaker 1: out of his other parachute. It never deployed. It's on YouTube,
6:32
Speaker 1: which is sad that they don't have that stuff. There's
6:34
Speaker 1: a lot of that on there's a lot of base,
6:36
Speaker 1: base jumping and skydiving deaths on YouTube, tons of well
6:40
Speaker 1: you know why, because they all film each other. Well yeah,
6:43
Speaker 1: thanks to the GoPro you know. Um and finally Earth
6:49
Speaker 1: and that is when you're jumping off like ilk cappy
6:52
Speaker 1: tan or a cliff or a fiord pretty what, it's
6:58
Speaker 1: just like the words out like the list could have
7:00
Speaker 1: just kept going indefinitely. You know, I do like the
7:03
Speaker 1: word feword though it's a good word. You rarely see
7:06
Speaker 1: an F and a J next to each other. Yeah,
7:09
Speaker 1: that's true. You don't get along historically, all right, So
7:12
Speaker 1: you wanna talk about the history. Yeah, I think before
7:14
Speaker 1: we get started we should say chuck that, um, no
7:16
Speaker 1: one should basse jump. Ever, we certainly aren't saying that
7:20
Speaker 1: you should. We're just talking about bass jumping. Well you
7:23
Speaker 1: should definitely, um do what we talked about later, which
7:27
Speaker 1: is how to get started in bass jumping and follow
7:29
Speaker 1: those rules. Get started in bass jumping, think about bass jumping,
7:34
Speaker 1: and then don't do it. I think it's super cool,
7:37
Speaker 1: Like I can watch those videos all day long, but um,
7:41
Speaker 1: not for me. Yea, as far as execution, I have
7:44
Speaker 1: to say. Also, I ran across a video that to
7:48
Speaker 1: me is even scarier than a bass jumping video, and
7:52
Speaker 1: it was these two dudes. I don't know if they
7:56
Speaker 1: were Ukrainian. They're part of the former so it states, Um,
8:02
Speaker 1: I don't remember where their phone. I'm sorry, but they
8:04
Speaker 1: just climb stuff. I've seen it, dude, and they climb
8:07
Speaker 1: their iPhones are like, look at where we are. Yeah,
8:10
Speaker 1: like no ropes, no harnesses, no parachute, no nothing. It
8:13
Speaker 1: makes me want to vomit. I almost fainted and literally
8:17
Speaker 1: almost fainted watching this video. They were climbing the world's
8:22
Speaker 1: second tallest but I can't remember what it was called.
8:24
Speaker 1: But the um it's in China, and the tops of
8:28
Speaker 1: other skyscrapers are hundreds of feet below them. There's cloud
8:33
Speaker 1: the cloud line is below them, and they're just standing
8:36
Speaker 1: on this antenna connected to nothing. I mean, there's there's
8:41
Speaker 1: no fear going whatsoever. They're not capable of it, Like
8:43
Speaker 1: you have to be just completely out of your mind,
8:47
Speaker 1: like they're they're like they're broken in some way shape
8:50
Speaker 1: to be able to do that and not just like
8:52
Speaker 1: I think I'd probably just be like I just let
8:54
Speaker 1: go because I want the terror to be over one
8:57
Speaker 1: way or another, you know what I mean. And these
8:59
Speaker 1: guys are just like, hey, how's it going? Like giving
9:01
Speaker 1: each other five stuff. The whole thing just makes me nervous.
9:05
Speaker 1: Have you seen the trailer for the New You know
9:07
Speaker 1: they're making a movie about the the the guy who
9:11
Speaker 1: did the highware walk between the I did see that
9:14
Speaker 1: before Mad Max, which is did you like it? I
9:19
Speaker 1: left Mad Max and I was like, I want to
9:20
Speaker 1: go buy all the Mad Max toys now. I wanted
9:23
Speaker 1: to see all the sequels are going to make right now? Yeah,
9:27
Speaker 1: I just it was a great movie. Well you came
9:29
Speaker 1: in wearing the iron face mask. I thought it was interesting.
9:32
Speaker 1: I made it myself. Could you tell out of aluminum
9:35
Speaker 1: foil and rubber bands? Long story short, which is not true? Uh?
9:42
Speaker 1: That that trailer for the Robert Zemeckis movie with Joseph
9:47
Speaker 1: Gordon Levitt Um that made me want to vomit when
9:50
Speaker 1: he just he was waiting for it too. Didn't hit
9:53
Speaker 1: me like that. Man, Well, it's just a teaser. He
9:55
Speaker 1: just basically like walks up to the top and looks
9:57
Speaker 1: and says like in his mind I want to do this,
9:59
Speaker 1: but just stands up on the edge. I just I
10:03
Speaker 1: can't take that. And it's based on the guy who
10:05
Speaker 1: actually did that in real life for and they made
10:08
Speaker 1: a documentary about it, I think back in the seventies
10:10
Speaker 1: called Man on Wire. It's fantastic Um and a dude
10:14
Speaker 1: in the mid seventies who is a high wire artist
10:19
Speaker 1: illegally went up to the top of the World Trade
10:21
Speaker 1: Center and climbed from one tower to the other on
10:24
Speaker 1: a high wire. Great documentary, and uh faith in this movie.
10:29
Speaker 1: And I think it's in three D, isn't it? Or
10:31
Speaker 1: it's going to be I'm sure I can't imagine that
10:34
Speaker 1: one though in three D. I saw Tintin in three D.
10:36
Speaker 1: It was all right, yeah, I'm letting do it. I mean,
10:39
Speaker 1: I know what you're saying, did you see Mad maxim
10:41
Speaker 1: three D? I didn't either. I don't see three D anymore,
10:44
Speaker 1: is what I'm saying. Did you see did you ever see?
10:48
Speaker 1: Was it? Friday the Thirteenth? Part three came out in
10:51
Speaker 1: three D? That was a good one. That was back
10:53
Speaker 1: when three D stunk? Yeah, you know, oh yeah, when
10:57
Speaker 1: it was like things look still kind of blew in
11:00
Speaker 1: red at the same time. Yeah, like now it's supposedly good,
11:03
Speaker 1: I just don't enjoy it. And the cardboard glasses were
11:06
Speaker 1: cutting into the bridge of your nose and you were
11:08
Speaker 1: bleeding on. Man, we can get sidetracked. Although that wasn't
11:13
Speaker 1: much of a sidetrack because we talked about you know
11:15
Speaker 1: how wire walking it's an extreme sport, that's right, just
11:19
Speaker 1: like base jumping. So we're talking, we're going to talk
11:22
Speaker 1: about the history of base jumping. Yes. Uh, if you
11:25
Speaker 1: talk about the distant history, um, early nineteenth century, there
11:30
Speaker 1: were some things going on that is essentially like basse jumping.
11:35
Speaker 1: There was a dude named Frederick Rodman Law and he
11:40
Speaker 1: jumped um off the Brooklyn Bridge at one point, and
11:43
Speaker 1: the Statue of Liberty Yeah, and the Bankers Trust building
11:46
Speaker 1: on Wall Street. And this is in like the nineteen tens. Yeah,
11:49
Speaker 1: so I mean technically he was bass jumping, but these
11:51
Speaker 1: were just one off stunts at this point. Yes, the
11:55
Speaker 1: same as in ninety five when Owen Quinn left from
11:59
Speaker 1: the World Trade Center and uh, there was another guy
12:01
Speaker 1: named Ron Boyle's who jumped from the Royal Gorge Bridge
12:04
Speaker 1: in Colorado. So all this is happening, these little one
12:07
Speaker 1: off stunts. And then in this girl named this guy
12:12
Speaker 1: named Carl Banish. There's a documentary about him actually called
12:15
Speaker 1: Sunshine Superman. Yeah that look did you see the trailer?
12:19
Speaker 1: It doesn't looks really good and I think that is
12:23
Speaker 1: like now that that one's coming in. Um, so he
12:27
Speaker 1: gets this idea. He goes to Yosemite to film some
12:31
Speaker 1: hang gliders. And these hang gliders there's three dudes on
12:34
Speaker 1: a single hang uh or a glider, I guess you
12:36
Speaker 1: call it. And once they get out over the land,
12:40
Speaker 1: two of them drop off and I think they're flying
12:43
Speaker 1: off El Capitan, which is like a few thousand feet tall, right,
12:48
Speaker 1: I don't know how tall it is, it's pretty tall.
12:50
Speaker 1: I think it's like three thousand feet tall. I mean,
12:52
Speaker 1: i've seen it, but from the bottom. Very impressive. Um.
12:57
Speaker 1: So these two dudes, Rich Piccarelli and Brian Johnson, they
13:01
Speaker 1: dropped off, they parachuted into the valley below, and Carl
13:06
Speaker 1: Banish was like, very interesting. I think we're onto something here, fellas,
13:12
Speaker 1: And so he got Rich Piccarelli and night he said,
13:16
Speaker 1: let's do it, brother, and let's go to El Capitan
13:19
Speaker 1: and jump off of it. Right, Like, forget the hanglider,
13:23
Speaker 1: leave that at home. Yeah. Apparently, when they went scouting
13:29
Speaker 1: the place to see if you could just basically base
13:32
Speaker 1: jump off of it. Um, they lowered Banish over the
13:35
Speaker 1: edge on like a rope and they heard him shout eureka,
13:39
Speaker 1: we can jump from here. Now pull me back up please.
13:43
Speaker 1: All the from what I gather from this guy who's
13:45
Speaker 1: probably like, you guys can just go. I'm gonna hang
13:48
Speaker 1: out here for a while. Yeah, that's true. So in
13:51
Speaker 1: August he took this new crew back to that location
13:56
Speaker 1: and uh he I think was just filming at the time,
14:00
Speaker 1: and one by one they jumped. And if you look
14:03
Speaker 1: at this documentary footage on the trailer of Sunshine Superman,
14:06
Speaker 1: these guys like way before the go pro, they were
14:10
Speaker 1: like these toaster robbins on their head, essentially attached to
14:14
Speaker 1: helmets because even back then they wanted to film stuff.
14:17
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, apparently Carl Banish, like for that first jump,
14:20
Speaker 1: he had a number of different cameras going for different
14:23
Speaker 1: angles and um, when he was documenting it, he would
14:27
Speaker 1: make people like do different takes of like walking into
14:31
Speaker 1: frame and stuff like that would be like, okay, go
14:33
Speaker 1: back and do that again. He was like walk again. Yeah.
14:37
Speaker 1: Well that's why they have with that great old footage still,
14:39
Speaker 1: I guess thanks to him. Um. Sadly he died, uh
14:43
Speaker 1: basse jumping bass jumping, but he was doing it solo,
14:47
Speaker 1: I guess. In um he did a solo jump off
14:51
Speaker 1: a cliff in Norway and um, no one saw him die,
14:55
Speaker 1: but they figured that he probably was steered into the
14:59
Speaker 1: cliff um that he jumped from, which is called an
15:03
Speaker 1: off heading jump. Right, which is one of the bigger
15:07
Speaker 1: dangers in basse jumping, as we'll see. Well that's where
15:10
Speaker 1: he originally UM. I don't think we mentioned that. These
15:13
Speaker 1: two guys, Michael Pelki and Brian Schubert, were the first
15:16
Speaker 1: two that he heard of that actually did jump from
15:19
Speaker 1: el cappy tan. But they did it with the old
15:21
Speaker 1: school around paratrooper parachutes, and they got slammed into the
15:25
Speaker 1: cliff face again and again and again, breaking bones and
15:29
Speaker 1: foots and legs and things like that. There's that's another video.
15:32
Speaker 1: There's a UM a woman who skied or who base jumped,
15:36
Speaker 1: and she got um, she got she went on to
15:40
Speaker 1: an offheading opening. Is that what it's called. I believe
15:45
Speaker 1: it is um And you just see like she's getting
15:49
Speaker 1: just directed right into the cliff face again and again.
15:53
Speaker 1: You just I can't imagine. I mean, it killed her,
15:56
Speaker 1: but I can't imagine how anybody could survive something like
15:59
Speaker 1: that because you're going so fast and all of that
16:03
Speaker 1: velocity is just being slammed into a cliff face and
16:07
Speaker 1: then you'll bounce off and float away and then just
16:09
Speaker 1: come back in again. Yeah, you're at the mercy of
16:12
Speaker 1: nature at that point, right, But that's what happened with
16:14
Speaker 1: those two dudes in the sixties, the first two to
16:17
Speaker 1: parachute off of El capitan Um, and Karl Banish was like,
16:22
Speaker 1: I don't think they're The idea of jumping off of
16:25
Speaker 1: El Capitan with the parachute was wrong. I think their
16:28
Speaker 1: gear was just wrong. And that's why Carl Bainish is
16:31
Speaker 1: credited as being the father of um of basse jumping,
16:35
Speaker 1: because he applied the techniques that are now the hallmarks
16:40
Speaker 1: of base jumping and the and the equipment. Yeah. Yeah,
16:44
Speaker 1: and he was also the guy if you complete all
16:47
Speaker 1: four phases, the B, the A, the S and the E,
16:51
Speaker 1: then you are assigned a number, and he's the one
16:54
Speaker 1: that started at but he was based number four though
16:57
Speaker 1: he wasn't even number one because he was filming people,
17:00
Speaker 1: I think because his wife was Base three. And uh
17:03
Speaker 1: so he was a feminist as well. He wasn't like
17:05
Speaker 1: good good to be in front of you. Uh So
17:09
Speaker 1: Base one was Phil Smith from Texas and as of
17:13
Speaker 1: now it's hard to get numbers. Then they point out
17:16
Speaker 1: pretty reasonably that a lot of these things happened in
17:19
Speaker 1: our cover of night and they're not reported necessarily, but
17:22
Speaker 1: as best as we can tell, they're they're up to
17:24
Speaker 1: like base plus at this point. That's what I thought,
17:29
Speaker 1: and that's who is. Those are people who have completed
17:31
Speaker 1: again all four phases buildings, an tennis, spans and uh
17:37
Speaker 1: earth Earth And originally it wasn't called base, it was
17:40
Speaker 1: called best. It was going to be uh buildings, earth
17:46
Speaker 1: span and tower. Yeah, so they just rearranged it a bit. Yeah.
17:50
Speaker 1: Apparently Carl Vanish's wife Jean said she liked best best,
17:55
Speaker 1: but Carl like basse um, particularly because the first definition
18:00
Speaker 1: of the word was a platform on which something stands.
18:04
Speaker 1: So it makes sense. And before I knew, I've known
18:07
Speaker 1: for a while I was an acronym, but before I
18:08
Speaker 1: knew it was an acronym, I just thought that's what
18:10
Speaker 1: it meant, Like, you go stand on some base and
18:12
Speaker 1: you jump. You know, Karl Baynis would have been proud.
18:16
Speaker 1: That's right, all right, So let's take a break and
18:18
Speaker 1: then um we will talk about some of that gear
18:21
Speaker 1: right after this stump. Alright, dude, So if you want
18:42
Speaker 1: a base jump, you just get an old nineteen sixties
18:45
Speaker 1: Army parachute and you go at it, right, yep. Add
18:49
Speaker 1: some get a weight vest. Yeah, he's scuba diving. Yeah,
18:55
Speaker 1: and um, you know, pair of sunglasses maybe, yeah, drink
19:00
Speaker 1: a gallon of whiskey, yeah, and just fall off of
19:02
Speaker 1: the cliff. That's right. No, no, no, no, no no.
19:09
Speaker 1: What you need is the right gear. And what they
19:10
Speaker 1: found out pretty quickly was that something called a ram
19:14
Speaker 1: air parachute. And these are the ones that you see nowadays.
19:18
Speaker 1: You don't even see the round parachutes anymore. I guess
19:19
Speaker 1: you do if you jump from outer space or if
19:21
Speaker 1: you're like a kind of a hipster vintage. We need
19:26
Speaker 1: to do one on skydiving, I guess. But yeah, I
19:29
Speaker 1: guess we haven't, no, because I was like, this doesn't
19:32
Speaker 1: sound familiar, like we've spoken about it before. So I
19:35
Speaker 1: was like, we're doing basse jumping before skydiving. Yeah. I
19:38
Speaker 1: like that. That's the opposite of what you're supposed to do,
19:41
Speaker 1: especially if you're actually base jumping. Well, that's true. Um,
19:45
Speaker 1: So the ram air parachute is the one that you
19:47
Speaker 1: see a lot now mostly now, which is the one
19:51
Speaker 1: that is rectangular, and they give you a lot more
19:55
Speaker 1: control on where you're going because you want to be
19:58
Speaker 1: able to steer this thing quickly, right, So you don't
20:02
Speaker 1: slam into the rock, because that's one of the two dangers,
20:05
Speaker 1: is slamming into the rocks or slamming into whatever the building. Right.
20:10
Speaker 1: The two dangers are slamming into the thing you jump
20:13
Speaker 1: you jumped off of, which is apparently the more frequent danger,
20:17
Speaker 1: or other things around I guess, right, or slamming into
20:21
Speaker 1: the ground. Sure, and like you're shooting, not opening or
20:25
Speaker 1: something like that. Yeah, I think mostly though, most injuries
20:29
Speaker 1: occur from slamming into structures and not improper deployment. Right.
20:34
Speaker 1: And the thing about the ram air parachute is it's
20:37
Speaker 1: this rectangular parachute that allows you to maneuver yourself, guide yourself,
20:44
Speaker 1: increase or decrease your speed. You're much more in control
20:47
Speaker 1: than you are with around parachute, which basically just slows
20:50
Speaker 1: your acceleration towards earth. Right, that's right, um, And with
20:53
Speaker 1: with a ram air parachute, Uh, it works so well
20:59
Speaker 1: that when you are base jumping, your face with a
21:03
Speaker 1: problem because when you're skydiving, you have a lot of time.
21:07
Speaker 1: You're jumping at like a well over ten thousand feet usually, right,
21:12
Speaker 1: you get the free fall for a while and then
21:13
Speaker 1: say about two thousand feet, you open your shot, and
21:16
Speaker 1: your shoe can just take all the time in the
21:18
Speaker 1: world to open. It's pretty yeah, but it's it's not
21:23
Speaker 1: like packed and then open. There's a there's a process
21:26
Speaker 1: that does take place over the course of maybe a
21:28
Speaker 1: second a second and a half that makes a lot
21:31
Speaker 1: of difference in going from free fall to floating right
21:38
Speaker 1: as far as your body is concerned, and as far
21:40
Speaker 1: as changing your velocity and direction. Well, with base jumping,
21:45
Speaker 1: you don't have that amount of time. You need your
21:47
Speaker 1: shoot to open pretty quick and so when you when
21:51
Speaker 1: you open a ramar shoot, all of a sudden, it
21:53
Speaker 1: can basically snap your neck. It open so so quickly
21:57
Speaker 1: and jerks you up right end. Since you have a
22:01
Speaker 1: lot of velocity because you're in free fall when your
22:05
Speaker 1: shoot opens and all of a sudden, you're not free
22:08
Speaker 1: falling any longer, you're transferring some of that velocity to
22:11
Speaker 1: the shoot, which can slam you into that cliff side.
22:15
Speaker 1: So there's some some things that you have to to
22:18
Speaker 1: deal with if you're a base jumper that a skydiver
22:22
Speaker 1: wouldn't have to deal with, and there's been some clever
22:24
Speaker 1: solutions to those things. Yeah, there's one device called a
22:27
Speaker 1: slider that basically reduces the rate at which those parachute
22:31
Speaker 1: lines spread out, so it's not gonna deploy as quickly
22:35
Speaker 1: and snap your neck in half or not your neck,
22:37
Speaker 1: but well I'm not sure what would happen buying or
22:42
Speaker 1: something could tear you clean in half. Okay, but a
22:45
Speaker 1: sliders just like this piece of fabric that that slides
22:48
Speaker 1: down the lines, and by doing that, it gives you
22:52
Speaker 1: a measure of um control over how fast your shoot opens.
22:58
Speaker 1: You know, the little pilot shoots. If you've ever seen
23:01
Speaker 1: a sky diver, there there's that little shoot that comes
23:04
Speaker 1: out and then that helps deploy the big shoot. Same
23:07
Speaker 1: with funny cars, did they have a pilot? Really? The
23:11
Speaker 1: good ones to? Uh, So you have a larger pilot shoot.
23:17
Speaker 1: If you're a base jumper, because you talked about velocity,
23:21
Speaker 1: there is some velocity, but not like your skydiving, so
23:24
Speaker 1: you're actually going a lot slower in most cases unless
23:27
Speaker 1: you're really, like you know, jumping off something super super tall,
23:31
Speaker 1: So you're not gonna be a like terminal velocity, which
23:33
Speaker 1: is what you count on for that shoot to open
23:35
Speaker 1: real fast. So because you're not going as fast, you
23:38
Speaker 1: want a larger pilot shoot, so it can gather more
23:42
Speaker 1: air to deploy the real shoot faster. Right, And since
23:45
Speaker 1: you don't have that velocity, you also don't have the
23:47
Speaker 1: same amount of air pressure you would if you were
23:49
Speaker 1: at terminal velocity, so that larger pilot pilot shoot gathers
23:53
Speaker 1: more air. Even in this it balances out the fact
23:57
Speaker 1: that you have less air pressure. Right, So yeah, it's
24:00
Speaker 1: gonna open your shoe faster. And um, you talked about
24:04
Speaker 1: if you were skydiving normally, if your shoot malfunctions or
24:08
Speaker 1: something not good, but you've got your backup shoot and
24:11
Speaker 1: you have time, which is key. Just think, well, things
24:14
Speaker 1: aren't going well with my regular shoot, let me deploy
24:16
Speaker 1: the backup shoots. Don't even have to make some toast.
24:21
Speaker 1: I'll eat my toast and then I'll deploy my backup
24:24
Speaker 1: shoot and the toast of it on my head. But um,
24:28
Speaker 1: a lot of times space jumpers don't even have backup
24:30
Speaker 1: shoots because there's just not enough time. Anyway. It's not
24:33
Speaker 1: like they're like screw it, man, although they probably are,
24:37
Speaker 1: you know, they're extreme dudes and ladies. But even if
24:41
Speaker 1: they were, like, I don't want to screw it. I
24:43
Speaker 1: really want to backup shoot. They're they're they're totally useless. Basically,
24:48
Speaker 1: Josh wants to backup para shoot. All right, so let's
24:52
Speaker 1: talk about that shoot. Uh, and the accessibility. Um, if
24:55
Speaker 1: you've ever seen a base jumper jump off with the
24:58
Speaker 1: parachute wadded up in their hand end, that is a
25:01
Speaker 1: thing you can do if it's a shorter jump, because
25:04
Speaker 1: you just want to be able to throw that thing
25:06
Speaker 1: out almost right away. Um, not a lot of freefall
25:10
Speaker 1: going on in that case. No, if it's a little
25:12
Speaker 1: higher than that, they might just pack that pilot shoot
25:15
Speaker 1: like in their pocket or something like that. But that
25:18
Speaker 1: leaves their hands free and then they'll just reach into
25:20
Speaker 1: the pocket and pull out the pilot shoot rather than
25:24
Speaker 1: using a rip chord to deploy it. Yeah, most of
25:26
Speaker 1: the base jumping, I think most of the rigs today
25:30
Speaker 1: have like a velcro flap type of scene that they use.
25:33
Speaker 1: It's not even a rip chord necessarily just sort of
25:36
Speaker 1: packed in a pouch of velcrow pouch and you just
25:38
Speaker 1: pull the velcrow off I think so, and just rip
25:40
Speaker 1: that away again. I will never do this, so I'm
25:44
Speaker 1: just going on research alone here. No interest. Um, if
25:49
Speaker 1: you're below three hundred feet. You might even have to
25:52
Speaker 1: use a static line. And that is when the there's
25:56
Speaker 1: a line actually attached I think to the thing you're
26:00
Speaker 1: jumping off of, right, and it just immediately opens up. Yeah,
26:04
Speaker 1: it like pulls your pilot shoot out. Um, and then
26:08
Speaker 1: it disconnects from it hopefully. Yeah. And um, that guy
26:13
Speaker 1: Frederick Rodman Law who jumped off of the Statue of Liberty,
26:17
Speaker 1: that was a static line jump. Yeah. Like when you
26:19
Speaker 1: see paratroopers like one after the other in a in
26:23
Speaker 1: a plane, A lot of times those are static line jumps. Yeah,
26:26
Speaker 1: they're leaving. Yeah, when they're leaving, there was there's a
26:28
Speaker 1: cord that's left behind after they jumped out that things
26:31
Speaker 1: just pulled their pilot shoot out. That's right. That's a
26:34
Speaker 1: low altitude jump technique. That's right. Um, I think offheading opening.
26:38
Speaker 1: Is that what you're talking about earlier? Yes, that's when
26:41
Speaker 1: you deploy the shoot again and um, you just start
26:45
Speaker 1: going crazy. Yeah. Because again, you especially if you're in
26:48
Speaker 1: free fall, if you have a couple of seconds to
26:51
Speaker 1: to go into free fall with no shoot deployed, no
26:54
Speaker 1: resistance other than your body, Um, you can build up
26:57
Speaker 1: pretty decent amount of velocity and when your shoot opens,
27:00
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, you transfer that velocity to your shoot,
27:04
Speaker 1: and your shoot can spin you around in another direction,
27:07
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden, you're going back towards the
27:09
Speaker 1: cliff or back towards the building, or and you you
27:12
Speaker 1: can be in big, big trouble. Yeah. And while you
27:15
Speaker 1: have some control, it's not the kind of control that
27:18
Speaker 1: you're used to, Like, let's in a car or something.
27:21
Speaker 1: You know, you can't just be like, oh, let me
27:23
Speaker 1: stop immediately and go in the other direction. Yeah. And
27:26
Speaker 1: even if you are an experienced bass jumper or skydiver,
27:30
Speaker 1: it's not like you're you You are using the chords
27:35
Speaker 1: on your parachute as often as you are like on
27:37
Speaker 1: your car, So it's not necessarily as uh natural reaction
27:41
Speaker 1: as it is to like steer your steering wheel out
27:44
Speaker 1: of the way of an oncoming truck. So it can
27:47
Speaker 1: be very easy to pull the wrong way or do
27:49
Speaker 1: the wrong thing, or not react quite in time. Even
27:52
Speaker 1: though that ram or parachute is giving you more control
27:55
Speaker 1: you you you you have to think so fast and
27:59
Speaker 1: under such sudden stress that you might not make the
28:02
Speaker 1: right decision. Yeah. Well, that's one of the things that
28:04
Speaker 1: um Tom Aello says, Uh, think about if it's right
28:08
Speaker 1: for you. He said that, Um, it's a good fit,
28:11
Speaker 1: or it could be a good fit. If you are
28:13
Speaker 1: intellectually curious, you have good reactions, you respond quickly and
28:17
Speaker 1: correctly without having to think during an emergency, and you're
28:21
Speaker 1: very organized in detail oriented like if you're sloppy, if
28:25
Speaker 1: you're lazy, if you take too much time to suss
28:30
Speaker 1: out an emergency, you're not going to be a good
28:31
Speaker 1: based jumper. Do you don't even try it? Don't even
28:35
Speaker 1: try it? So, UM, body positioning is important. Um. When
28:39
Speaker 1: you deploy that shoot, and I think the super safe
28:43
Speaker 1: way to base jump, if you call it that would
28:45
Speaker 1: just be to jump off head first in that traditional
28:48
Speaker 1: facedown form. Of course, now you see him doing like
28:52
Speaker 1: flips and tumbles and joining hands and spinning each other,
28:55
Speaker 1: and those are like the serious, seriously experienced people. But
29:01
Speaker 1: even when you do jump off and your your face
29:04
Speaker 1: towards the earth right and you're horizontal parallel to the
29:09
Speaker 1: earth with the shoot deploying behind you, UM, you you
29:13
Speaker 1: don't want to take necessarily the um normal skydiving pose
29:18
Speaker 1: with your arms out and your legs splayed. You want
29:21
Speaker 1: to keep your arms on the side and your legs
29:22
Speaker 1: together and basically turn yourself into a bullet going away
29:26
Speaker 1: from the structure that you just jumped off of. It's
29:30
Speaker 1: called tracking, and it can um reduce your chances of
29:34
Speaker 1: an off heading opening. Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. You
29:37
Speaker 1: want to get as far as far away from the
29:39
Speaker 1: thing that you just jumped off of as possible, exactly,
29:41
Speaker 1: and the best way to do that is to turn
29:42
Speaker 1: your body into a bullet that's being directed in the
29:45
Speaker 1: opposite direction. Yeah. And I just let me correct something
29:48
Speaker 1: when I said that these um people now tumble and
29:52
Speaker 1: flip and do all those things they do, but they
29:54
Speaker 1: still when they go to deploy, the shoot will end
29:56
Speaker 1: up in that traditional position right right. It's not like
30:00
Speaker 1: they're upside down. They're like, this is a great time
30:02
Speaker 1: to throw out my parish. You know. Um, there was
30:05
Speaker 1: a pretty cool video that surfaced in the last year
30:08
Speaker 1: or two. I think of some guys who jumped off
30:11
Speaker 1: the New World Trade Center tower at night. It's just crazy.
30:16
Speaker 1: A lot of base jumping happens at night for obvious reasons,
30:19
Speaker 1: which seems super scary. So we'll we'll talk about um
30:24
Speaker 1: the legalities and the ins and outs of base jumping
30:28
Speaker 1: right after this stop? All right, so why my friend, uh,
30:51
Speaker 1: is base jumping a fringe sport besides the fact that
30:55
Speaker 1: you could kill yourself? Well, it's a it's kind of
30:59
Speaker 1: a sport of outlaws, that's right. The grabster wrote this article,
31:03
Speaker 1: and as he puts it, even if the jump itself
31:05
Speaker 1: aren't is an illegal. Gaining access to prime jumping spots
31:09
Speaker 1: often involves trespassing, picking locks, climbing fences, and deceiving security guards.
31:16
Speaker 1: I'm sure that is all part of the rush. Deceiving
31:20
Speaker 1: security guards as a felony offense. What's that, rummer? Do
31:24
Speaker 1: you just make it up? It's kind of a daze
31:26
Speaker 1: and confused reference. Yeah, campering with mailboxes federal offense? Who's
31:32
Speaker 1: this felony offense? And some of the small parts in
31:36
Speaker 1: that movie, I'm pretty convinced we're just regular folks. They
31:40
Speaker 1: weren't actors. Oh yeah, I'm sure they're just friends of
31:42
Speaker 1: link Letter who lived in Austin for a lot of
31:45
Speaker 1: the adults like the comedian store guy, and he showed
31:49
Speaker 1: up and I think he's in boyhood. Yeah, he played
31:51
Speaker 1: the convenient store kind of boyhood. He's a convenient store dude. Um,
31:58
Speaker 1: so the National Parks Service. Obviously, national parks are pretty
32:02
Speaker 1: popular because they have tall things and they don't have
32:05
Speaker 1: many people, and they don't have many cops or park rangers.
32:08
Speaker 1: I mean, if you talk about the land mass, you're
32:11
Speaker 1: not gonna see a park ranger for days sometimes. So
32:14
Speaker 1: the National Parks are like, sure, base jump all you want, right, No,
32:18
Speaker 1: for a little while. Um, certain parks would allow it
32:21
Speaker 1: with a permit. Um, you have somebody in El Capyitan.
32:24
Speaker 1: They let that happen for like a few months before
32:27
Speaker 1: they realize it's probably not a good idea to be
32:30
Speaker 1: on the hook. Yeah. Well, I mean the Park Service
32:32
Speaker 1: experience with base jumping from the start was a bad one.
32:36
Speaker 1: These two guys who jumped in the sixties had to
32:39
Speaker 1: be rescued and like metivact out of there at great costs. Yeah,
32:43
Speaker 1: the the National Park Service had to flip that bill.
32:47
Speaker 1: So just from the get go they were like, yeah,
32:48
Speaker 1: base jumping sucks, please don't do it here. But there's
32:52
Speaker 1: and there was a law already on the books against
32:55
Speaker 1: having a parachute in the National parks and apparently, um
32:59
Speaker 1: it was to prevent hunters from resupplying using parachutes. Oh really, Yeah,
33:04
Speaker 1: they had nothing to do with base jumping. Interesting, So
33:08
Speaker 1: like a supplied drop, So like, no, if you want supplies,
33:12
Speaker 1: you have to go out and then come back. Yeah,
33:15
Speaker 1: I guess. So they're like, oh, needs more AMMO to
33:18
Speaker 1: blow some deuce's head off. I want a parachute. So nowadays,
33:24
Speaker 1: you're gonna get fined a couple of grand or more. Um,
33:28
Speaker 1: you're gonna uh get arrested. You're going to have to
33:32
Speaker 1: pay for any cost of META backing you out. They're
33:36
Speaker 1: gonna take your gear. It's an expensive proposition if you
33:39
Speaker 1: get busted in a national park base jumping. Yeah, it
33:44
Speaker 1: sounds like such a school principal move. Yeah, I'm taking
33:47
Speaker 1: your parachute. Your your parachute has been confiscated and they
33:51
Speaker 1: put it in the drawer At the end of the
33:53
Speaker 1: chattering Teeth in the right, um, buildings is always is illegal,
34:00
Speaker 1: Almost alwheels always illegal. I didn't see one single building
34:04
Speaker 1: where it wasn't illegal. I didn't either, but the fact
34:07
Speaker 1: that the article says almost makes me think there might
34:09
Speaker 1: be one, or maybe it meant if there's an arrangement,
34:14
Speaker 1: Like there's a great video of two guys I think
34:17
Speaker 1: they were red bull jumping off of the building in Dubai. Yeah,
34:23
Speaker 1: did you see that thing? That was nuts? Dude, Vince
34:27
Speaker 1: Retha and Fred Fugan And again thanks to the go
34:32
Speaker 1: pro and you can get all of this stuff. Like
34:34
Speaker 1: the footage is amazing because you always have someone jumping
34:37
Speaker 1: with you, at least one other person with a camera,
34:40
Speaker 1: um just filming you, and then they have camera setup
34:43
Speaker 1: for the wide shots. And I mean these dudes, did
34:46
Speaker 1: they flew in a spiral around the building. Yeah, they
34:50
Speaker 1: did some pretty amazing stuff. Yeah. I could watch this
34:52
Speaker 1: stuff all day. It's amazing. Again, not interested in doing it.
34:58
Speaker 1: I would skydive, though, I'm gonna do that at some point.
35:01
Speaker 1: That seems less risky. It is much less risky. And
35:07
Speaker 1: I mean when you go, you they like sit you
35:10
Speaker 1: through a class and like it's just much more structured
35:13
Speaker 1: and formalized. One of the things about base jumping is
35:16
Speaker 1: that you um, like normally, if you're a base jumper,
35:22
Speaker 1: you're doing it after you've already become an experienced skydiver,
35:26
Speaker 1: and you're probably being taken under the wing of an
35:30
Speaker 1: experienced base jumper, Whereas with skydiving, it's like this is
35:35
Speaker 1: a business comes sit down in this airplane hangar and
35:38
Speaker 1: watch this video, and UM, I'm gonna teach you exactly
35:41
Speaker 1: what you need to know. We're gonna go up. And
35:43
Speaker 1: it's been We've already done it fifty times today. Yeah,
35:45
Speaker 1: it's like for a tandem jump, it's like, if you've
35:47
Speaker 1: got seventy and sign a waiver, then you can jump
35:51
Speaker 1: out of a plane this afternoon exactly, which is and
35:54
Speaker 1: they're still very scary. Have you ever done that? H
35:58
Speaker 1: did a tandem jump, and yeah, it's very scary, but
36:01
Speaker 1: I can't I just can't imagine a base jump. Did
36:04
Speaker 1: the person The one thing I worry about with the
36:06
Speaker 1: tandem jump is I would just want the person to
36:09
Speaker 1: shut up behind me that's attached to me. Yeah, like
36:13
Speaker 1: I would want to experience it just myself and not
36:15
Speaker 1: have someone in my ear going like, bro, check it
36:18
Speaker 1: out and it's awesome. I think if that happens, the
36:21
Speaker 1: skydiving company gives you a free another free one if
36:25
Speaker 1: you're like the guy was saying, bro in my ear,
36:28
Speaker 1: I wanted I demand another jump that's uninterrupted. See I
36:32
Speaker 1: figured all of them did that, like you having fun? Man?
36:35
Speaker 1: This great? I don't know, I mean not not that
36:38
Speaker 1: I know of, because I would have felt bad saying
36:40
Speaker 1: I'm very excited, please keep it down. Can you shut up?
36:43
Speaker 1: I'm experiencing the majesty of this experience. Well, I just
36:46
Speaker 1: don't want to be reminded that someone's attached to my
36:49
Speaker 1: my butt. Dude. There's a video of a woman who
36:54
Speaker 1: is um doing a tandem jump. First to start off with,
36:58
Speaker 1: she's holding onto the side to the plane and is
37:01
Speaker 1: pushing back on the guy who's trying to push her
37:03
Speaker 1: out the tandom jumping. He has to grab her wrists
37:07
Speaker 1: and pull them in and and then push her out.
37:10
Speaker 1: Is that legal? I wouldn't think so. And then secondly,
37:15
Speaker 1: she's obviously not. She's not wearing a suit, she's just
37:18
Speaker 1: wearing her street clothes. So she's got like her arms
37:22
Speaker 1: in the harness, not hooked into the harness, just her
37:25
Speaker 1: arms are, and almost immediately she starts to slide out,
37:29
Speaker 1: so she's doubled up with like her legs in her arms,
37:32
Speaker 1: like at her face, her feet sticking into the air.
37:36
Speaker 1: In Turkey, just hanging out. I don't know where it was,
37:39
Speaker 1: but just it. It didn't appear to be in Dollywood. Um,
37:43
Speaker 1: but Dolly would never allow something like that in her part,
37:48
Speaker 1: and she survived. They lived. But like the shoot, it's
37:51
Speaker 1: just like the pilot. She was just hanging out at first,
37:55
Speaker 1: and you're like, what is going to happen? It is
37:57
Speaker 1: so scary, and to start, the woman obviously didn't want
38:01
Speaker 1: to do this. She gets forced out of the plane
38:04
Speaker 1: and then like almost slides out of the harness. Well
38:06
Speaker 1: it sounds like she was like doing her taxes and
38:08
Speaker 1: someone abducted her. Kind of look that way. Actually send
38:12
Speaker 1: me that video, will you will? Very interesting and it's
38:15
Speaker 1: not a movie. You sure it didn't look like a movie.
38:18
Speaker 1: I'm like, wait, that's Kathleen O'Hara. That's Romancing the Stone. Uh,
38:24
Speaker 1: that's Kathleen Turner. And I think it's Catherine. It made
38:27
Speaker 1: me think of Romancing the Stone. Yeah, I hear you, Um,
38:31
Speaker 1: Katherine O'Hara, Yeah, I think it is. I don't know
38:34
Speaker 1: why I thought of her. She just seems like someone
38:36
Speaker 1: who'd be down with that. Yeah. She was the mom
38:41
Speaker 1: and home alone, among many many many other things. Right,
38:43
Speaker 1: that's right, that's Catherine Oha. Right, Okay, she's an setv vet.
38:48
Speaker 1: I think so. Jerry just nodded. So at least she
38:52
Speaker 1: knows what SETV is. Um. It says guarding your spots.
38:59
Speaker 1: What based jumpers don't want to do is is mess
39:02
Speaker 1: it up for other base jumpers. So they say, like,
39:04
Speaker 1: the worst thing you can do is either get hurt
39:08
Speaker 1: or killed, because that's going to be a dead giveaway
39:11
Speaker 1: um literally um or just you know, being a jerk
39:16
Speaker 1: getting arrested drawing attention to this otherwise cool spot to
39:20
Speaker 1: base jump. It's very secretive thing. Yeah, it's among the code.
39:24
Speaker 1: The code. I couldn't find the where what it referenced,
39:27
Speaker 1: but apparently there was a base jumper in Atlanta who
39:29
Speaker 1: got caught trying to jump off of a building and
39:32
Speaker 1: some other base jumpers like went to his house and
39:34
Speaker 1: beat them up, like bringing heat onto their sport locals
39:38
Speaker 1: only Um yeah point break, Yeah, well the new point
39:44
Speaker 1: break is our base jumpers. Why why can't Hollywood come
39:49
Speaker 1: up with a brand new concept, Like even if all
39:53
Speaker 1: of the good ideas have been used before, right and
39:57
Speaker 1: and everything is still a category like us buy a movie,
40:00
Speaker 1: a bank robber movie, a um, a romantic comedy, like
40:04
Speaker 1: all of these things are still just categories and there's
40:07
Speaker 1: still room for creativity. Still that you don't have to go.
40:11
Speaker 1: What movie was big in the eighties, Let's remake it
40:14
Speaker 1: except worse. It's it drives me crazy, man, I've not
40:17
Speaker 1: seen one remake, with the exception of Bad Max that
40:20
Speaker 1: was worthwhile. Well, that wouldn't a remake at all. Was
40:25
Speaker 1: it supposed to be like a prequel or something like that.
40:27
Speaker 1: It's just it's I guess you think you would call
40:29
Speaker 1: it a reboot. It's just like a reboot. Here's a
40:31
Speaker 1: new version of a character that's already been established. But
40:37
Speaker 1: it's not like Cannon as they say, Oh, yeah, you
40:40
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying. Yeah, But but do you do
40:42
Speaker 1: you agree? Oh? Of course? Can you think of okay,
40:46
Speaker 1: can you think of one thing that was already done
40:49
Speaker 1: from the eighties, like a good movie from the eighties
40:51
Speaker 1: that was redone recently or even added to that was better,
40:56
Speaker 1: that was even good. Um, I'd have to look. I
40:58
Speaker 1: mean there's probably a couple, but not many. You know,
41:02
Speaker 1: it's always seems like a bad idea for sure. Let's
41:05
Speaker 1: remake Ghostbusters or just let Ghostbusters exist as great. I'm
41:10
Speaker 1: reserving judgment on that one. Well, it may be good.
41:12
Speaker 1: They've got a great director, and who is it? I
41:15
Speaker 1: think it's Paul Feig from he directed Bridesmaids, but he
41:19
Speaker 1: was uh he did a lot of the freaks and
41:21
Speaker 1: geeks back in the day. Okay, he's a very smart
41:24
Speaker 1: and funny guy. For some reason, I thought you were
41:25
Speaker 1: talking about Mike Figgis and I'm like, yeah, that seems
41:29
Speaker 1: directing Ghostbusters. Um. Can I read a little more about
41:35
Speaker 1: how to Get started from this guy? Tom? I yell o,
41:38
Speaker 1: I think this was in? Was this an apex from
41:42
Speaker 1: the apex website? Um? So, after checking yourself to see
41:47
Speaker 1: if you're a good fit, like I said, if you're
41:49
Speaker 1: have good reaction time and handle emergency as well and
41:51
Speaker 1: all that good stuff, then make the decision to do so.
41:55
Speaker 1: And he said, in my short time in the sport,
41:58
Speaker 1: I've seen to lifelight helicopters from the outside, two more
42:01
Speaker 1: from the inside, inside the back of a police car,
42:05
Speaker 1: several broken noses, and a funeral. I've also spent three
42:08
Speaker 1: weeks in intensive care in eighteen hours in neurosurgery. Wow.
42:12
Speaker 1: So his contention is if you base jump like hundreds
42:17
Speaker 1: of times, like most of those people do, you will
42:20
Speaker 1: get hurt at some point, and that you know, just
42:22
Speaker 1: know that getting into it. Um, and people do die.
42:26
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, from what I saw, a hundred and eight
42:30
Speaker 1: people have died since nine but that was as of
42:33
Speaker 1: February two thousand twelve. And by the way, I think
42:36
Speaker 1: we should say, like we're making a lot of jokes
42:38
Speaker 1: about how you can die base jumping. It's obviously super
42:40
Speaker 1: tragic when someone dies doing anything. Yes, So I don't
42:44
Speaker 1: want to, you know, make it like we're taking like
42:47
Speaker 1: making light of that kind of thing. Yeah. I didn't
42:49
Speaker 1: think we were, were we No, I just wanted to
42:51
Speaker 1: make sure that well, sure, yeah, someone dies is tragedy,
42:55
Speaker 1: especially when they die young, which most space jumpers except
42:59
Speaker 1: for the seventy three year old who lit his parachute
43:02
Speaker 1: on fire. And again I giggled, not funny, You're just
43:06
Speaker 1: gonna this is like an Ora Borous. I know, I
43:09
Speaker 1: think I get uncomfortable about death and I make and
43:11
Speaker 1: I laugh. Man, have you ever seen that one King
43:14
Speaker 1: of the Hill where Khan is giving that that eulogy
43:19
Speaker 1: at Buckley's funeral and he talks about the man who's
43:22
Speaker 1: being chased by a tiger and the tiger chases him
43:25
Speaker 1: off the cliff and the man starts to fall, but
43:27
Speaker 1: he stops and he grabs himself and he holds on
43:30
Speaker 1: by this route and it turns out it's a strawberry plant,
43:34
Speaker 1: and he says that he knows at that moment that
43:37
Speaker 1: he is going to die. And he reaches up and
43:40
Speaker 1: he plucks the strawberry from the strawberry plant and eats it,
43:43
Speaker 1: and it's the sweetest strawberry he's ever had. Nice. It's
43:47
Speaker 1: a great, great scene like they animated in like the
43:51
Speaker 1: this Chinese illustration. Um, it's really great. I remember when
43:56
Speaker 1: he first met Con when Con said he was like ocean.
43:58
Speaker 1: He's like, you're from the ocean, right, good stuff? So
44:03
Speaker 1: where were we? I think five or six have died
44:06
Speaker 1: this year, so more than Dean Potter and Graham Hunt.
44:10
Speaker 1: Dean Potter is like one of the the biggest like
44:12
Speaker 1: extreme dudes out there, and he passed away a Dya
44:15
Speaker 1: semite recently. Really Yeah, he was doing the wingsuit flying,
44:19
Speaker 1: So that's pretty nuts in and of itself. It's amazing,
44:23
Speaker 1: you know. I was looking at some of that stuff
44:25
Speaker 1: you sent me. I was looking at some wingsuits stuff,
44:27
Speaker 1: and I thought, like, why why would they not put
44:31
Speaker 1: wingsuits in the top of tall buildings, like in office towers,
44:36
Speaker 1: just like you have life vests on a boat. I
44:39
Speaker 1: think because it takes a lot of experience to successfully
44:44
Speaker 1: fly in a wingsuit and deploy your parachute. The thing
44:47
Speaker 1: is though, like like why not just put parachutes? Yeah,
44:50
Speaker 1: I mean, why not? It just seems like it seems
44:52
Speaker 1: like a good idea. I would guess wingsuits are a
44:55
Speaker 1: lot cheaper. Even if it's a terrible cruddy wingsuit, it's
45:00
Speaker 1: still worth the shot. Well, have you seen some of
45:03
Speaker 1: those videos the wingsuit flying? It's crazy, it's amazing, like
45:08
Speaker 1: humans are flying at this point. There was one, Um,
45:11
Speaker 1: there was one I saw. I don't remember if you
45:13
Speaker 1: you sent it to me or I stumbled across it.
45:15
Speaker 1: But they had a camera set up in like this
45:18
Speaker 1: grassy meadow and this guy comes and flies right overhead.
45:22
Speaker 1: It looks like he's like twenty ft off the ground. Yeah,
45:24
Speaker 1: and the grass like moves like the airplane just flew
45:28
Speaker 1: over it, like it just ripples. It's unbelievable. That was
45:32
Speaker 1: going fast. That started in the late nineties. UM, the
45:35
Speaker 1: modern wingsuit was developed by a guy or squirrel suit
45:38
Speaker 1: because they look they're like a little flying squirrels basically, uh.
45:42
Speaker 1: Patrick de Gallardald and France. Um, he died at thirty
45:47
Speaker 1: eight from bass jumping. Are you guys seeing a pattern here? Yeah,
45:52
Speaker 1: like a lot of basse jumpers died base jumping. Yeah,
45:56
Speaker 1: died young. Uh. That was based though in an earlier
45:59
Speaker 1: design by this guy, this basse pioneer, John Carter, that
46:03
Speaker 1: they called the Birdman, And he was a Vietnam veteran,
46:05
Speaker 1: and like the seventies, he was creating these wingsuits that
46:09
Speaker 1: didn't work nearly as well. But he was told jumping
46:11
Speaker 1: off of stuff. I probably worked good enough to jump
46:15
Speaker 1: out of an office tower if it's on fire. He
46:17
Speaker 1: died too, But I don't think base jumping. I think
46:19
Speaker 1: he died like in a plane crash, Banana peal, probably
46:22
Speaker 1: going to skydive. Um, but the I mean you can fly.
46:26
Speaker 1: I think the record, I don't know if it still stands,
46:28
Speaker 1: is like five close to five miles of flight in
46:31
Speaker 1: a wing suit. Wow. I believe it in uh four
46:35
Speaker 1: or five minutes. It's pretty amazing. That's like a mile
46:38
Speaker 1: a minute. That's sixty. So the final few things you
46:43
Speaker 1: should think about, um, make sure that you're always prepared
46:46
Speaker 1: to not do anything that doesn't feel right, and not
46:49
Speaker 1: be afraid to back down. That's a big one is
46:51
Speaker 1: to be able saying no, this isn't good because I
46:54
Speaker 1: don't want to die. I don't want to base jump
46:56
Speaker 1: successfully is the goal, right, Um, And this one is
46:59
Speaker 1: horror trying. Um, tell your family and write a sealed
47:03
Speaker 1: letter to your friends and family on the event that
47:06
Speaker 1: you die, explaining exactly why you have decided to take
47:09
Speaker 1: up base jumping and what you get out of it,
47:11
Speaker 1: and why you're willing to risk death. Give sealed copies
47:14
Speaker 1: to your family and your base mentor to open in
47:18
Speaker 1: the event of death. Right, and then make at least
47:21
Speaker 1: two hundred skydives as his and then sort of mimic
47:25
Speaker 1: base jumping as much as you can, like wait as
47:28
Speaker 1: long as you can to open, do a lot of tracking,
47:31
Speaker 1: call it max tracking. Uh, find a mentor, get a
47:35
Speaker 1: good base rig and he suggests spending the money and
47:39
Speaker 1: taking an actual class from a manufacturer they have called
47:43
Speaker 1: first jump course classes. And um, he said, even if
47:47
Speaker 1: you have a mentor, even if you've done it a
47:49
Speaker 1: hundred times, just spend the money and make sure you
47:52
Speaker 1: know how to do the rigs and everything correctly. Wise
47:56
Speaker 1: words yelloids, Danny I, yello, UM, base jumping expert. Do
48:03
Speaker 1: you got anything else? They got nothing else. If you
48:05
Speaker 1: want to know more about basse jumping, type those words
48:07
Speaker 1: into the search bar how stuff works dot Com look
48:09
Speaker 1: up Paul A Yellow Yes, and Paul Fieg and Mike
48:14
Speaker 1: Figgus Yeah. And then don't basse jump. Yeah, just stay
48:18
Speaker 1: at home and watch base jumping videos. You can do
48:20
Speaker 1: that all day long. Um. And since I said search bar,
48:23
Speaker 1: I think somewhere in there it's time for a listener mail.
48:27
Speaker 1: I don't think anyone's ever died watching a bass jumping video.
48:30
Speaker 1: Have they? You could, Yeah, but it's probably because you
48:33
Speaker 1: you just eating seven or eight pounds of taco bell,
48:37
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. That's it for me, all right.
48:41
Speaker 1: I'm gonna call this New Zealand my New Zealand gang,
48:46
Speaker 1: the Mongrel Mob. Hey, guys, them from Wellington. I thought
48:49
Speaker 1: i'd cheer some light on one of the New Zealand's
48:51
Speaker 1: more prominent gangs, the Mongrel Mob. They began when a
48:55
Speaker 1: group of mainly European utes from Wellington and Hawk's Bay
48:58
Speaker 1: in the nineteen sixties. The Mob whereas red regalia, often
49:03
Speaker 1: fusing the cultural tattoo work of the Maori people. I
49:07
Speaker 1: feel like we talked about them in the Maori episode.
49:09
Speaker 1: We may have the Mongrel Mob either that is it
49:12
Speaker 1: a motorcycle gang? M I don't know. I'm sure some
49:15
Speaker 1: of them have motorcycles, so I think we did talk
49:17
Speaker 1: about them in the Maori episode. I think they're a
49:19
Speaker 1: Vespa gang. They're Vespa to there's one driving and then
49:24
Speaker 1: one running side saddle and back. Yeah. Um uh, as
49:30
Speaker 1: well as portraits of bulldogs with their tattoos and occasionally
49:33
Speaker 1: Nazi symbols that are synonymous with the gang, such as
49:36
Speaker 1: swastikas and the slanted s S symbolo yeah, that are
49:40
Speaker 1: said to be included to provide a contradiction with the
49:43
Speaker 1: British symbol of the bulldog. No. No, it makes sense
49:46
Speaker 1: like most gangs of Mongrel Mob is involved in organized
49:49
Speaker 1: crime and thus has been associated with an aggressive and
49:51
Speaker 1: feared stereotype of how people. These people live their lives.
49:54
Speaker 1: You just said stereotype like a New Zealander, did I? Yeah,
49:58
Speaker 1: you went stereotype weird. Maybe it's how we spelled it, Nope,
50:04
Speaker 1: stereo type. What I think is overlooked though, guys, is
50:07
Speaker 1: uh the communal family roles that gangs or chapters inherit
50:11
Speaker 1: because of the need of an individual, and we did
50:14
Speaker 1: talk about that some. Yeah, I don't know how you
50:16
Speaker 1: got that as overlooked, buddy, He's a nice fellow. At
50:20
Speaker 1: least in some parts of New Zealand, the mob has
50:22
Speaker 1: scene as an ingrained part of the community and a
50:24
Speaker 1: source of solidarity. Uh. And I've thrown a link to
50:27
Speaker 1: a Vice article below about a photographer who spent eight
50:30
Speaker 1: years with the mob documenting and taking portraits. Amazing portraits
50:34
Speaker 1: UM of some of his members, and Vice is awesome,
50:37
Speaker 1: so we'll always plug them. So just look up portraits
50:41
Speaker 1: of New Zealand's Mighty Mongrel Mob from Vice dot com.
50:45
Speaker 1: It's pretty neat. And he said, thanks guys, love your work.
50:48
Speaker 1: You've killed a lot of potential silence over the years.
50:51
Speaker 1: Professional silence killers band name killer with bare hand regards
50:56
Speaker 1: from the Long White Cloud. I guess that's New Zealand stereotype.
51:01
Speaker 1: Sam Vander Cult, great name, Yeah, excellent name. Throw a
51:07
Speaker 1: little dutchiness in there, great name Dutch tilt Fander Cult.
51:13
Speaker 1: Thanks a lot, Sam. Also, somebody I don't know who
51:16
Speaker 1: it was, so I apologize to you if you're listening,
51:19
Speaker 1: tweeted to us. Um an article that I have yet
51:22
Speaker 1: to read but looks awesome. It's about Disney gangs. What
51:28
Speaker 1: I will send it to you? No serious. I was
51:31
Speaker 1: looking over it and I'm like, is this just like
51:33
Speaker 1: a hoax? Gangs that hang out in Disney World and
51:36
Speaker 1: rough people up or gangs that wear Mickey Mouse costumes.
51:39
Speaker 1: I don't think they rough people up. They don't wear
51:41
Speaker 1: Mickey Mouse costumes, but they wear like they'll have like
51:44
Speaker 1: Disney Gang stuff tattooed on them. They wear like Disney
51:48
Speaker 1: biker jackets with like their gang symbols have Mickey Mouse involved,
51:52
Speaker 1: and they're like Disney Gang. So Disney centered gangs. So
51:56
Speaker 1: you're talking about Holly from stuff you miss in history class.
51:59
Speaker 1: If she isn't remember, then she at least knows a member.
52:02
Speaker 1: There's no way she doesn't, or she just didn't know
52:04
Speaker 1: about it yet. There's no way she's too into Disney. Agreed.
52:08
Speaker 1: Uh So, if you want to get in touch with
52:11
Speaker 1: us to let us know about a gang in your area,
52:15
Speaker 1: or a base jump that you did, or whatever, you
52:19
Speaker 1: can tweak to us at s Y s K podcast.
52:22
Speaker 1: You can join us on Facebook dot com slash stuff
52:24
Speaker 1: you should know you can send us an email to
52:26
Speaker 1: stuff Podcasts at how stuff works dot com and has
52:29
Speaker 1: always joined us at her home on the web. Stuff
52:31
Speaker 1: you Should Know dot com for more on this and
52:38
Speaker 1: thousands of other topics. Does it How stuff works dot com.