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What's the deal with sinkholes? · Stuff You Should Know

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Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
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Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you Should Know
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Speaker 1: from House Stuff Works dot Com? Hey, and welcome to
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Speaker 1: the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Chaz Bryant that makes
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Speaker 1: this stuff you should know? S y s K. You
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Speaker 1: realize if we release every week the five minutes before
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Speaker 1: we podcast, like we could make them. We could make
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Speaker 1: money on that, especially if you said, to the Benny
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Speaker 1: Hill music, that is the gold, this is the silver. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: I would, I would call that the platinum in this
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Speaker 1: the goal. Okay, how about that? Just to be contrary though,
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Speaker 1: just no bronze. Those guys are losers, bronze medal winners. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: third place bronze. I don't even know why you'd like
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Speaker 1: bring it home just leaving on the plane in that
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Speaker 1: little magazine pocket in front of you. Um, chuck, Yes,
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Speaker 1: I know that you have been to Guatemala, and I
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Speaker 1: know that you know. I've been to Guatemala too. Jerry's
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Speaker 1: been there, and we learned pretty quickly that Guatemala has
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Speaker 1: it hard. But um, we also learned that translated into
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Speaker 1: English from I think Spanish, Guatemala means God's whipping post.
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Speaker 1: All right, I thought you're gonna say land of many sinkholes.
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Speaker 1: That's just one of the many problems facing Guatemala. Yeah. Um,
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Speaker 1: we talked, you know, extensively about mud slides, about civil war,
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Speaker 1: just about all these problems that Guatemala has, and uh
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Speaker 1: this past week, this past weekend, Guatemala faced even more problems.
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Speaker 1: Last week there was a volcanic eruption volcano like twenty
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Speaker 1: click south of Guatemala City, started raining ash down and
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Speaker 1: then incomes Hurricane Agatha from the Pacific. I think, um
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Speaker 1: to get rid of all the ash, but flood the area,
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Speaker 1: UM create mud slides, kill a hundred and eighty people.
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Speaker 1: And then getting to the point of this podcast, hasten
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Speaker 1: a major sinkhole that's almost unbelievable looking in the middle
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Speaker 1: of Guatemala City. Yeah. All our Facebook lit up with
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Speaker 1: fans saying, have you seen this sinkhole picture? It looks
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Speaker 1: it was, Yeah, it does. It looks completely fake. It
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Speaker 1: is uh sixty six ft across twenty and uh almost
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Speaker 1: a hundred feet deep. But when you look at it,
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Speaker 1: it looks like the very gates of Hell have opened up.
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Speaker 1: It looks and considering there's a building in there and
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Speaker 1: that you can't even see it swallowed a three story
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Speaker 1: apartment building. Yeah. Well, now it was a factory, it wasn't. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: it was a clothing factory. Um. And they said that
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Speaker 1: the guys who worked there, the people who work there,
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Speaker 1: left at six in the afternoon, an hour before the
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Speaker 1: earth opened up, so they got out. And then there's
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Speaker 1: some security guard too that had a schedule altered that
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Speaker 1: earlier that day, so he wasn't there. So just like
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Speaker 1: the church group that, like every buddy um in the fifties,
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Speaker 1: everybody showed up late to this um like church choir practice. Uh,
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Speaker 1: and for all these different reasons, like all like twelve
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Speaker 1: or fifteen people were put were delayed and getting to
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Speaker 1: the practice, and the church happened to catch fire, and
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Speaker 1: had they all gotten there on time, they would have
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Speaker 1: burned to death. One imagines at the very least thing
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Speaker 1: I had to have gotten out of the church good fortune. Yeah.
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Speaker 1: So well, I guess maybe God does like Guatemala a
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Speaker 1: little maybe so maybe he just doesn't overtly hate it
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Speaker 1: like we thought. Yeah, this sinkhole was um, like you said, Saturday,
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Speaker 1: and um three miles from a similar sinkhole from what
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Speaker 1: was that two thousand seven? Yeah, yeah, the residents have
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Speaker 1: been complaining of all of the signs of sink whole's developing.
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Speaker 1: One happening two years earlier. That's a pretty big sign.
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Speaker 1: But then there's also creaking noise. Is um, the pavement
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Speaker 1: isn't exactly you know, perfectly flat. Um. There there's been
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Speaker 1: uh slight tremors maybe, yeah, I think. And they said
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Speaker 1: in the O seven one which f y I was
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Speaker 1: three hundred and thirty ft deep, and it appeared instantly,
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Speaker 1: almost instantly, killing three at least three people and like
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Speaker 1: swallowed at homes. They said that they felt the ground
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Speaker 1: shaking a month before it appeared, and that at the
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Speaker 1: time the government was going to send down like a
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Speaker 1: robotic camera. But it's Guatemala, so they were like, where
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Speaker 1: do we get a robotic camera? So it never happened. Yes,
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Speaker 1: that is a good point, chuck. Um. It's a kind
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Speaker 1: of an evil point, but it's a good point, right yeah. Um,
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Speaker 1: So we're talking about sink Cole's here. This one's not
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Speaker 1: about tropical storms, hurricanes, mud slides, right. I alway should
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Speaker 1: mention though that our friends at co ED and Guatemala
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Speaker 1: are all okay. They sent word and we posted on
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Speaker 1: Facebook that they weren't affected and everyone's doing fine down there. Awesome, Okay, okay,
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Speaker 1: we're good. So what what what's the deal with the sinkhole? Josh? Well,
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Speaker 1: it depends on who you ask, schuckers Um. One of
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Speaker 1: our fellow colleague coworkers over at Discovery News, guy named
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Speaker 1: Michael Riley, had a blog post um that interviewed a
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Speaker 1: Guatemalan based geologist who's like, do not call that a sinkhole?
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Speaker 1: That is not a sinkhole. And he's like, well, what
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Speaker 1: would you call it? He said, I would call it
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Speaker 1: a piping feature. And I'm pretty sure the guy made
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Speaker 1: that term up. I think he did too. We did
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Speaker 1: a Google search for piping feature and it brought up
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Speaker 1: a description of pajamas, baseball uniform has something to do
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Speaker 1: with email possibly uh, and that's it. There's no there's
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Speaker 1: no geological feature formation or happening that's called a piping feature.
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Speaker 1: So this guy was like, don't call a sinkhole. Let's
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Speaker 1: all call it this term that I just made up. Well,
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Speaker 1: that's how you coin a term, my friend. It is,
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Speaker 1: But I don't think you need to be using Michael
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Speaker 1: Riley's blog to do it at the very least to
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Speaker 1: say and I just made that up, you know. Anyway,
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Speaker 1: um man made sinkhole is what I think it is, right, Well,
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Speaker 1: he What he was talking about though, was the the
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Speaker 1: the bedrock under Guatemala is actually old volcanic deposits, and
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Speaker 1: usually with sinkhole's what you're talking about is a different
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Speaker 1: kind of bedrock that's actually bedrock. It's not volcanic, it
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Speaker 1: wasn't just deposited thereby, you know, something spewing it um
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Speaker 1: and you have things like limestone, dolomite. Yeah, my favorite
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Speaker 1: mineral basult. Wait, how did we ever come up with
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Speaker 1: how to say that? I think it's basalt, one of
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Speaker 1: those two gypsum. Yeah, the the carbonate or what's the
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Speaker 1: other evaporate evaporate classes of rocks, right, Yes, that is
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Speaker 1: typically what is underneath what's called the overburden, and the
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Speaker 1: overburden is just the soil that's on top of all that. Right. So,
6:55
Speaker 1: for those of you who have never tried this, if
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Speaker 1: you go out in your backyard and dig a hole,
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Speaker 1: eventually you're gonna run out of dirt and you're gonna
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Speaker 1: hit rock. Yeah, and when you run out of dirt,
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Speaker 1: you you can say I have dug through the overburden
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Speaker 1: and have now made contact with the bedrock. Right. And
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Speaker 1: the reason you mentioned all this is because that's how
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Speaker 1: sinkhole forms, at least this type of sinkhole. You have
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Speaker 1: to dig it up exactly the bedrock underneath the overburden.
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Speaker 1: It gets uh whittled away by water. This turns acidic
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Speaker 1: from absorbing c O two and interacting with plants, so
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Speaker 1: it carves out a little conduits, little pathways of sort
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Speaker 1: of like an underwater stream almost right, very much like that,
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Speaker 1: And then it loosens the soil, and then then soil
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Speaker 1: starts to fall down in these cracks. And although the
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Speaker 1: surface and the overbird may look okay up top, this
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Speaker 1: is why they seem to happen like overnight, there's just
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Speaker 1: a lot going on underneath it. We don't see right
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Speaker 1: for weeks, months, years. Sure, you know EON's that kind
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Speaker 1: of thing. Um. So when the when the water whittles away, say, um,
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Speaker 1: a chamber the future sinkhole, which you can also call
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Speaker 1: a cave. When you're going caving, what you're doing is
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Speaker 1: walking through basically a dry conduit sinkhole system. Right, good point.
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Speaker 1: So when the uh, the sinkholes formed right whettle away
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Speaker 1: by water and the overburden starts spilling into it, which
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Speaker 1: is called spawling. It's spawling, right, Um. That means that
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Speaker 1: there is much less of it above. It's like an
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Speaker 1: hour glass basically, yeah. Right, And then when somebody walks
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Speaker 1: on it, drives on it, builds a building on it. Yes,
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Speaker 1: that that salt, what appeared to be solid, is now
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Speaker 1: in the bottom of this hole. Yeah. And oftentimes it
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Speaker 1: can um that the what I called the overburden is
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Speaker 1: solid enough to hold up even though it might be
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Speaker 1: hollow underneath. It can hold up for a little while
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Speaker 1: if nothing is on it. But like you said, the
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Speaker 1: problem comes when something is planted on top of it,
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Speaker 1: like a car, right, And that's actually called a cover
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Speaker 1: collapse sinkhole. And that's what we think of like for sinkholes,
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Speaker 1: these really dramatic, sudden, holy cow sinkholes. Right. I would
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Speaker 1: like to call it the coolest sinkhole, but since you know,
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Speaker 1: people do die, Yeah, exactly, Chuck. There's two other kinds
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Speaker 1: of sinkholes, right, um that are slightly less dramatic. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: the cover cover subsidence sinkhole. Yeah, this is this is
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Speaker 1: possibly the least dramatic syncole. Basically it is, Um, this
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Speaker 1: is this is a very similar process happens, except uh,
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Speaker 1: you get the impression it happens much more slowly, right
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Speaker 1: Chuck was talking about. Imagine like, um, a straw coming
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Speaker 1: into you know those little nitro sock side tubes, the
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Speaker 1: little chargers. Yeah, for like for the little industrial arts
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Speaker 1: cars that you made sure or making whipped cream or whatever.
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Speaker 1: You know. Um, you've got a straw going into one
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Speaker 1: of those in a straw coming out. So it's like narrow, narrow,
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Speaker 1: fat narrow. Again, that would be like conduit sinkhole or cave, um,
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Speaker 1: because it's pretty much a cave until the top collapses. Uh,
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Speaker 1: and then conduit again. All right, So these conduits allow
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Speaker 1: water to go in and out, but as spalling occurs,
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Speaker 1: the the dirt, the sediment, the overburden the soil spills
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Speaker 1: into the loose parts right right, and it can clog
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Speaker 1: up the conduits. Right. So what you have then for
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Speaker 1: the cover subsidence sinkhole is basically just a depression in
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Speaker 1: the earth, but a dirt depression and a lot of
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Speaker 1: times they're not very big either. We're talking like a
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Speaker 1: few feet. Right. One of the ways across one of
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Speaker 1: the ways to deal with the sinkhole small one is
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Speaker 1: to fill it with sand and boom bang bam. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: that's what the Florida Management UH District says. And Florida's
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Speaker 1: kind of allows you with sinkholes because of all the sand.
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Speaker 1: But these cover subsidence. Sinkholes often turned into ponds because
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Speaker 1: rainwater starts collecting, it has nowhere to go because the
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Speaker 1: kinduests are blocked, and bam, you get yourself a brand
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Speaker 1: spanking new pond and it's good fishing. Yes, it is,
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Speaker 1: I imagine. Uh. And then the third one, chuck a
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Speaker 1: dissolution or solution sink coole. Are you starting to see
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Speaker 1: a pattern here? Not spilling, spawling, dissolution or solution sinkhole. Right,
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Speaker 1: it's a geology. It's like take your pick. Yeah that
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Speaker 1: these are um actually not as dramatic either, And that's
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Speaker 1: usually if you just have like a thin overburden that
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Speaker 1: washes away and the rhodes over time and umposes the bedrock. Yeah, exposed.
11:28
Speaker 1: I always want to say twitch twitch after you say
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Speaker 1: bed rock each time from the flint Stones remember that, No,
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Speaker 1: you're like flint Stones. I mean I remember the flint
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Speaker 1: Stones and they lived in Bedrock. But what's the twitch
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Speaker 1: the that was the one episode where they had the
11:42
Speaker 1: movie star singer come to town, Tony Kurt Rock or
11:45
Speaker 1: was Yeah, and that was a song in Bedrock twitch
11:48
Speaker 1: twitch I don't remember that one. Wow, showing my age.
11:52
Speaker 1: I like the one with Mr. Rock She's a hot cartoon. Yeah,
11:56
Speaker 1: it's so funny that all the names were like rock oriented.
12:00
Speaker 1: Never figured that one out because they lived in the
12:02
Speaker 1: Stone Age's just kidding, um. But the big rack of
12:06
Speaker 1: ribs on the car that tipped the car where that
12:08
Speaker 1: was normal? That was a Bronosurus rib rack. Yeah, that's
12:12
Speaker 1: good eating. That's what they ate in the Stone Age. Yes, So,
12:15
Speaker 1: like you said, you can get a new um, a
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Speaker 1: new pond when you have a dissolution syinnkhole. Is that
12:21
Speaker 1: where we were, Yeah, you can get a pond from
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Speaker 1: that to Basically, the difference between a cover subsidence and
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Speaker 1: a dissolution sinkhole is one is possibly grassy right, the
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Speaker 1: other is exposed rock right, So a grassy depression both
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Speaker 1: can be ponds. Both of them have their conduits covered. Really,
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Speaker 1: when you think a sinkhole, the one we're talking about
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Speaker 1: is the cover collapse. Oh my god, save me, sink whole.
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Speaker 1: So we need to talk about human beings and what
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Speaker 1: we can do. There's actually those you know, a lot
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Speaker 1: of those are naturally occurring sinkholes just because of erosion.
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Speaker 1: But humans can actually contribute to sinkholes, uh, in a
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Speaker 1: lot of ways. Yeah, I mean think about it. We
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Speaker 1: talked about reservoir induced seismicity. Yeah, same deal, that's just
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Speaker 1: the tip of the iceberg. Totally. We are really screwing
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Speaker 1: with the geophysical properties of Mother Earth. I'm constantly amazed
13:14
Speaker 1: every time I go to New York that New York
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Speaker 1: is still like a standing, functioning city for now. Yeah,
13:22
Speaker 1: well it's true. Well yeah, let's hope it's keeps standing
13:25
Speaker 1: for at least the next week exactly. Uh, drilling, Josh, mining,
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Speaker 1: um foot traffic, vehicle traffic, increased water flow, broken pipes.
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Speaker 1: The other thing that you know, we talked about humans
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Speaker 1: causing an earthquake, extracting water from the subsurface. That can
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Speaker 1: be a big problem CAUs sinkholes. So that's how man.
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Speaker 1: Those are just a few ways that man can create
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Speaker 1: one basically, and that's what they think happened in Guatemala,
13:52
Speaker 1: right yeah, um, basically with plumbing, and we have the
13:56
Speaker 1: same problem here in Atlanta. I'm a little nervous to
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Speaker 1: admit our sewer system is like a hundred years old.
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Speaker 1: Guatemala cities is not too much older, you know, or younger.
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Speaker 1: It's right about the same age. Um. So a sewer
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Speaker 1: pipe bursts, right and you think, well, okay, this is
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Speaker 1: very bad. Erodes the soil because of the water movement,
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Speaker 1: not just that it has it. It provides a double whammy. Actually, um,
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Speaker 1: it erodes the dirt and it actually gives it a
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Speaker 1: place to be carried away through that first sewer pipe.
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Speaker 1: So imagine the sewer pipe and then bam, it burst
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Speaker 1: and there's a big hole there. The spewing water, the
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Speaker 1: water pressure is just eroding soil above it, right uh.
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Speaker 1: And it's it's eroding the overburden and and then it's
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Speaker 1: also this big hole in the pipe is giving a
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Speaker 1: place for the soil to be taken away. So it's
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Speaker 1: eroding it taking it away, creating a cavern and the
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Speaker 1: bam and that's yeah, that's exactly what happened in Guatemala
14:57
Speaker 1: City both times. Well, actually the I mean I read
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Speaker 1: today they said they still aren't sure what happened in
15:02
Speaker 1: this most that's what happened, Okay, they said, the guys
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Speaker 1: that we have to descend into it to find out
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Speaker 1: what happened. The guy who called it a piping feature, No,
15:11
Speaker 1: it was some other guy that you like better. Uh,
15:17
Speaker 1: let's talk about Polk County, Florida. Yeah, I think we should.
15:20
Speaker 1: That was a human caused sinkhole. And here's what's going
15:23
Speaker 1: on in Florida. You know when you use for fertilizer
15:25
Speaker 1: in your yard, which and you'd like to do, Yeah,
15:30
Speaker 1: it's got phosphate in it, and about thirty of the
15:32
Speaker 1: entire world's phosphate. Uh stash comes from Florida. So the
15:38
Speaker 1: problem with this stuff is this radioactive Miley radioactive. And
15:41
Speaker 1: so Florida said, well, well, here's what we're gonna do.
15:44
Speaker 1: We're gonna stack it up and huge stacks, so it's
15:46
Speaker 1: all in one place, and we're talking hundreds of acres,
15:50
Speaker 1: millions of tons. The result, years later, in central Florida,
15:56
Speaker 1: a billion tons of it basically created a sinkhole. The
16:00
Speaker 1: weight crushed the sand underneath it and create a huge sinkhole. Right, Yeah,
16:05
Speaker 1: Florida is already. Um what what's known as a CARST
16:09
Speaker 1: region and CARST region is it's a type of topography. Yes, yes,
16:14
Speaker 1: And if you want to see some cool video on
16:16
Speaker 1: a carst on CARST regions, um, check out watersheds dot
16:21
Speaker 1: org slash earth slash krst awesome stuff. Um and uh,
16:27
Speaker 1: CARST region is basically it's a type of topography that
16:30
Speaker 1: features a lot of caverns, sinkholes, um springs, all this
16:35
Speaker 1: geological these geological features created by the movement of water. Right, Um,
16:40
Speaker 1: Florida is lousy with this stuff. But then, as you
16:43
Speaker 1: were saying, it had this extra added benefit of billions
16:47
Speaker 1: of tons of FoST foot chips radioactive byproducts. And then bam, Yeah,
16:51
Speaker 1: and in that one collapse in Polk County, the stuff
16:55
Speaker 1: collapsed into the water supply and polluted the entire state supply.
17:00
Speaker 1: Yeah that's not good. Well, it's not good. But I mean,
17:04
Speaker 1: if I'm gonna go silver lining here, which I'm not
17:06
Speaker 1: one to do. Uh, it did make them all take
17:08
Speaker 1: a hard look at how they dispose of you know,
17:11
Speaker 1: harmful byproducts. Right, They're like, you can't just stack it
17:14
Speaker 1: up until it falls through the earth. They're like, well,
17:17
Speaker 1: what should we do? Right, and they're still trying to
17:20
Speaker 1: answer that one. Yeah, which I took. Took a lot
17:22
Speaker 1: of money in time that would clean up their water supply. Yeah,
17:25
Speaker 1: and chuck, let's get in our balloon and go over
17:27
Speaker 1: to Barzynski, Russia. We haven't been our balloon in a
17:30
Speaker 1: long time. I know it's got a little dusty you
17:32
Speaker 1: need to clean up in here. I know there's a
17:34
Speaker 1: dead raccoon in the corner that's creepy. Yeah, don't look
17:37
Speaker 1: at it. Uh. And so in Barzynski, Berezni, Breznicki, Breznicki. Yes, yeah,
17:44
Speaker 1: I almost took us to Brezynski. Jeez, that was close.
17:47
Speaker 1: We're going to Breznicki Russia. Uh In uh I think
17:52
Speaker 1: six They had another fertilizer related sinkhole problem. Right. Pot
17:57
Speaker 1: Ash potash, it's actually pot that's what the lady said
18:02
Speaker 1: on the pronunciation guide. Really and she said potash. So's
18:07
Speaker 1: the robot, that's what we're going with. Yeah, six hundred
18:10
Speaker 1: and fifty six ft deep, two d and sixty ft
18:13
Speaker 1: LONGDT one ft wide and growing. So for our non
18:18
Speaker 1: American non librarian. And then what Burma may be sure. Uh,
18:25
Speaker 1: that would be two hundred meters deep, eighty meters long
18:29
Speaker 1: and forty wide. That's a huge sinkhole. And the reason
18:34
Speaker 1: was they were just removing uh, potash, potash from the
18:40
Speaker 1: ground through mine and it became flooded. And that was
18:43
Speaker 1: that question. The sink holes always caused massive destruction and
18:49
Speaker 1: killed people in swallow buildings. Yes, no, not true. They're
18:53
Speaker 1: actually a lot of times you're just kind of like
18:54
Speaker 1: an annoyance. Um the ones you can fill with sand, right,
19:00
Speaker 1: or ones that aren't around, um, you know, an urban
19:04
Speaker 1: civilized area, like if they're out in the boonies, it's
19:07
Speaker 1: kind of cool, like really cool. If we're talking about
19:10
Speaker 1: the ones in Venezuela, the sorry sorry Nama sinkholes. Did
19:15
Speaker 1: you see those things? I saw this picture of them. Yeah,
19:18
Speaker 1: well I didn't mean literally have you descended into them?
19:22
Speaker 1: But those are really cool because those are in the
19:25
Speaker 1: Tapui region, these really high mass Basically it's like at
19:28
Speaker 1: the top of a mountain, you'll just see a forest,
19:31
Speaker 1: dense forest, and then these huge, perfectly round holes thousand
19:36
Speaker 1: ft deep yea deep in these crazy oh yeah, these
19:42
Speaker 1: crazy dudes like put the parachutes and jump into them. Yeah,
19:46
Speaker 1: very cool. They did on that the Planet Earth. Um.
19:48
Speaker 1: Actually I don't think it was there, but did you
19:50
Speaker 1: ever watch that the Planet Earth Discovery thing. Yes, they
19:53
Speaker 1: gave us that when they bought us as a gift.
19:56
Speaker 1: It was really cool. But it has the base jumpers
20:00
Speaker 1: jumping into these things. It's crazy. That's awesome. They also
20:03
Speaker 1: have a say no taste. Yeah, did you see those
20:05
Speaker 1: into loom? Yes, because they got a lot of them
20:08
Speaker 1: down there, right, Yes, they do. They're everywhere into loom
20:10
Speaker 1: and they're awesome. So basically that is um a sinkhole
20:14
Speaker 1: that is now a pool, right yeah, and they're there
20:17
Speaker 1: for some reason. There's I guess the water collects. It
20:21
Speaker 1: percolates down from the top, so there's always a dripping sound,
20:24
Speaker 1: and then it collects in the bottom of the sinkhole,
20:27
Speaker 1: usually bedrock or light sediment um. But during the percolation
20:32
Speaker 1: process it becomes purified. So it's this incredible like bluish
20:37
Speaker 1: water um that's totally pure. We're just yeah, huge for snorkeling,
20:43
Speaker 1: scuba diving, that kind of thing. And they're also very
20:45
Speaker 1: um sacred places I guess among the Maya maybe um.
20:50
Speaker 1: And there's like a big movement to uh preserve these
20:55
Speaker 1: saint no tastes because they were they were believed to
20:58
Speaker 1: be um um portal to the next world, and so
21:02
Speaker 1: they'd like sacrifice people and stuff there. They are wicked
21:05
Speaker 1: cool looking. I plan to go one day, okay and
21:09
Speaker 1: tread the ground that you tread into Loom. There is uh.
21:12
Speaker 1: There's also a lot of the ruins around on the
21:15
Speaker 1: Yucatan or will have a saint note. Well, they have
21:18
Speaker 1: ruins near to Loom, right, huh and then chuck. Lastly,
21:21
Speaker 1: probably the biggest sinkhole on the planet is the Qatara
21:25
Speaker 1: Depression right in Egypt. It's like three hundred feet deep
21:29
Speaker 1: or four hundred and thirty six, yes, four hundred and
21:32
Speaker 1: thirty six hundred and thirty one deep size of Lake
21:36
Speaker 1: Erie basically. Yeah, but it's like seventy five miles wide,
21:40
Speaker 1: which is add twenty kilometers. Yeah, it's it's not I
21:44
Speaker 1: kind of expected more to Did you see pictures It
21:46
Speaker 1: looks sort of just looks like a desert basin sort of. Yeah.
21:49
Speaker 1: I thought it's not nearly as cool looking as the
21:52
Speaker 1: ones in Venezuela. No, And if you want to see
21:54
Speaker 1: cool picture of the ones in Venezuela. You can type
21:57
Speaker 1: sinkhole into how stuff works dot Com. There's also a
22:00
Speaker 1: cool flash animation on zero of how sinkhole's form and
22:04
Speaker 1: really to sum up sinkhole's form, because water moves underground,
22:10
Speaker 1: it rose erodes the overburdened above combat. There you have it. Okay, Um,
22:17
Speaker 1: and I think I said handy search bar at how
22:19
Speaker 1: stuff works dot Com? Right? If not, I just did,
22:23
Speaker 1: which means it's time for a listener. Meant yes, Josh,
22:28
Speaker 1: serial killers. I just need to say, judging from the
22:32
Speaker 1: Facebook and fan reaction, that we have a sick and
22:34
Speaker 1: twisted audience. I thought it was funny that a lot
22:37
Speaker 1: of people felt they need to be like, you know,
22:39
Speaker 1: not to be morbid or anything, but real coach, everybody
22:42
Speaker 1: loves serial killers. Okay, just go with it. Before I
22:45
Speaker 1: read these, Josh, I should just point out a quick correction.
22:48
Speaker 1: Ted Bundy Um did his final Sorority House actions at
22:52
Speaker 1: Florida State, not Florida, and I knew that too. I
22:56
Speaker 1: don't know why I said UF Yeah, I thought it
22:58
Speaker 1: was Florida the whole time. I'm not a big Florida
23:00
Speaker 1: Gator fan, as you know, but I'm sure that had
23:03
Speaker 1: nothing to do with it. You. Uh, we heard from
23:07
Speaker 1: a bunch of people. Josh kind of jokingly said, if
23:09
Speaker 1: you know of any serial killers. Turns out a bunch
23:12
Speaker 1: of people have come into contact with surprising amount. Uh,
23:16
Speaker 1: And so I have a bunch of them. I'm gonna
23:17
Speaker 1: run down you. You want to read some of these two? Oh, sure,
23:21
Speaker 1: I'll give you that page. Uh. This is from Solomon.
23:24
Speaker 1: My mom told me a story when she was in
23:26
Speaker 1: Washington in the late seventies. She graduated college, moved there
23:29
Speaker 1: to work as a social worker in Seattle. She was
23:31
Speaker 1: supposed to meet up with a friend one day and
23:32
Speaker 1: co worker in her roommate, and they waited for hours
23:35
Speaker 1: and hours, but they never showed. She spoke to her
23:38
Speaker 1: co worker later and said the reason she never came
23:40
Speaker 1: because her friend was missing. Turns out, long story short,
23:44
Speaker 1: that she went to help a guy with a sailboat
23:45
Speaker 1: and the parking lot buffalo bill style, can't help me
23:48
Speaker 1: get this couch in the van. She got there and
23:50
Speaker 1: there was no sailboat. And it turns out that this
23:53
Speaker 1: guy was Ted Bundy and the friend was janics Ott,
23:56
Speaker 1: one of his final victims. It's from Solomon. All right,
23:59
Speaker 1: I've got a give one. This is my favorite. This
24:00
Speaker 1: is from Justin. My grandfather once knew a serial killer.
24:04
Speaker 1: They were in the same fantasy baseball league. I do
24:07
Speaker 1: not know his name. Unfortunately, he was kicked out of
24:10
Speaker 1: the league for cheating and his family left him, so
24:12
Speaker 1: he resorted to shooting people in the head with the pistol.
24:15
Speaker 1: The police had him cornered in a motel, so he
24:18
Speaker 1: covered himself in baseball cards and committed suicide. That's from Justin.
24:22
Speaker 1: I don't know about that one, just said at the
24:24
Speaker 1: very least Justin as a great imagination. Yes. Uh. This
24:26
Speaker 1: one comes from Karen h. Just a tidbit, guys. My
24:29
Speaker 1: aunt's first husband was a corner on the Manson murders,
24:32
Speaker 1: Tate la Bianca. I never met him because they divorced
24:35
Speaker 1: before I was born, but my aunt always talked about
24:38
Speaker 1: him during the murders. Her ex husband also founded the
24:42
Speaker 1: Los Angeles Coroner's gift shop. I thought that was strange,
24:46
Speaker 1: strange and awesome kind of the gift shop at least. Uh.
24:49
Speaker 1: This one's from Megan. I just wanted to tell you
24:52
Speaker 1: that my stepdad's brother murdered two people. They were my
24:55
Speaker 1: stepdad's friends. My stepdad recounted always feeling a little odd
24:59
Speaker 1: around his brother. There. He said the hair on his
25:01
Speaker 1: arms and neck would rise when his brother would talk
25:03
Speaker 1: to him. His brother's His brother used to catch sparrows
25:07
Speaker 1: as a child and show firecrackers into their butts and
25:10
Speaker 1: let them go after he lit them, which is pretty awful.
25:13
Speaker 1: Thanks Megan. Yeah, that's part of the McDonald triad. I
25:16
Speaker 1: would say, uh, two quickens here on Jeffrey Dahmer. Apparently
25:20
Speaker 1: he had a bunch of neighbors that listened to our show.
25:24
Speaker 1: Joel says, around the time of the killings, my mom
25:26
Speaker 1: lived next door to Jeffrey Dahmers. She met him twice
25:29
Speaker 1: and she said he seemed like a nice guy, but
25:32
Speaker 1: a little weird. I would say so anyway, I just
25:35
Speaker 1: thought I would share my little anecdote with you guys.
25:39
Speaker 1: Joel and from Coal and Cincinnata says, my father went
25:43
Speaker 1: to preschool with Jeffrey Dahmer. He doesn't remember him torturing
25:46
Speaker 1: small animals or anything, but one fact sticks out. He
25:49
Speaker 1: liked to walk around with his cheeks sucked in. My
25:51
Speaker 1: dad said, picture someone making a fishy face. My dad's
25:55
Speaker 1: theory was that Jeffy was saving his taste for human flesh.
26:00
Speaker 1: But that's pure speculation. Wow, that is pure speculation. Thanks
26:04
Speaker 1: for that. Checkov had a couple more, uh, if that's
26:07
Speaker 1: okay with you, Yes, all right. There's one from anonymous
26:10
Speaker 1: in Florida who wanted to give the attention to the
26:13
Speaker 1: victim and not take any for herself. I went to
26:16
Speaker 1: high school with a girl who became the victim of
26:18
Speaker 1: a serial killer known as the Gainesville Ripper, Danny Rolling.
26:21
Speaker 1: I wasn't close friends with her, but she was in
26:23
Speaker 1: my freshman English honors class. So that's from anonymous. Kurt's
26:28
Speaker 1: lived eight minutes away from Dennis raiders home the bt
26:31
Speaker 1: K killer, and the house where he murdered one of
26:33
Speaker 1: his victims is across the street from the hardware shop
26:35
Speaker 1: where I shop. And it turns out b t K
26:38
Speaker 1: Dennis Raider uh murdered more than three people over the
26:42
Speaker 1: course of his career. Still kind of a poop poo
26:45
Speaker 1: serial killer career, in my opinion, said I was, you
26:50
Speaker 1: got any more? I got one more? Go ahead. Back
26:53
Speaker 1: in night, my dad's best friend's family was targeted by
26:57
Speaker 1: the Zodiac Killer. We recently met up with her daughter
27:00
Speaker 1: and she told us the story that one of her relatives,
27:03
Speaker 1: David Arthur Faraday, was killed by Mr Zodiac and the
27:07
Speaker 1: fear of someone else being killed caused them to leave California,
27:11
Speaker 1: which meant my dad lost contact with her. Thanks for
27:13
Speaker 1: the podcast and fully expect you to to release new
27:16
Speaker 1: episodes even after you are dead. Jerry. Slightly disturbing. It was,
27:21
Speaker 1: especially in relation to the Zodiac killing and especially since
27:23
Speaker 1: it was written by our own Jerry. Yeah, it was,
27:27
Speaker 1: wasn't it. I got one more? This is from Leslie,
27:29
Speaker 1: and Leslie has Josh known three murderers. Wow, and she's
27:34
Speaker 1: still around. The First person Robert Bennett, a k a.
27:37
Speaker 1: The handcuff Man, who I think was caught in Atlanta.
27:41
Speaker 1: He lived just across the street from me in to
27:43
Speaker 1: wand Up, Pennsylvania, and we used to sneak through the
27:45
Speaker 1: alley beside his house to get to school and we
27:47
Speaker 1: would sneak into his pool. Yeah, dangerous business. Second was
27:51
Speaker 1: Eric Smith, a kid from Sonoma, New York, who murdered
27:55
Speaker 1: a four year old boy. His grandfather was my science
27:57
Speaker 1: teacher and a family friend. And finally, the recent murderer
28:00
Speaker 1: I've known was Messak Dumas, who murdered his family here
28:04
Speaker 1: in Naples. I worked with him for a while at
28:07
Speaker 1: a restaurant and knew his wife from the grocery store
28:09
Speaker 1: right shop. And that's from Leslie. So she's done three
28:12
Speaker 1: murderers and good for her, Leslie. UM, keep your eyes peeled.
28:17
Speaker 1: That's what I want to remain on point. I've never
28:19
Speaker 1: known anybody who's known that many murderers before. UM chuck
28:24
Speaker 1: tag teaming listener mail makes me feel like Michelle Norris
28:27
Speaker 1: and Robert Siegel. Okay, Uh, and it's Thursday even so,
28:32
Speaker 1: like the whole MPR thing's really going on. UM. Check
28:35
Speaker 1: us out on Facebook, it's UH stuff you should Know
28:38
Speaker 1: website in parentheses. We're also on Twitter, s y s
28:41
Speaker 1: K podcast and uh. If you want to send us
28:45
Speaker 1: an email about anything at all, just wrap it up
28:47
Speaker 1: and ship it off to stuff podcast at how stuff
28:52
Speaker 1: works dot com For more on this and thousands of
28:58
Speaker 1: other topics how stuff works dot com. Want more House
29:02
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29:05
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