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How Search and Rescue Works · Stuff You Should Know

0:00
Speaker 1: Hello, Atlanta and Georgia and surrounding states and heck the world.
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Speaker 1: It is stuff you should know. So what can people expect,
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Speaker 1: so Chuck, they can expect all the glorious nous of
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Speaker 1: G A. Yeah, it's gonna be pretty cool everyone. And
0:44
Speaker 1: it is December eight at the wonderful Center Stage Theater
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Speaker 1: here in Atlanta, where I have seen various shows over
0:51
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1:02
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1:07
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Speaker 1: us in Atlanta for our one time only Christmas special.
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Speaker 1: That's right, they go and sale this Friday, so don't
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Speaker 1: snooze or you will lose. Welcome to stuff you should
1:40
Speaker 1: know from house stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome
1:49
Speaker 1: to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, There's Charles w Chuck Bryant,
1:53
Speaker 1: and wait for it, there is first time ever guest
1:57
Speaker 1: producer Dylan First on first time. I confirmed it with him.
2:01
Speaker 1: He's nodding. He said, we're the only show here that
2:04
Speaker 1: he hasn't guested as a producer on. So the band
2:08
Speaker 1: has been lifted finally. I don't know if it was
2:12
Speaker 1: it was his band. They finally warmed down. But you know,
2:15
Speaker 1: he's the regular producer on Afro Punk Solution Sessions, Yes,
2:20
Speaker 1: which is pretty awesome podcast hosted by our pals Eve
2:24
Speaker 1: Jeff Cote and I didn't pronounce the s on Eves
2:27
Speaker 1: but it's Eaves and verified this and bridget Todd from
2:31
Speaker 1: stuff Mom never told you bridgets Todd. But they do um.
2:38
Speaker 1: They kind of present like you know, afro punk, like
2:40
Speaker 1: the tour, the Musical Tour, the Awesome Musical Tour. Um.
2:45
Speaker 1: They have like a side thing called Solution Sessions and
2:48
Speaker 1: it's kind of like um Ted Talks, but for um
2:53
Speaker 1: so first for significant things that get overlooked generally, so
2:58
Speaker 1: like race centric stuff, reproductive rights or things like that.
3:02
Speaker 1: It's pretty awesome. It's good and you can get it anywhere.
3:05
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, look at that. Well we gotta pay him somehow.
3:10
Speaker 1: I was just gonna slide him my half warm sparkling
3:14
Speaker 1: water as payment. No, I've got a cold one here.
3:18
Speaker 1: Oh yeah yeah, how do you get those out of
3:20
Speaker 1: the fridge? So chuck um before we get started again.
3:25
Speaker 1: A couple other things. There are two episodes in here
3:29
Speaker 1: that I want to do separately. Okay, h a bit,
3:32
Speaker 1: I can guess them Civil Air Patrol, know what? Sure,
3:37
Speaker 1: But that wasn't one of them. Well that was one
3:39
Speaker 1: of mine. Okay, so there's three and this is a
3:41
Speaker 1: media episode. What's the other one? Then? I don't know oh,
3:45
Speaker 1: you know it scuba or we already did Scuba Cat?
3:49
Speaker 1: We did? I forgot about him. Did you interview the
3:51
Speaker 1: guy who who made Scuba Cat swim around? Yeah? And
3:55
Speaker 1: it's funny. We often mentioned Jackhammers is our worst show ever.
3:58
Speaker 1: I forgot it's Scuba Cat? Is it? You go back
4:01
Speaker 1: and listen. No, but it's got to be the worst, right,
4:04
Speaker 1: we'll have to have like a listening party. That was
4:07
Speaker 1: like not even a thing. We'll listen to Jack Hammerson
4:09
Speaker 1: Scuba Cat. It was, well, it was the thing. It
4:11
Speaker 1: was that one cat. Yeah, and I guess we can
4:13
Speaker 1: just come out and say now that Discovery Channel made
4:16
Speaker 1: us do that. That's like kind of one of the
4:18
Speaker 1: only times we were steamrolled. That's funny. Otherwise we have autonomy.
4:22
Speaker 1: I don't know if that was being steamrolled as much
4:24
Speaker 1: as Rick rolled. Well, now, I don't even know what
4:27
Speaker 1: you're gonna pick it in, all right, I'll tell you then,
4:29
Speaker 1: No more suspense for you, um Coast Guard. No, I
4:34
Speaker 1: don't feel like you know me at all anymore. I
4:36
Speaker 1: don't search and rescue dogs. Oh they're like, dude, I
4:42
Speaker 1: looked at the article. It's at least as big as
4:43
Speaker 1: this one all right, robust, and they don't have a
4:46
Speaker 1: lot of overlap. It's not like doing recycling twice or
4:49
Speaker 1: anything like that. And the other one is getting lost.
4:53
Speaker 1: Oh well, that's esoteric, right right. I didn't expect you
4:57
Speaker 1: to guess the loss time. I thought you'd get searching
4:59
Speaker 1: rescue dogs. But there's a whole psychology getting lost, and
5:02
Speaker 1: this is about finding people. I want to talk about
5:04
Speaker 1: getting lost. Sometimes it's just too much to put onto
5:07
Speaker 1: this one. So it's going to be its own episode, okay,
5:10
Speaker 1: and all your mark Civil Air Patrol because fellow network
5:16
Speaker 1: host colleague John Roderick of omnibus is or was a
5:21
Speaker 1: member of the Civil Air Patrol? Is he mary yet? No, no, no,
5:25
Speaker 1: because that'd be something like the flying Mayor of Seattle.
5:29
Speaker 1: You'd love to be the flying but even still, remember
5:32
Speaker 1: the Civil Air Patrol. It's pretty interesting. So he flies?
5:34
Speaker 1: Uh did? I don't know if he's current, but Roderick is.
5:37
Speaker 1: He has a very interesting pass. I'd be well, it's
5:40
Speaker 1: an interesting It would be kind of fun to do
5:41
Speaker 1: Civil Air Patrol and pick his brain. Okay, let's do
5:44
Speaker 1: his weird brain, alright, flying brain. So we have our
5:49
Speaker 1: two organic show plugs in. Yeah, so we're talking today
5:55
Speaker 1: about s search and rescue. I forgot I wrote this.
6:00
Speaker 1: You did write it back in like a million years ago. Yeah,
6:03
Speaker 1: that's when I was. Um. I was so excited to
6:06
Speaker 1: be the adventure writer. You wrote a bunch of adventure stuff,
6:09
Speaker 1: and I was named adventure writer. Here's the funny part
6:13
Speaker 1: of this story. I was named adventure writer. I was
6:15
Speaker 1: really excited. Then, after a while of doing this stuff
6:19
Speaker 1: before the podcast, I went into an unnamed boss I
6:24
Speaker 1: know this story and said like, hey, man, I really
6:27
Speaker 1: think that, Like I'm kind of wondering about the future
6:30
Speaker 1: here and where where I could go and if I
6:33
Speaker 1: could work my way up somehow to do things. And
6:35
Speaker 1: he he very politely, was like, I think this is
6:38
Speaker 1: kind of the deal, and like there is not much
6:40
Speaker 1: of the future here beyond writing these articles. And then
6:45
Speaker 1: that same dude would change my life tossing a podcast
6:49
Speaker 1: our way. That funny how things work out, It is hilarious.
6:52
Speaker 1: No future here, right. I think he even put a
6:56
Speaker 1: cigarette out in front of you. On my hand. It
6:58
Speaker 1: was really painful. So but a reminder. Still, but you
7:02
Speaker 1: wrote some good stuff. The survival stuff is is good.
7:05
Speaker 1: We have more to to dig through. I appreciate it.
7:08
Speaker 1: I was nervous going into when I saw this was
7:11
Speaker 1: my article from back then. I was like, oh man,
7:14
Speaker 1: this is gonna steak. But it was actually a decent article.
7:17
Speaker 1: It was It was an expansive article too. There's a
7:20
Speaker 1: lot of stuff to it because there's a lot of
7:22
Speaker 1: stuff to search and rescue. There's a lot of different
7:25
Speaker 1: kinds of search and rescue, right, I mean, you know,
7:28
Speaker 1: now I feel like the sham is up because you
7:30
Speaker 1: already know all this stuff, so I can't tell you anything.
7:32
Speaker 1: I guess I'll tell you guys who are listening to
7:34
Speaker 1: the podcast. But there's a lot of different types of
7:37
Speaker 1: search and rescue. Right. There's urban search and rescue, which
7:40
Speaker 1: happens after say like like nine eleven. Yep. I've also
7:45
Speaker 1: seen it us and are really yeah, it's a little
7:49
Speaker 1: it is um. There's like marine or water rescue, which
7:53
Speaker 1: is usually the one that kind of comes to mind
7:55
Speaker 1: when I think of like military rescue. But then there's
7:57
Speaker 1: like combat rescue, like the Scotto anything which will touch
8:01
Speaker 1: on UM. And then there's like the normal search and
8:04
Speaker 1: rescue I think a lot of people think of, which
8:06
Speaker 1: is somebody getting lost in the woods or their desert
8:09
Speaker 1: or something, and a bunch of sheriff's deputies kind of
8:11
Speaker 1: spread out and start looking for you deputies and just people. Yes,
8:16
Speaker 1: did you know that before you research this article, that
8:19
Speaker 1: people like dedicate themselves to spend their own money to
8:22
Speaker 1: up on training and equipment and things. Yeah. The reason
8:25
Speaker 1: I know that is because, um my dad had a
8:28
Speaker 1: touch of this um when he owned a jeep years ago,
8:32
Speaker 1: and I told stories about him going out on snowy
8:35
Speaker 1: days and using his toe innch to pull people out
8:37
Speaker 1: of ditches. So that was I was just aware of
8:41
Speaker 1: their being a general like thing with certain outdoors people
8:46
Speaker 1: where there they had like they like to get in
8:48
Speaker 1: in there and volunteer, and if they hear someone's trapped
8:52
Speaker 1: in the woods near their house, they're out there. Like
8:55
Speaker 1: I knew they existed, but there's like an actual pro
9:00
Speaker 1: sess you can go through and become a registered like searcher. Yeah,
9:05
Speaker 1: And I think some of these people are just do
9:06
Speaker 1: gooders and some of them maybe we're like man, I
9:10
Speaker 1: never was able to become the uh, the wilderness firefighter
9:15
Speaker 1: that I wanted to be or the paramedic maybe, And
9:18
Speaker 1: so I'm going to get the state to force them
9:20
Speaker 1: to hang out with me while we like this is
9:22
Speaker 1: how can live out that unfulfilled? Uh I was about
9:26
Speaker 1: to say fantasy, but that means it unfulfilled, you know,
9:30
Speaker 1: desire dream, all of them. And then there's the last
9:33
Speaker 1: group of people who are like, I want to see
9:34
Speaker 1: a dead body in the woods. They start joining star Man.
9:39
Speaker 1: Don't get teamed up with that guy. It doesn't always
9:42
Speaker 1: and that always the way, though it doesn't always work out,
9:45
Speaker 1: is the thing. Sometimes search and rescue becomes searching recovery. Yeah,
9:49
Speaker 1: but uh, I mean most of this applies to it
9:52
Speaker 1: as well, because search and rescue typically starts out as
9:55
Speaker 1: or searching recovery starts out as search and rescue. Right,
9:59
Speaker 1: there's always it's kind of neat, like, if you think
10:01
Speaker 1: about it, there's really no better quick sketch of humanity
10:07
Speaker 1: than a group of people who have never met some
10:10
Speaker 1: the person they're looking for, take their time and effort
10:13
Speaker 1: and put themselves in peril to go try to find
10:16
Speaker 1: somebody who's missing and starts out on the hopes that
10:20
Speaker 1: they're still alive. Yeah, and that a lot of times
10:23
Speaker 1: what we were talking about there is like the um
10:25
Speaker 1: someone was hiking and got lost, and these people kind
10:28
Speaker 1: of regularly go out and do this. Uh. But then
10:31
Speaker 1: the stuff that really gets me is like the Missing Child,
10:35
Speaker 1: where entire communities come together to form you know, quarter
10:40
Speaker 1: mile long lines walking through a field or the forest together.
10:46
Speaker 1: That's the stuff. This is like, Man, I can't even
10:48
Speaker 1: take it. Yeah, you know, way to bring it down, Chuck, Hey,
10:53
Speaker 1: that's what I'm here. So uh so okay, so let's
10:56
Speaker 1: start at the start. So, if you if you wanted
10:59
Speaker 1: to be a I don't. I guess there's a it's professional, right,
11:03
Speaker 1: If you're in the Coastguard or in the military, and
11:06
Speaker 1: you're trained for this, you're a professional search and rescue person, right.
11:10
Speaker 1: It's not like you have your regular duty and then
11:13
Speaker 1: on the side you get called out for star stuff. Well.
11:16
Speaker 1: I don't know about that. I mean I think I
11:19
Speaker 1: don't think that's necessarily the case. I think the Coast Guard, well,
11:23
Speaker 1: we'll have to find that out. Actually it's I don't
11:25
Speaker 1: think they're sitting around waiting on a rescue. Yeah. The
11:29
Speaker 1: thing is is I saw that the Coastguard rescues in
11:32
Speaker 1: average of a hundred and fourteen people a day, So
11:35
Speaker 1: they're always just rescuing so I wonder if they have
11:37
Speaker 1: like they're just yeah, that's what they do, is some
11:39
Speaker 1: there's their search and rescue. People are searching and rescuing
11:42
Speaker 1: all day every day. I don't know. I'm stimmied right
11:45
Speaker 1: out of the gate. Sorry, man, But we'll we'll start
11:48
Speaker 1: with the Coast Guard because they're actually the heart of
11:51
Speaker 1: search and rescue. They've been doing this for at least
11:53
Speaker 1: fifty years now. Yeah. I mean, there's a school in Yorktown,
11:56
Speaker 1: Virginia called the National Star School, and it's operated by
12:01
Speaker 1: the Air Force and the Coast Guard. And their motto
12:04
Speaker 1: is really great, always ready comma that others may live.
12:09
Speaker 1: And I believe a couple of years ago they celebrated
12:12
Speaker 1: their fiftieth anniversary. Is a school, yeah, because when I
12:18
Speaker 1: wrote this, I believe it was the anniversary. Yea, the
12:21
Speaker 1: most recent. This thing is so old. You were talking
12:23
Speaker 1: about a change that Noel was undertaking in two thousand nine.
12:27
Speaker 1: In future tents like nine comes around. If it does,
12:32
Speaker 1: the gray beard hairs are really showing. Uh. So they
12:37
Speaker 1: have three simultaneous classes of students going on at this
12:40
Speaker 1: our school at all times, and their goal is a
12:44
Speaker 1: program is uh to say at least of people and
12:50
Speaker 1: of property that's at risk. Pretty good goal. Yeah, And
12:54
Speaker 1: to be ready to be there and ready, I believe
12:57
Speaker 1: within two hours total response time and to be like
13:00
Speaker 1: ready to go within a half hour. Right, so like
13:02
Speaker 1: the moment they're activated to the moment they show up
13:04
Speaker 1: on seeing two hours tops pretty good. Yeah, that's great.
13:08
Speaker 1: And then imagine like rescuing. Let's split the difference. At
13:16
Speaker 1: first it was and they're like that's shooting a little
13:19
Speaker 1: high exactly, but nineties not enough? Yeah, and being uh,
13:23
Speaker 1: you know, going through the test and the physical and
13:26
Speaker 1: mental testing for this is tough. Yeah. So when I
13:30
Speaker 1: was researching this initially, I was thinking like, oh, this
13:33
Speaker 1: is cool or whatever, but I've actually come to admire
13:36
Speaker 1: anybody who does this, not just because they're out doing this,
13:40
Speaker 1: but there's a lot of things that they're doing that
13:41
Speaker 1: I can't. And now we've really entered that thicket, which
13:46
Speaker 1: is like, um, the rescue swimmers test. And so so
13:50
Speaker 1: the whole thing starts out with pull ups, which right there,
13:55
Speaker 1: I'm done. I'll give you three tops, maybe fifteen chin ups?
14:01
Speaker 1: Aren't they the same thing? There? Do you put like
14:03
Speaker 1: the chin on the bar and a chin up it's different.
14:05
Speaker 1: Chin ups are knuckles facing you pull ups or knuckles
14:09
Speaker 1: facing out, So chin up pull up pull ups are harder.
14:14
Speaker 1: Yeah either way, maybe three tops because chin ups you
14:17
Speaker 1: can you know, kick and swing yourself up. But a
14:21
Speaker 1: pull up, especially if you do the Studley arms apart
14:24
Speaker 1: pull up like that number. Yeah, No, mine are like
14:27
Speaker 1: right under my face. Yeah. So, um, you got twenty
14:31
Speaker 1: five of those, followed by a hundred yard obstacle course.
14:35
Speaker 1: I'm assuming it's a pretty rough obstacle course. I haven't
14:37
Speaker 1: seen pictures of it. Yeah, and this is while you're
14:40
Speaker 1: carrying two fifty pound dumbbells. Again, have you ever picked
14:43
Speaker 1: up a fifty pound dumbell? Just once? It's not comfortable,
14:48
Speaker 1: Never do it again, and you especially don't want to
14:49
Speaker 1: do it while you're doing it obstacle course that's the
14:52
Speaker 1: size of a football field, right. Uh So then you're
14:55
Speaker 1: timed while you march one mile and you think big deal.
15:01
Speaker 1: This is after you've already done these other things though,
15:03
Speaker 1: and you're carrying a forty pound rescued letter, which is
15:07
Speaker 1: it's called the Stokes basket too. It's a it's that
15:10
Speaker 1: caged stretcher that you see so often on the news
15:13
Speaker 1: and in the Perfect Storm. I like that movie. It's
15:17
Speaker 1: a great movie. I don't know about great, but it's
15:20
Speaker 1: a good movie. That's good enough. You convinced me. Uh.
15:24
Speaker 1: And then it's still not over because then you get
15:28
Speaker 1: into your rescue harness. You put on your fins and
15:31
Speaker 1: your snorkel, and you swim a third of a mile
15:35
Speaker 1: pulling a victim in one of these rescue letters. You
15:38
Speaker 1: swim a third of a mile to the victim, and
15:40
Speaker 1: then another third of a mile. You gotta do all
15:44
Speaker 1: that in twenty seven minutes. And I think this is
15:46
Speaker 1: after you know, it's not like they're like, all right,
15:48
Speaker 1: we'll go rest a few hours and then you'll do
15:50
Speaker 1: this next part. Plus they make they make you chug
15:53
Speaker 1: a cup of pancake batter at every stop. And so
15:57
Speaker 1: that's just the swimming art. Uh. There's also the inland training,
16:03
Speaker 1: which you gotta learn to climb rocks, you gotta learn
16:05
Speaker 1: to repel. Uh. There's a hundred and eighty pound dummy
16:09
Speaker 1: that they like tangle up in a tree fifty six
16:12
Speaker 1: ft in the air to get it. Yeah, you gotta
16:14
Speaker 1: figure that out. Sometimes they have combo scenarios like this
16:17
Speaker 1: dude's in the tree. This dude's in the water, Like,
16:20
Speaker 1: go figure it out and don't use rocks to get
16:22
Speaker 1: the one out of the tree. No, it doesn't count never. So, Um,
16:27
Speaker 1: that's pretty that's the Coastguard, and I think the Air Force,
16:31
Speaker 1: um go in for that same academy, or maybe all
16:33
Speaker 1: members of the military go to the Coastguard one. I
16:35
Speaker 1: believe yes, so that if you're a military search and
16:39
Speaker 1: rescue person, you train at the Coastguard academy for it, right, right,
16:44
Speaker 1: if you're just a normal everyday person and you want
16:46
Speaker 1: to do it. There are our schools around the country,
16:49
Speaker 1: but they're all private. There's no accreditation. Um. I think
16:55
Speaker 1: it's probably buy or beware in some of those cases,
16:58
Speaker 1: but I also got the impression that there's actual legitimate
17:01
Speaker 1: like s our schools. It's not just somebody who's like
17:03
Speaker 1: thanks for the money, chump, buy or beware as opposed
17:06
Speaker 1: to full guaranteed or your money back, right you will
17:10
Speaker 1: find your first person or all your your tuition is
17:13
Speaker 1: is reimbursed. Uh. And then some of these folks ride horses.
17:18
Speaker 1: It's called mounted star and horses. Even though it's an
17:21
Speaker 1: age old way of getting around or really valuable um
17:26
Speaker 1: in search and rescue for quite a few reasons. Yeah. Like,
17:31
Speaker 1: first of all, their horses, so I can go farther
17:34
Speaker 1: than your dumb human meat body. Sure. Plus they're nice
17:37
Speaker 1: to have around as well. They're nice to have around,
17:39
Speaker 1: and they can get you to places where you could
17:43
Speaker 1: kind of walk, but you probably shouldn't be walking. A
17:45
Speaker 1: horse might be a little more sure footed or a donkey.
17:48
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, and um yeah, I like how you said,
17:52
Speaker 1: if you've been sitting in the lab analyzing stuff for
17:55
Speaker 1: the last few years, you might benefit from riding a
17:58
Speaker 1: horse out to a search of riscue you location. Yeah,
18:01
Speaker 1: I mean that's a movie seen waiting to happen, if
18:04
Speaker 1: it hasn't already. It is. Um Wayne Night just griping
18:08
Speaker 1: all mad that he's being dragged out into the woods, right,
18:11
Speaker 1: but then they put him on the horse. He's backwards
18:13
Speaker 1: on the horse. Somebody stop this thing. Uh. The other
18:16
Speaker 1: thing you can do, obviously, the horse is a lot
18:18
Speaker 1: stronger than a person. So if you need a rescue
18:22
Speaker 1: leader towed up the side or you know, pulled up
18:25
Speaker 1: the side of a cliff, you can attach it to
18:27
Speaker 1: a horse and then then you're gonna tell him about
18:29
Speaker 1: the radio thing. I never thought of this. It's good.
18:31
Speaker 1: Go ahead. So you can station horses in position along
18:35
Speaker 1: a route when you get further and further into the woods.
18:38
Speaker 1: And if you keep a radio transmitter on each one,
18:40
Speaker 1: it acts as like a radio relay network. Just install
18:44
Speaker 1: a bluetooth into a horse's ear, tin horses ears and
18:49
Speaker 1: you've got coms. Not bad, It isn't bad at all.
18:53
Speaker 1: I feel like we should take a break. All right,
18:56
Speaker 1: let's do that and we'll talk about urban SAR right
18:59
Speaker 1: after this. All right, ma'am. So we're talking about you
19:24
Speaker 1: sare or US and R yes, depending on who you're
19:28
Speaker 1: talking to. This is um. This is a whole different
19:32
Speaker 1: type of fish settle of fish um. When you're talking
19:36
Speaker 1: about urban starro is not woods. It's not like cliffs,
19:40
Speaker 1: it's not the ocean. It is enormous skyscrapers that have
19:44
Speaker 1: crumbled in on themselves and there you're sure that there
19:47
Speaker 1: are people trapped inside and you have to figure out
19:50
Speaker 1: how to get into these this rubble and get them
19:53
Speaker 1: out without getting killed yourself. Yeah, and this is a
19:57
Speaker 1: division of FEMA. UM probably should come no surprise and
20:01
Speaker 1: believe in n is when they set this up. The
20:05
Speaker 1: National Response plan for disasters and they have twenty five
20:09
Speaker 1: national use AR task forces and in the case of
20:13
Speaker 1: a flood or earthquake, what else hurricane, plane crash, has met, spills, tornadoes,
20:20
Speaker 1: any natural disaster, a terrorist attack. Um, I think they
20:26
Speaker 1: they They were all called out for the Oklahoma City bombing. UM,
20:30
Speaker 1: definitely nine eleven, UM, Katrina. They were integral and UM
20:36
Speaker 1: some of the bigger ones that you can list off.
20:38
Speaker 1: Basically every single one of these task forces was called
20:42
Speaker 1: in to the to to assist. Yeah, and assist is
20:46
Speaker 1: the key word there, because they are supporting UH local
20:51
Speaker 1: and state emergency systems who generally take the lead in
20:54
Speaker 1: these cases. Thirty one people I think per team for
20:59
Speaker 1: a US OUR task force. And how many did they deployed?
21:03
Speaker 1: Twenty of these on nine eleven, like right out of
21:07
Speaker 1: the gate. Yeah, I think all of them except for
21:10
Speaker 1: Virginia was activated in Virginia's was at the Pentagon instead,
21:15
Speaker 1: but like the rest of them were in New York
21:17
Speaker 1: for nine eleven. It was just I was reading a
21:20
Speaker 1: in firsthand account from a Star Team member at nine
21:25
Speaker 1: eleven and they were just like it was this utter chaos,
21:27
Speaker 1: Like the people who were in charge were all dead
21:29
Speaker 1: when the second tower collapsed. Um, there was just like
21:34
Speaker 1: he said, there was just a total leadership vacuum that
21:36
Speaker 1: got filled pretty quickly. But I've never seen anything like
21:39
Speaker 1: this before. It was nuts. But the just the way
21:42
Speaker 1: that they had to improvise was pretty pretty astounding. Oh yeah,
21:46
Speaker 1: And there's all sort of secondary dangers you know, after
21:49
Speaker 1: a building like that collapses, the well, I mean, I
21:52
Speaker 1: guess we can talk about a little bit, but I
21:54
Speaker 1: mean everything from hazardous materials leaking to you know, electricity
22:00
Speaker 1: down to electricity that could you know shock and kill
22:02
Speaker 1: you too, water mains bursting and you know, filling up
22:07
Speaker 1: spaces and drowning people. It's like there every single front
22:11
Speaker 1: you can imagine they're attacking. So one of the first
22:14
Speaker 1: things they do. UM. Again, every every UM search and
22:18
Speaker 1: rescue situation or every disaster is actually operated initially by
22:23
Speaker 1: the local cops. That's who runs search and rescue, and
22:27
Speaker 1: like you said, femas there to assist, and usually the
22:30
Speaker 1: state agencies are there to assist too. But UM, one
22:33
Speaker 1: of the first things that happens when femas UM you
22:36
Speaker 1: saw our teams come on the scene is they have
22:38
Speaker 1: like structural engineers who are licensed professional engineers who have
22:43
Speaker 1: experience in construction or inspection or something like that, who
22:47
Speaker 1: come in and say they look at this. So once
22:50
Speaker 1: this was a nice, tidy structure. Now it's a different
22:53
Speaker 1: kind of structure and it's not tidy at all, and
22:56
Speaker 1: there's a lot of hidden dangers. But their job is
22:58
Speaker 1: to come in and assess the the structure of the
23:01
Speaker 1: rubble and figure out how to create safe passage into
23:05
Speaker 1: this thing. And they it's pretty amazing that they can
23:08
Speaker 1: do it at all. Yeah, and yeah, you mentioned the dogs,
23:11
Speaker 1: so we won't get too heavy into that, but um,
23:14
Speaker 1: I believe that the largest deployment of dogs in history
23:18
Speaker 1: was for nine eleven. Yeah, I think at least, Yeah,
23:20
Speaker 1: search and rescue dogs. It worked twelve hours at a time.
23:24
Speaker 1: All right, that's enough about search and rescue dogs and
23:28
Speaker 1: I value them, Can I say that? Sure? That's that's
23:32
Speaker 1: no big news, No, take it back. So, um, one
23:36
Speaker 1: of the ways you want to talk about what they
23:38
Speaker 1: do when they come into these structures and figure out
23:40
Speaker 1: what to do. Sure, I didn't know this, I guess
23:44
Speaker 1: I had never thought about what they would do. But
23:46
Speaker 1: there there are kevlar bags that you can put underneath
23:51
Speaker 1: up the seventy ton pieces of like concrete or metal
23:56
Speaker 1: or whatever and inflate them and it will actually lift
23:59
Speaker 1: them up to like almost two feet off of the ground.
24:02
Speaker 1: It's pretty amazing. And then once you have that, you
24:05
Speaker 1: start to shore it up. You put in steel beams
24:07
Speaker 1: and then or would depending on how heavy whatever you're
24:10
Speaker 1: lifting is, and you actually start to create basically like
24:14
Speaker 1: an old timey like Minor forty nine or mine shaft
24:19
Speaker 1: into this place, just shoring up and lifting and shoring
24:22
Speaker 1: up and along the way to to stabilize the structure.
24:27
Speaker 1: And then once you have entry into this place, then
24:30
Speaker 1: you start sending in different kinds of rescuers. So you've
24:35
Speaker 1: got like the medics who go in. You have people
24:38
Speaker 1: who are sending cameras or listening devices um to to
24:42
Speaker 1: try to find survivors. You've got the people who are
24:44
Speaker 1: testing the air quality to make sure that the air
24:47
Speaker 1: conditions are the conditions of the air aren't like deadly. Yeah,
24:52
Speaker 1: I mean, can you imagine this is all like you're
24:56
Speaker 1: you're on the clock too, so like you have to
24:58
Speaker 1: make sure it's safe to go in there, so you're
25:00
Speaker 1: just not killing people that are going in to rescue
25:04
Speaker 1: and but at the same time you're trying to get
25:06
Speaker 1: people out of there. You're not just like, let me
25:08
Speaker 1: go investigate the scene and what's going on down there.
25:10
Speaker 1: It's like you're on a timer, but you have to
25:13
Speaker 1: make sure it's done safely too. It's just like, I
25:15
Speaker 1: can't imagine how overwhelming that must be, rescue effort leader. Yeah,
25:20
Speaker 1: because there are people who are running this whole show,
25:23
Speaker 1: doing their logistics people. There are people who are overseeing
25:26
Speaker 1: everybody and making sure that this whole chaotic scene is
25:28
Speaker 1: running smoothly. I can't imagine a more stressful job, especially
25:33
Speaker 1: having that clock taking on lives, just just draining away,
25:38
Speaker 1: just hanging over your head. That's just nuts. And people
25:40
Speaker 1: do this. Yeah, and you, like you said, you've got
25:43
Speaker 1: has Matt specialists there. You might have to suit up
25:46
Speaker 1: yourself before you go in. You might have heard on
25:49
Speaker 1: your listening device or from a camera that some people
25:51
Speaker 1: are trapped like hundred feet into a place you can't
25:54
Speaker 1: even get so you send them like breathing tubes, or
25:58
Speaker 1: you might send a rescue letter down there and say,
26:00
Speaker 1: if you can get in this thing and strap yourself in,
26:02
Speaker 1: we may be able to pull you out because we
26:05
Speaker 1: can't get in, do you write? But at the same time,
26:08
Speaker 1: you have like heavy equipment operators running like cranes and
26:12
Speaker 1: bulldozers trying to like pick off the pieces that the
26:15
Speaker 1: structural engineers and said like you can get ready to
26:17
Speaker 1: that one. Get and they'll they'll like lift them up
26:20
Speaker 1: and move them and try to remove as much stuff
26:22
Speaker 1: as they can. But yeah, all again, all this the
26:25
Speaker 1: clock is ticking. Do you remember the I think it
26:28
Speaker 1: was the Bay Bridge collapse in San Francisco during the
26:31
Speaker 1: World Series and I think the earthquake, Yeah, it just
26:35
Speaker 1: so happened. San Francisco is playing Oakland in the World
26:38
Speaker 1: Series and that that earthquake happened, And do you remember,
26:41
Speaker 1: like the whole the top deck just fell down onto
26:44
Speaker 1: the other deck on top of people in their cars,
26:46
Speaker 1: and like some people survived. It's amazing that there are
26:49
Speaker 1: people out there that, like I would just start crying
26:53
Speaker 1: in place and huddle in a corner, but there are
26:57
Speaker 1: people out there that can stay calm enough and are
27:00
Speaker 1: experienced enough to just be like, all right, well this
27:02
Speaker 1: is what we do starting right now. Man. Yeah, those
27:07
Speaker 1: are the people who slap people like you and me
27:09
Speaker 1: and tell us to snap out of it. Share shares.
27:12
Speaker 1: One of those people, and maybe some of those people think,
27:15
Speaker 1: can you imagine sitting there and talking about our job,
27:18
Speaker 1: right and uh, explaining what we do? How perilous that
27:22
Speaker 1: is for these two. That's right. I got a paper
27:26
Speaker 1: cut earlier. I wasn't gonna say anything about it. It
27:28
Speaker 1: was rough. Help prove your point. We should shout out
27:32
Speaker 1: the Civil Air Patrol though, even though I do want
27:34
Speaker 1: to do a show on that. Um, they are a
27:36
Speaker 1: nonprofit with more than I don't know what the numbers
27:39
Speaker 1: are now, but when I wrote this, there were more
27:42
Speaker 1: than fifty five thousand civilian pilots and cadets, and they
27:46
Speaker 1: since have supplemented our own military's aviation. Uh. It's pretty
27:53
Speaker 1: neat and like Roderick was a he was pretty young
27:55
Speaker 1: when he did this too. I guess he was a cadet.
27:58
Speaker 1: I got you that you my guess. I'll bet you
28:01
Speaker 1: have the most polished shoes you've ever seen. I'll have
28:04
Speaker 1: to ask him about it, because I've never I've never
28:06
Speaker 1: actually spoken with him at length about it. Yeah, I
28:08
Speaker 1: think it was a it's civilians, right, okay, And it
28:12
Speaker 1: was originally supposed to be like we're the liaison between
28:16
Speaker 1: the Air Force and and the rest of civilian America.
28:20
Speaker 1: But then they said, hey, we think there's some Nazi
28:22
Speaker 1: submarines off the coast of Maine. Can you start dropping
28:25
Speaker 1: bombs too? And they said, getty up. Oh, I'm sure
28:28
Speaker 1: they were delighted. They started dropping bombs in depth charges
28:31
Speaker 1: in World War Two and things were never the same
28:33
Speaker 1: after that. Yeah, so Civil Air Patrol, your day is coming. Okay, sorry,
28:38
Speaker 1: I just gave a little more information if you want
28:40
Speaker 1: to go back and edit that out. So we talked
28:44
Speaker 1: a little bit about some of the equipments are um,
28:46
Speaker 1: you saw I should say carries with them, but it's impressive.
28:51
Speaker 1: And again, if you were a mayor and your local
28:55
Speaker 1: sheriff for your local police chief for the police commission
28:57
Speaker 1: called you and said, um, we had a building collapse
29:00
Speaker 1: and we need some help. You call the governor and
29:03
Speaker 1: the governor says, ah, well, we'll see what we can do,
29:06
Speaker 1: but we think this is a federal thing. They call
29:08
Speaker 1: the president and the President says, FEMA, good on there,
29:12
Speaker 1: and FEMA comes free of charge with trade tractor trailers
29:17
Speaker 1: full of supplies. From what I saw, it's about one
29:21
Speaker 1: point just one Task Forces equipment is like a one
29:26
Speaker 1: point four million dollar package of sixteen thousand, four hundred
29:31
Speaker 1: pieces of equipment, everything from like medical supplies, the generators,
29:35
Speaker 1: to the bulldozers to everything. And they just show up
29:37
Speaker 1: and say, how can we help. You're in charge, how
29:40
Speaker 1: can we help? Yeah, And it's almost like, uh, all
29:43
Speaker 1: the mundane things of assembling. It's like assembling a film
29:47
Speaker 1: shoot or something. You're like, well, these people have to eat,
29:49
Speaker 1: they have to go to the bathroom. Like yeah, they
29:53
Speaker 1: need to sleep, they need to rest. Uh, so you
29:55
Speaker 1: have to set up like a little a village, like
29:58
Speaker 1: in the case of a nine eleven or any major
30:00
Speaker 1: disaster like that. Um. Yeah, I mean it's pretty astounding,
30:04
Speaker 1: like the one. I imagine this list grows daily, uh,
30:09
Speaker 1: because the one thing you don't want to ever happen
30:11
Speaker 1: is to be on the scene of was something of
30:13
Speaker 1: a natural disaster and be like give me the the thing.
30:17
Speaker 1: They're like, oh, we didn't back that thing. Why not? Well,
30:20
Speaker 1: I like it's a nice round number. But like you said,
30:25
Speaker 1: everything from like chainsaws and jackammers to like bolt cutters
30:29
Speaker 1: and porta potties, which we did an episode on. We'll
30:34
Speaker 1: probably do on on bolt cutters. One day twenty years
30:36
Speaker 1: from now, we did one on jackammers. Did uh should
30:40
Speaker 1: we talk about a SAR yeah, um eron c Yeah.
30:45
Speaker 1: So this is where the the extraordinarily trained rescue swimmers
30:51
Speaker 1: and divers come into play. Yeah, this is amazing. I
30:54
Speaker 1: think it's the STATU got in here. Was it has
30:57
Speaker 1: a fift dropout rate. Yeah, look to go to the school.
31:01
Speaker 1: There's there's like higher you know, spending in the ear No.
31:04
Speaker 1: I mean there's there's other military schools that have higher
31:07
Speaker 1: wash out rates, but not many. Yeah, it's mostly special forces.
31:12
Speaker 1: I think the Ranger school typically has about the same
31:14
Speaker 1: wash out rate as the uh, the rescue diver school,
31:18
Speaker 1: re excuse swimmer school. It's it's substantial. Like you there's
31:22
Speaker 1: a really good chance you're not gonna make it, actually
31:24
Speaker 1: a fifty percent chance you're not gonna make it. The
31:27
Speaker 1: Coast Guard says that, And this is pretty interesting. Of
31:32
Speaker 1: all sea rescues are less than twenty miles from shore,
31:35
Speaker 1: and nine of these are only rescue. Um. Thankfully, because
31:39
Speaker 1: of all of our distress beacons that we're armed with
31:43
Speaker 1: these days, like you can usually well nine of the time,
31:48
Speaker 1: you can find these people pretty quickly. At least. Yeah,
31:50
Speaker 1: and the Coast Guard, and I don't remember exactly when
31:54
Speaker 1: it was, but they updated the um distress system that
31:58
Speaker 1: they had since the seventy s where you called in
32:01
Speaker 1: on a radio frequency and said made a made a
32:03
Speaker 1: and tried to give your position. Maybe you had a
32:06
Speaker 1: beacon that was operating on that frequency that they could
32:08
Speaker 1: try to track. They updated all that with something called
32:11
Speaker 1: Rescue twenty one is in the century. That's way more
32:15
Speaker 1: sophisticated than it was before. And so now they still
32:19
Speaker 1: monitor that channel for for voice may days. But if
32:22
Speaker 1: you press your beacon, it's it enters this vast computer
32:29
Speaker 1: and communications network that the Coast Guard maintains in at
32:33
Speaker 1: least a twenty mile area outside of all of America's shores,
32:37
Speaker 1: and um it's you're gonna get their attention pretty quick. Yeah,
32:41
Speaker 1: and uh, these beacons now they operate at four and
32:45
Speaker 1: six mega hurts. That's the newer standard. Oh no, they
32:49
Speaker 1: will as of two thousand nine one day. Um Man,
32:55
Speaker 1: I was a young man when I wrote this. Jeez,
32:57
Speaker 1: just a little pup, just a little pup. These things
33:00
Speaker 1: are manually activated a lot of times, but they can
33:02
Speaker 1: also be automatically activated. So like if it hits water,
33:06
Speaker 1: like not if you spill water on it, but that's
33:09
Speaker 1: that's submerged in water, like the boat is sinking, it'll
33:12
Speaker 1: automatically activate. Or and this is cool, it's if it
33:16
Speaker 1: goes above a certain g force, then that means bad
33:19
Speaker 1: things have happened. Don't take it on a roller coaster.
33:22
Speaker 1: One thing I saw about that Rescue twenty one is
33:24
Speaker 1: one of the updates that they made too. It was
33:26
Speaker 1: it has geo locating now, so they can tell where
33:29
Speaker 1: a distressed call is actually coming from. Yeah, like it's
33:32
Speaker 1: satellite been pointed right. Um, But that actually does away
33:38
Speaker 1: with the prank calls of yesteryear. People would actually prank
33:43
Speaker 1: called distress calls into the Coastguard. That's so expensive, and
33:46
Speaker 1: now they can be like, we can see you're calling
33:48
Speaker 1: from Nevada. You're not out on the Pacific Ocean right now.
33:51
Speaker 1: You jerk in that terrible Can you imagine leading the
33:55
Speaker 1: Coastguard in a wild goose chase? What kind of jerk
33:57
Speaker 1: would you have to be? Are you like some sort
33:59
Speaker 1: of of unstable search and rescue guys, Like, let's get
34:03
Speaker 1: out there. It's like the arsonists who are also firefighters.
34:08
Speaker 1: Very interesting, I thought so too. And then one more
34:12
Speaker 1: thing about the distressed beacons. There's a new so the
34:15
Speaker 1: weather satellites that Noah operates, NASA has onboard instrumentation that
34:21
Speaker 1: they have an a star office themselves. NASA does, and
34:24
Speaker 1: their whole thing is basically tracking human beings through their beacons.
34:29
Speaker 1: Hopefully just through their beacons and not through like I
34:31
Speaker 1: don't know, their cell phones. But now if you press
34:34
Speaker 1: your beacon, it immediately goes up and immediately gets shot
34:37
Speaker 1: out to the rest of the um. There's actually a
34:40
Speaker 1: global search and rescue network, so wherever you are in
34:43
Speaker 1: the world, that distress signal will be spread out. And
34:47
Speaker 1: then in the meantime, as they're getting their resources together,
34:51
Speaker 1: they can start to try to find where you are.
34:54
Speaker 1: But they get their attention almost instantanea instantaneously now thanks
34:59
Speaker 1: to NASA. Yeah, and then eventually the beacons will will
35:04
Speaker 1: be that instantaneous and also give out your coordinates down
35:07
Speaker 1: to something like a hundred hundred meters. I thought you're
35:10
Speaker 1: gonna say, eventually it will predict your disaster. No, eventually,
35:15
Speaker 1: it'll just shoot a tractor beam down onto you, pill
35:18
Speaker 1: you up to the satellite, and it'll it'll land you
35:20
Speaker 1: at Edwards Air Force Base and serve you a nice
35:23
Speaker 1: hot meal and send you on your way. That's the future,
35:27
Speaker 1: all right. So combats are is next? And uh, I
35:33
Speaker 1: don't know. I just I don't think about this stuff
35:35
Speaker 1: a lot because I generally just think of the military
35:38
Speaker 1: is like, well, they just do everything. I thought that
35:41
Speaker 1: Gene Hackman assembled like ragtag groups of people that go
35:45
Speaker 1: in behind enemy lines. Like ten years later, I thought,
35:47
Speaker 1: that's how we did it. What was that? Uncommon? Valid?
35:51
Speaker 1: Maybe one of the best post Vietnam movies of all time?
35:56
Speaker 1: I don't know about that. Have you seen it lately?
35:58
Speaker 1: I saw it within the last probably five of yours. Really, Yeah, dude,
36:01
Speaker 1: it's good A right that I'm not a gun guy,
36:04
Speaker 1: but when that guy um gives Gene Hackman the menu
36:09
Speaker 1: of the like heavy artillery, it's still pretty cool when
36:15
Speaker 1: you see it, Like I would take that one and
36:18
Speaker 1: that one. It's so funny, Like I think, I don't know,
36:22
Speaker 1: we're not gun guys at all, yet the notion of
36:24
Speaker 1: a gun menu just lights us up. What is that
36:27
Speaker 1: all about? There's some part of our brain just brainwashing
36:30
Speaker 1: from movies. Yeah, probably, I guess, you know, sure, that's
36:34
Speaker 1: my guess. Alright, So c sar they're there. They're basically
36:38
Speaker 1: kind of the first people to arrive behind enemy lines
36:42
Speaker 1: and in the course of battle, and the U. S.
36:45
Speaker 1: Air Force takes lead in this situation. So anytime there's
36:50
Speaker 1: like a Scott O Grady situation where someone has let's say,
36:54
Speaker 1: ejected from their jet behind enemy lines, dude on fire. Yeah,
37:00
Speaker 1: that's the worst case scenario probably, Um, that is when
37:04
Speaker 1: c s are really uh earns their metal. Yeah, you know,
37:08
Speaker 1: and you, I mean, the story of Scotto Grady kind
37:10
Speaker 1: of says it all right, Um, it's their metal test,
37:13
Speaker 1: their metal to eventually earn a metal. What I meant, yea,
37:19
Speaker 1: I think you got it all together. So, Um, I
37:24
Speaker 1: think the Air Force still is tasked with combat search
37:27
Speaker 1: and rescue, but they're starting to do it jointly with
37:31
Speaker 1: the army I think as well. But they have um,
37:34
Speaker 1: what it called expeditionary rescue squadrons. That is the name
37:39
Speaker 1: of the people that you want coming after you. Yeah, Um,
37:43
Speaker 1: and they go in, like you said, behind enemy lines, Um,
37:47
Speaker 1: under a tremendous amount of danger. There's usually two helicopters. Um.
37:52
Speaker 1: One goes in and actually airlifts the person out. The
37:55
Speaker 1: other helicopter is there to like shot shoot at people, yeah,
37:58
Speaker 1: and be like stay back, stay back, um, because this
38:01
Speaker 1: is the like again, it's behind enemy lines, one of
38:04
Speaker 1: your pilots has been shot down. When you guys have
38:06
Speaker 1: gotten lost or captured or something, these are the people
38:09
Speaker 1: who go in and get them. Yeah. They have planes
38:12
Speaker 1: to long range search planes like the h C one
38:15
Speaker 1: thirty which can actually refuel these helicopters to h H sixties,
38:21
Speaker 1: which U they said, the hell the planes are when
38:24
Speaker 1: there was like not much of a threat then I
38:26
Speaker 1: think the helicopters they use up to a medium threat.
38:30
Speaker 1: But like you said, they have you know, ground support
38:32
Speaker 1: going on too. Yeah, and there was like a real
38:33
Speaker 1: push to update their um their helicopter that they used
38:37
Speaker 1: to one that's specifically designed for c SAR. But I
38:40
Speaker 1: think the plug got pulled on it, so there's still
38:43
Speaker 1: I think working with the is that the h H
38:46
Speaker 1: sixties obey they call him double H six zeros that's
38:50
Speaker 1: even longer. Okay, Uh. This is kind of the cool
38:54
Speaker 1: part for me for c SAR is you don't really
38:58
Speaker 1: think about this, but if someone has been shot down
39:01
Speaker 1: and they do have radio comms ability and they can
39:05
Speaker 1: get in touch with you. You you need to be
39:08
Speaker 1: able to authenticate this signal, whether it's a beacon or
39:11
Speaker 1: a real human voice on the other end, because they
39:15
Speaker 1: could be compromised. They could be sitting there with a collision,
39:18
Speaker 1: a cough to their head and uh being forced to
39:22
Speaker 1: like you know, lure someone into a trap of a
39:25
Speaker 1: foreign enemy. Right, So you have to be able to
39:28
Speaker 1: authenticate these calls. And they do that by never giving
39:32
Speaker 1: their full uh details over the radio, like as it stands.
39:37
Speaker 1: They'll say, it's like add numbers or subtract or multiplied digits,
39:42
Speaker 1: and you're like call signs and your rank and your
39:46
Speaker 1: unit numbers and stuff like that, right, and then they
39:48
Speaker 1: verify who you are. And they once they verify who
39:50
Speaker 1: you are, they'll come get you. But there are more
39:53
Speaker 1: Some conditions are more ideal than others. And when Scott
39:56
Speaker 1: O'Grady very famously went down um in Bosnia during the
40:00
Speaker 1: Balkan War, I think they he they received his distress
40:07
Speaker 1: signal finally, I think six days on he'd been surviving
40:11
Speaker 1: by like drinking the sweat out of his own socks
40:13
Speaker 1: and eating bugs and spending the whole time evading UM
40:17
Speaker 1: getting captured did of just an amazing job of staying
40:20
Speaker 1: alive and staying uncaptured. UM. But he sent out his
40:25
Speaker 1: beacon or they received his beacon or distress signal like
40:30
Speaker 1: a couple hours before dawn, and they're like, this guy
40:32
Speaker 1: has already been missing for six days. We found him.
40:35
Speaker 1: We can't let him just stay for another six days
40:37
Speaker 1: because the ideal conditions are after dark. They couldn't do that.
40:41
Speaker 1: So two hours after that, UM, they went in after
40:44
Speaker 1: him like in broad daylight, I guess, And w wasn't
40:47
Speaker 1: it marines had actually got him out? And what was
40:50
Speaker 1: wasn't it like twenty minutes or something ridiculous too? Oh,
40:54
Speaker 1: two minutes from the time they arrived to the extraction
40:58
Speaker 1: to the time they were gone again. Yeah, I'm sure
41:01
Speaker 1: he wasn't lollygag And I'm sure and he was like,
41:04
Speaker 1: let's go. He's like, oh wait, I forgot my basket
41:08
Speaker 1: I was making with reads. I got to go back
41:11
Speaker 1: and get it. Uh, pretty amazing. So I saw about
41:16
Speaker 1: his story, I looked up what happened with him. He
41:18
Speaker 1: released a book called Return with Honor, and you know,
41:22
Speaker 1: they made that movie Behind Enemy Lines with Owen Wilson
41:25
Speaker 1: and Gene Gene Hackman. Again, he was like the guy
41:30
Speaker 1: who was trying to get Owen Wilson out. I never
41:32
Speaker 1: saw that movie. He sued Fox, twenty Century Fox, and
41:36
Speaker 1: then eventually Discovery Channel. He sued um No. He sued
41:41
Speaker 1: for basically appropriating his life story. Uh. And the problem
41:46
Speaker 1: that he publicly said he had with it was that
41:48
Speaker 1: Owen Wilson used foul language, was portrayed as a hot
41:51
Speaker 1: dog pilot, and disobeyed orders, and that Scott O Grady
41:56
Speaker 1: was none of those. Now was he actually scott O
41:58
Speaker 1: Grady in the movie or debate? Thinly disguise? It thinly disguise,
42:02
Speaker 1: which meant they didn't need to pay him any royalties, right,
42:04
Speaker 1: and it also probably many lost his lawsuit. Imagine, right,
42:07
Speaker 1: I don't know. I didn't see that. I just saw
42:09
Speaker 1: like a two thousand one Entertainment Weekly article on it,
42:16
Speaker 1: the definitive source. It's good journalism, man. All right, well,
42:20
Speaker 1: let's take a break and we'll talk about some search
42:23
Speaker 1: techniques and other fun stuff right after this. All right, now,
42:49
Speaker 1: this feels like a no brainer, but it's actually a
42:51
Speaker 1: little more interesting than you would think. Establishing your search area. Yeah,
42:56
Speaker 1: so let's say, where do you look now we've moved
42:58
Speaker 1: on to somebody, say like lost in its is a
43:00
Speaker 1: really good example of this, right, happens a lot, And
43:05
Speaker 1: there's like, if you're a sheriff's deputy, you may or
43:08
Speaker 1: may not have any star training. If you're the sheriff,
43:11
Speaker 1: you may or may not have any star training. That's
43:13
Speaker 1: probably unlikely these days, but it's a possibility. But even
43:17
Speaker 1: if you're the only one in your department, you've got
43:19
Speaker 1: a whole department who you need to explain what to do.
43:22
Speaker 1: And the first thing you have to do is start
43:23
Speaker 1: looking for uh answers to your questions. But you need
43:28
Speaker 1: to know what questions you have to ask first. So
43:31
Speaker 1: if you're looking for any kind of evidence specifically of
43:34
Speaker 1: where the last place the person was seen was, that's
43:38
Speaker 1: the first thing you want to find. Yeah, last scene
43:41
Speaker 1: uh or I think last sing can also be last uh.
43:48
Speaker 1: Well if that's not true, because last known position is different.
43:51
Speaker 1: So if someone was last seen leading a trailhead um
43:56
Speaker 1: for their for their hike, let's say they were last
43:58
Speaker 1: seeing at noon starting at this trailhead. That means that
44:01
Speaker 1: another human being who's now talking to you as an
44:04
Speaker 1: eyewitness said, I saw this person. Yeah, like maybe they
44:07
Speaker 1: either saw someone on the trail or they checked into
44:10
Speaker 1: a ranger station and got their back country permit or something.
44:13
Speaker 1: They're like, I'm off so long, suckers. Uh. That is
44:17
Speaker 1: different though, than last known position. So if someone is
44:19
Speaker 1: missing their last known uh last scene place, maybe the trailhead,
44:24
Speaker 1: but three miles in, if they find that person's baseball cap,
44:28
Speaker 1: then that is they're all of a sudden their last
44:31
Speaker 1: known position. If you compare that to where they started,
44:34
Speaker 1: you might be able to reasonably come up with maybe
44:38
Speaker 1: they're headed in this direction and they might be somewhere
44:41
Speaker 1: in this area by now. That would be an enormous
44:43
Speaker 1: break because if you can figure out when they were
44:46
Speaker 1: last seen, like you're saying, and then when this thing
44:48
Speaker 1: was found, you know the direction and roughly the speed
44:52
Speaker 1: that there they're going. Yeah, and this is there are
44:55
Speaker 1: a lot of assumptions involved here, um, but hopefully you're
44:59
Speaker 1: you know, hopefully one wasn't like they dropped their baseball
45:02
Speaker 1: hat and then decided to go in a completely different
45:05
Speaker 1: direction they did. They close your eyes and twirled around
45:07
Speaker 1: and just headed out. Yeah, so that's the that's how
45:11
Speaker 1: that works, Um, But generally it's a it's a circle
45:15
Speaker 1: unless you starting from the last the place they were
45:18
Speaker 1: last laid eyes on, right, Yeah, because they could theoretically
45:21
Speaker 1: be going in any position in any direction. Um, unless
45:25
Speaker 1: you come up with something called the choke point, which
45:27
Speaker 1: is kind of interesting. Uh. That is where you have
45:29
Speaker 1: either a man made feature or some sort of geological
45:33
Speaker 1: natural feature that cuts off an area, like like I
45:37
Speaker 1: think definitely, yeah, couldn't have climbed that three ft cliffs,
45:40
Speaker 1: So now we can go in this direction across that
45:43
Speaker 1: crazy river. Yeah, and the say, if it's a river,
45:47
Speaker 1: if it's a cliff, you can just position somebody at
45:49
Speaker 1: that cliff and be like, stay here in case you
45:51
Speaker 1: see them. If it's a river, you can say, well
45:54
Speaker 1: they would have if they wanted to cross, they'd have
45:56
Speaker 1: to go to this bridge to stay here on this
45:58
Speaker 1: bridge in case they come this way. That's one thing
46:01
Speaker 1: to do when you have a choke point, right. Yeah.
46:03
Speaker 1: So if you have a searcher named Cliff and to
46:06
Speaker 1: searcher name river, yes, to avoid confusion. And if Jeff
46:10
Speaker 1: Bridges is searching as well or Bow Bridges either one, well,
46:15
Speaker 1: I think we know that Jeff would be doing the searching, right,
46:18
Speaker 1: I don't know. I think would just be telling him
46:20
Speaker 1: how to do it. Maybe he is the boss, the
46:22
Speaker 1: older brother. Man, those guys are the best, Like they're there.
46:26
Speaker 1: Have you met bo I've never met either one of them,
46:29
Speaker 1: but I've just heard interviews with both and they're like,
46:33
Speaker 1: they're like brothers should be. Oh you've heard interviews with
46:35
Speaker 1: them together, no separately talking about each other. It is
46:40
Speaker 1: very sweet. They're like best buds. That's cool and very
46:43
Speaker 1: big brother little brother. Yeah, it's kind of neat. I
46:47
Speaker 1: wonder what the quaids are like. Man, I'm curious about
46:52
Speaker 1: that because Randy is you know, yeah, I know he's
46:55
Speaker 1: developed into something else. So oh oh, So if you
47:02
Speaker 1: were searching from the last position, no, not the last
47:07
Speaker 1: known position, last place scene, yes, the last place scene.
47:11
Speaker 1: So that's where you start. If you're searching from that
47:13
Speaker 1: and you start heading out and you find that baseball cap,
47:16
Speaker 1: that is a huge clue, like I said, and probably
47:19
Speaker 1: the people who found it are what are called the
47:21
Speaker 1: hasty search team, because right when you establish a last
47:26
Speaker 1: place scene, you send some people out who are usually
47:29
Speaker 1: like very experienced, very well trained star people, and they
47:33
Speaker 1: start scrambling out in every direction in that circle lightfoot
47:37
Speaker 1: looking for Yeah, that's a part of it. They probably
47:39
Speaker 1: climb a tree like nothing, um looking going to the
47:42
Speaker 1: places where it would be most likely that somebody like
47:45
Speaker 1: this would would go to. Yeah, and that's uh. When
47:49
Speaker 1: they think, like, you know, this person is in danger,
47:51
Speaker 1: there's a storm coming in or night is falling and
47:54
Speaker 1: it's going to get really cold, you deploy these hasty
47:57
Speaker 1: search teams that they're not out there coming the ground
48:01
Speaker 1: for clues. No, but I think it is a matter
48:03
Speaker 1: of course that the first thing you do is deploy
48:05
Speaker 1: the hasty team. Then you follow up with the deliberate people. Yeah,
48:10
Speaker 1: the the clue team, that's what we'll call them, Colonel Mustard.
48:14
Speaker 1: They get a little slower and they are and I
48:18
Speaker 1: think this, I mean, well, I guess it kind of depends.
48:20
Speaker 1: It could be for someone just trapped in the woods,
48:22
Speaker 1: but definitely they use these for those community searches when
48:26
Speaker 1: like a kid is missing or something. These are the
48:28
Speaker 1: things you see on the news and people are walking
48:30
Speaker 1: very slowly through the woods because a clue could be
48:33
Speaker 1: a a cigarette butt on the ground, you know, and
48:37
Speaker 1: you have people say space twenty ft apart, and each
48:41
Speaker 1: one is responsible for everything ahead of them, and ten
48:45
Speaker 1: ft to the side and ten ft to the other side,
48:47
Speaker 1: and then that way, if everybody is doing what they're
48:49
Speaker 1: supposed to be doing, every square inch of this this
48:54
Speaker 1: search area is covered eventually by this these searchers, the
48:57
Speaker 1: second group of searchers. Yeah, they'll also use track traps sometime,
49:03
Speaker 1: so they'll like maybe go to a trail, uh, a
49:07
Speaker 1: place on a trail or any place really, and they
49:09
Speaker 1: will put like sand on the ground and then they
49:12
Speaker 1: can go back and check that sand if there were footprints,
49:15
Speaker 1: they know that it wasn't wasn't their footprints, So that
49:19
Speaker 1: might have be a last known position perhaps, So Chuck,
49:22
Speaker 1: if you get lost and they find you and they say, hey,
49:28
Speaker 1: come back with us, you might say, uh, no, I'll
49:31
Speaker 1: find my own way back. I'll crawl back myself, even
49:34
Speaker 1: though my leg's broken. Why would a human being do that? Well, Uh,
49:39
Speaker 1: because you might get a bill at the end of
49:42
Speaker 1: the day or a week or month, depending on what
49:44
Speaker 1: state you get lost in. Yeah, this is a bit
49:47
Speaker 1: of a This is a lightning rod in the outdoor
49:51
Speaker 1: community because there's a lot of facets to this um.
49:55
Speaker 1: One facet is, Hey, if you did something dumb and
49:58
Speaker 1: you went somewhere where you weren't supposed to go, and
50:01
Speaker 1: you weren't equipped to do this or experience enough to
50:06
Speaker 1: do this, why should a taxpayer have to fit foot
50:09
Speaker 1: your sixty dollar bill of rescue. It's a legitimate point.
50:14
Speaker 1: It's a legitimate point. So they say, pass laws in
50:18
Speaker 1: some states to deter people from doing something stupid. On
50:22
Speaker 1: the other hand, on them, the other side says, search
50:27
Speaker 1: and rescue is a pure public service, just like you
50:30
Speaker 1: don't get a bill from the fire department. If you
50:33
Speaker 1: do this kind of thing, then people will think twice
50:35
Speaker 1: about calling for help. If they don't have the money
50:38
Speaker 1: and they know they're going to get a sixty bill,
50:41
Speaker 1: they might actually just put it off too long, and
50:45
Speaker 1: then by the time they say, okay, fine, I need
50:47
Speaker 1: some help, it's too late and they're going to die
50:49
Speaker 1: out there. You don't want anybody thinking about money during
50:51
Speaker 1: a search and rescue operation. Yeah, I mean, it's it's
50:55
Speaker 1: sort of a weird balance you're trying to strike between
50:57
Speaker 1: encouraging people to get out and explore the wilderness, but
51:01
Speaker 1: only wanting people that are to go in certain places,
51:04
Speaker 1: and that have a certain experience level to do so,
51:08
Speaker 1: and certainly not like like the worst case scenario like
51:11
Speaker 1: you were talking about, is I'm in trouble, but I'm
51:13
Speaker 1: not gonna send out my beacon. So apparently the Colorado
51:19
Speaker 1: Search and Rescue Board actually put together fifteen cases This
51:23
Speaker 1: is according to Outside Magazine, of people who actually delayed
51:28
Speaker 1: calling for help to Yeah, because they um, they knew
51:33
Speaker 1: that they would be charged or there was a chance
51:35
Speaker 1: that they would be charged like they So it actually happens.
51:37
Speaker 1: It's not hypothetical like it. It happens in real life.
51:41
Speaker 1: So there are some states like New Hampshire apparently is
51:44
Speaker 1: the the last place you want to um have a
51:48
Speaker 1: search undertaken for you, because they actually do bill. They've
51:52
Speaker 1: done something like seventy dollars in billing for like sixty
51:55
Speaker 1: rescues since two thousand eight. Are pretty low cost rescues. Yeah,
51:59
Speaker 1: it's surprising like this one guy in this article is
52:03
Speaker 1: search and rescue a public service? Not exactly is the
52:07
Speaker 1: name of the article. And there was a man named
52:09
Speaker 1: Ed Beacon who had an artificial hip, went hiking by
52:12
Speaker 1: himself on a bad weather day, tried to jump onto
52:15
Speaker 1: a ledge and dislocated that artificial hip and took it
52:19
Speaker 1: all the way to the state Supreme Court when he
52:21
Speaker 1: didn't want to pay his nine thousand bill, and the
52:24
Speaker 1: state Supreme Court said, sorry, yeah, because New Hampshire has
52:28
Speaker 1: in their law it says you can be billed if
52:30
Speaker 1: you were shown to have been negligent. And the state
52:33
Speaker 1: Supreme Court are agreed with the case against him that
52:37
Speaker 1: said he had a replacement hip, so a faulty hip,
52:41
Speaker 1: and he knew that there was a large possibility of
52:43
Speaker 1: bad weather. They said, stay home, old man, basically, and hey, yeah,
52:48
Speaker 1: but he fought it up to the Supreme Court and
52:49
Speaker 1: loss and after that you got yeah, you got no recourse. Yeah,
52:53
Speaker 1: and there's uh, there are quite a few states that
52:56
Speaker 1: have laws like this on the books that range from
52:59
Speaker 1: very specific to very broad. And uh, just because your
53:03
Speaker 1: state has this on the books a lot of times
53:05
Speaker 1: is to dissuade people from being dumb. Um. It doesn't
53:08
Speaker 1: mean you're gonna get hit with a bill. Even if
53:10
Speaker 1: they have the law on the books. It's up to
53:12
Speaker 1: them whether or not they want to pursue that. And
53:14
Speaker 1: then a lot of states have programs um that you
53:17
Speaker 1: can pay anywhere from three bucks to twenty five dollars
53:22
Speaker 1: to basically say, if you've paid this money, that means
53:25
Speaker 1: that you don't get charged for rescue. Right. It's like
53:28
Speaker 1: a communal pot that everybody pays into with the chances
53:32
Speaker 1: of them actually needing it very slim, but they do
53:34
Speaker 1: need it, then they've got it. Yeah, which I think
53:37
Speaker 1: is a great idea. Not bad. I think any outdoor
53:40
Speaker 1: enthusiasts that regularly does this with they're three dollars, you know,
53:47
Speaker 1: for a year per year. Yeah, that's not bad at all. Yeah,
53:50
Speaker 1: And the federal government apparently does not um, although they
53:55
Speaker 1: could always change, you never know, but they don't get reimbursed,
53:57
Speaker 1: but they have a policy of not charging. Yeah. Um.
54:00
Speaker 1: Last thing I saw there was an app. You know,
54:02
Speaker 1: I'm crazy for apps like Gluco for diabetes. There's also
54:06
Speaker 1: an app called Drones SAR and it basically takes over
54:11
Speaker 1: your drone and and flies your drone in a search
54:16
Speaker 1: pattern for a search and rescue mission. So this is
54:19
Speaker 1: if you're a drone pilot who has lost no, if
54:23
Speaker 1: you have one of those rotor multi rotor drones that
54:27
Speaker 1: you like to fly around and buzze your neighbor's roof
54:29
Speaker 1: with so your drone pilot, if you show up to
54:32
Speaker 1: a UM search and rescue mission, I got a drone
54:35
Speaker 1: you want to use it, It's got a video camera
54:37
Speaker 1: on it. They say, sure, download drone Star and you
54:43
Speaker 1: drone Star app will take over your your drone and
54:46
Speaker 1: fly it as part of this search. It's pretty cool. Yeah.
54:51
Speaker 1: Shout out to my buddy Lowell, my sister in law's
54:57
Speaker 1: boyfriend is a drone pilot. A couple of shout it's
55:00
Speaker 1: for Lowell. He's a drone pilot and a good one.
55:03
Speaker 1: I've seen. I've seen him in action, and you know,
55:06
Speaker 1: it's not the easiest thing the world to do. He
55:08
Speaker 1: doesn't he doesn't crash these things. Although it's kind of
55:11
Speaker 1: funny to see drone fails on YouTube UM because it's
55:15
Speaker 1: always going great until like there was one I saw
55:19
Speaker 1: today where there was a some sort of ape or
55:23
Speaker 1: monkey preserve and they were flying all around. It's like, man,
55:26
Speaker 1: this is gorgeous. Look at all these apes and monkeys
55:28
Speaker 1: doing their thing. And then it flies up close to
55:30
Speaker 1: one and this monkey just fully takes a stick and
55:33
Speaker 1: goes whack. And then the next thing you know, you
55:35
Speaker 1: see it falling on the ground and then you know,
55:38
Speaker 1: all these monkeys start descending upon it and like poking
55:40
Speaker 1: and stuff. It's pretty neat. So shout out to Lowell
55:44
Speaker 1: for that. And I meant to say a few weeks ago,
55:48
Speaker 1: I finally vaped with Lowell. What gave it a try?
55:52
Speaker 1: I was like, you know what, he's a vapor. We
55:54
Speaker 1: got a lot of flak for dissing vapors. Uh uh.
56:00
Speaker 1: And I was like, all right, let me try it.
56:02
Speaker 1: And it was one of those you know, flavored things
56:06
Speaker 1: with no nicotine. No, it had nicotine. Okay, at least
56:09
Speaker 1: at least you're smoking nicotine. Yeah, And it was I
56:13
Speaker 1: will say this, it was interesting. So are you hooked
56:15
Speaker 1: on vaping now, are you? No? No, no, no, no,
56:17
Speaker 1: I'm not. I never did it again. I took a
56:19
Speaker 1: couple of puffs. It's like, well, that's interesting. It tastes
56:22
Speaker 1: it was like banana, okay, And I was like, I
56:26
Speaker 1: didn't have quite how to wrap my head around still
56:29
Speaker 1: like the pleasure of inhaling vapi banana like. But the
56:34
Speaker 1: funny thing is I can't stop thinking about it. It
56:37
Speaker 1: was weird. I was like, I mean, it wasn't like,
56:39
Speaker 1: oh this is disgusting, but I didn't want to do
56:41
Speaker 1: it again either. That's good, Charles. I think that is
56:45
Speaker 1: the lesson here. I just thought i'd give it a shot.
56:47
Speaker 1: So well, good for you for trying new things. Don't
56:50
Speaker 1: ever do that again, yea lulls leading me? Done it bad? Ah?
56:54
Speaker 1: You got anything else? Nope, So we got a whole
56:56
Speaker 1: sweet coming. Just wait, everybody, I can't wait. Uh. And
57:00
Speaker 1: in the meantime, you can look up Chuck's awesome articles
57:03
Speaker 1: Star Search and Rescue on how stuff works in the
57:08
Speaker 1: search bar. Since I said search bar's time for listener mail,
57:12
Speaker 1: I'm gonna call this golf pro. Golf pro, Hey, guys.
57:17
Speaker 1: Like many in the golf business, my first job included
57:19
Speaker 1: time as a picker as a teenager, and of course
57:21
Speaker 1: I soon became acquainted with the multiple bangs and clangs
57:23
Speaker 1: of titlists ricocheting off every side of the cage. Remember
57:27
Speaker 1: we talked about taking aim on the driving range at
57:30
Speaker 1: those folks going and beatles. A few years later, when
57:33
Speaker 1: I was a beginning my career as an assistant pro,
57:36
Speaker 1: I found myself supervising these kids, one of whom relished
57:38
Speaker 1: his time on the range and especially the chance to
57:41
Speaker 1: engage in good natured trash talk whenever his card came
57:44
Speaker 1: within reach. On one such occasion, after a friend and
57:47
Speaker 1: I had missed him on several point blank attempts, he
57:50
Speaker 1: turned the card away from us to make another pass
57:52
Speaker 1: on the far into the range, confident that our aim
57:54
Speaker 1: would certainly not be better. As he moved further away,
57:57
Speaker 1: traveling in a direct line away from me, he had
57:59
Speaker 1: reached a distance about a hundred and fifty yards when
58:01
Speaker 1: my laser beam three iron shot took flight on a
58:04
Speaker 1: low trajectory and never left its target. It came as
58:08
Speaker 1: a surprise to him and to me when, instead of
58:10
Speaker 1: the usual clang followed by laughter, we heard a dull
58:14
Speaker 1: thud and a low groan. It turned out our range picker,
58:18
Speaker 1: which is the car, included a narrow gap of about
58:21
Speaker 1: two and a half inches where the back of the
58:24
Speaker 1: cage met the top of the seat in the rear
58:25
Speaker 1: of the cart. Despite my countless hours in that old machine,
58:28
Speaker 1: I never noticed that. Neither had he. Thankfully, his likable
58:30
Speaker 1: demeanor had led him to be well tipped by the membership,
58:34
Speaker 1: and the wallet in his back pocket, thick with dozens
58:36
Speaker 1: of dollar bills, took the brunt of the below Uh,
58:40
Speaker 1: I don't see how that would have happened. But if
58:43
Speaker 1: he was sitting on his wallet, had to hit him
58:45
Speaker 1: in the butt. Maybe it's a tiny maybe he has
58:47
Speaker 1: a big but I don't know. I don't know either.
58:50
Speaker 1: I would love this guy, So Brian says, as I
58:52
Speaker 1: have never made a hole in one, this still stands
58:55
Speaker 1: as my best shot I've ever had. And one might
58:59
Speaker 1: argue that, uh, it's even more difficulty. And that is Brian.
59:02
Speaker 1: He is a golf bro. Thanks Brian, and Northern Cali.
59:05
Speaker 1: And he said to both of us, if we're ever
59:08
Speaker 1: out in Carmel and we want to a play golf,
59:12
Speaker 1: alright with a golf bro, we could do that. Or
59:16
Speaker 1: if we want to actually drive the picker, he would
59:18
Speaker 1: let us do that. I just rather play golf. I
59:20
Speaker 1: want to do both. Okay, well, shoot, let's do it.
59:24
Speaker 1: Let's do it. Thanks a lot, Brian. That was also
59:28
Speaker 1: an excellent, well written email. If you if you ask me,
59:32
Speaker 1: it's great. Brian Sleeman. He's the head pro at the
59:34
Speaker 1: Preserve Golf Club. Is it basically John Cheever short story?
59:38
Speaker 1: Maybe uptick? I don't know one of the two. Uh,
59:41
Speaker 1: if you want to get in touch with me, and
59:43
Speaker 1: chuck and offer us something awesome like Brian did. You
59:46
Speaker 1: can go onto our website Stuff you Should Know dot com,
59:49
Speaker 1: find all the links to our social meds and catch
59:51
Speaker 1: our attention that way. Or you can just go straight
59:54
Speaker 1: to the horse's mouth and send us an email to
59:57
Speaker 1: stuff podcast how stuff Works dot com for more on
1:00:06
Speaker 1: thiss and thousands of other topics. Is it how Stuff
1:00:08
Speaker 1: Work stopp