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Speaker 1: website apart. Welcome to you Stuff you Should Know from
Speaker 1: House Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Josh Park. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant and Jerry's
Speaker 1: over there, and there's some coffee. Let's see a few posters. Uh,
Speaker 1: there's a Beasley brand storage thing. You're getting. You're getting
Speaker 1: some of that Beasley catch come in your way? Maybe
Speaker 1: what was that all about? I hope it's Beasley, it
Speaker 1: could also be Bisley. I don't know. You know, I
Speaker 1: got a listener mail from someone who went to get
Speaker 1: a Bond side tree in Boston after they were inspired
Speaker 1: after our episode, and the dude she's like, have you've
Speaker 1: been busy? Think? I was like, this week we've been
Speaker 1: like people want Bonds eye trees. The phone has been
Speaker 1: off the hook. No way. Yeah, we could be getting
Speaker 1: some of that bonds ie scratch. We definitely should be.
Speaker 1: We're getting nothing. Japan should be giving us money. Man,
Speaker 1: what's their monetary unit again? Is it still the end?
Speaker 1: The Japanese yen? We we need many in coming our way. Yeah,
Speaker 1: soon many yet, and they're gonna try to flash some
Speaker 1: numbers that you know you'll be like, wow, that's a lot.
Speaker 1: Just remember it's about a hundred yend to one dollars.
Speaker 1: I'll just ten. I'll let you negotiate that one. I
Speaker 1: think it's ten now, Yeah, I remember, uh. And the
Speaker 1: other night I turned on the television and Karate Kid
Speaker 1: was on that just moments before the Wonderful Bonds I seen. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I thought you took a picture of your television and
Speaker 1: I put it on Instagram, our instagram s, y s
Speaker 1: K podcast. Yeah, we're trying to take more pictures that
Speaker 1: what you do share ourselves. Yeah. Uh, but this isn't
Speaker 1: about one. No, I've got one more shout out though. Um.
Speaker 1: There's a dude named Aaron Sits who remember when we
Speaker 1: had our horror fiction contest years back, and we said
Speaker 1: that anybody who was a part of it, if they
Speaker 1: ever published anything, we give him a shout out in perpetuity.
Speaker 1: In perpetuity, and Aaron Sites published something. He published a
Speaker 1: short story collection called The Andrew Jackson Stories, UM. And
Speaker 1: he says that it was published by Lockjaw magazine. And
Speaker 1: he said they're about Andrew Jackson about as much as
Speaker 1: Richard Broad against trout fishing in America's about trout fishing.
Speaker 1: That means nothing to me. Well, it wasn't really about
Speaker 1: trout fishing. Um. But the the it's a slim little book.
Speaker 1: He sent it to us. I haven't read it yet,
Speaker 1: but he swears up and down that it's awesome. So
Speaker 1: we're gonna go ahead and take his word for it.
Speaker 1: But congratulations Aaron Sites And if you want to go
Speaker 1: get your hands on Andrew Jackson's Stories, go look it up,
Speaker 1: go to the Lockjaw magazine side I would imagine. So
Speaker 1: that's done, and now we can talk about Controlled Burn. Yes,
Speaker 1: good band name, Control Burn, Yeah, depending on like maybe
Speaker 1: if it was like a soft rock group. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: they're like a eighties wedding band, Controlled Burn. Good evening
Speaker 1: we were Controlled Burn. And this is by E. L
Speaker 1: O right or Loggins and Messina. Yeah, I'm not dissing
Speaker 1: l O. By the way, I love No Llo was great.
Speaker 1: Did you see Kenny Loggins on documentary now Parter yeah,
Speaker 1: which episode is that? It was the two part one
Speaker 1: about them? What were the what? What did uh? What
Speaker 1: was their thing? Oh? They were a band? They were Um,
Speaker 1: oh that's right, that was the band. Yeah yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it was like the greatest band name ever. It was
Speaker 1: I want to say California Chrome, but that was that Racehorse.
Speaker 1: I don't remember what they were called. Was it Controlled Burn? No?
Speaker 1: But that that was a good one. That two parter.
Speaker 1: Great show. I love that show. Uh, there's a new
Speaker 1: season coming out right, Uh they should Okay, so um
Speaker 1: again we're talking about Control Burning, not a band, an
Speaker 1: actual thing. Yeah. And this ties into our Wildfires episode yeah,
Speaker 1: which we did um years back. Yeah. Um, but Chuck,
Speaker 1: I always loved the opportunity to talk about Oh here
Speaker 1: we go and here's what now? Alright, so um, it
Speaker 1: wasn't until about fourteen on one. The book by the way,
Speaker 1: if you're new to the show, Josh's long uh stated
Speaker 1: favorite book so long, and you've talked about it a lot,
Speaker 1: at least fifty sixty times. And I would have read
Speaker 1: it by now if you hadn't have talked about it
Speaker 1: so much. You don't even need to now you know
Speaker 1: the whole book so fourteen one. One of the premises
Speaker 1: of it is that they're like, our understanding of UM,
Speaker 1: Native America in North and Mezzo and South America prior
Speaker 1: to Columbus coming over is like just totally wrong. There
Speaker 1: were way more people, they were way more advanced then UM.
Speaker 1: Anthropology and archaeology has long given them credit for the Internet.
Speaker 1: Pretty much they did, UM. But it wasn't until like
Speaker 1: the early two thousands that this idea of the noble
Speaker 1: savage who treaded lightly on the on the ecosystem, on
Speaker 1: the environment started to crumble, right and UM. We started
Speaker 1: to realize that a lot of the features, what what
Speaker 1: the early explorers thought were natural features of North and
Speaker 1: South in Mesoamerica were um actually really well managed ecosystems,
Speaker 1: right um. And one of the ways that Native Americans
Speaker 1: used or managed ecosystems was through fire. But again there
Speaker 1: was this idea that Native Americans just had no idea
Speaker 1: what they were doing with anything. So whenever archaeologists up
Speaker 1: until about two thousand, two thousand one or two, the
Speaker 1: late nineties maybe and it time they came across evidence
Speaker 1: of like a fire and it seemed like the Native
Speaker 1: Americans had said it they just assumed that either the
Speaker 1: Native Americans had said it to amuse themselves because they're
Speaker 1: big dummies, or because a campfire got out of control
Speaker 1: because they're big dummies. But this is what they came
Speaker 1: up with their like, oh, well, they clearly wanted to
Speaker 1: set some fires for fun. They couldn't have possibly had
Speaker 1: any any point to it. But then more and more
Speaker 1: investigation has shown like, no, actually, not only did they
Speaker 1: know what they were doing. Like, if you step back
Speaker 1: and look at North America, the whole continent was a
Speaker 1: managed set of ecosystems, and one of the ways they
Speaker 1: did it was through fire. The other thing that interested
Speaker 1: me too was depending on the the explorers and the
Speaker 1: Europeans and the settlers that came over to to North America. Um,
Speaker 1: some of them came and that was not anything new
Speaker 1: to them. It turns out that using fire to manage
Speaker 1: ecosystems is almost universal. Basically, yeah, I mean so of
Speaker 1: the reasons they might have done it. Of course, these days,
Speaker 1: one of the main reasons we do it is to
Speaker 1: prevent forest fires from spreading, which we'll get to. But
Speaker 1: back then, uh, they would use it to improve the
Speaker 1: foraging conditions for free ranging cattle. Uh, increased visibility, access.
Speaker 1: There were all kinds of great reasons to burn things
Speaker 1: in a controlled way. Yeah. Supposedly the early explorers didn't
Speaker 1: really think about it, but the historians went back and
Speaker 1: looked at it. That the explorers who used to say, like,
Speaker 1: you can't you can't get through the forests in North America.
Speaker 1: We're talking about swamp land like lands that wouldn't burn. Ye,
Speaker 1: but you could drive like a car through a forest
Speaker 1: in like Ohio or something like that. Although there's swamps
Speaker 1: in Ohio, a non swampy part of Ohio because of
Speaker 1: the use of fire. The swamps in Ohio, Yeah, there were.
Speaker 1: They filled them in and built to ledo over it. So, uh,
Speaker 1: you were talking about the um when Europeans came upon
Speaker 1: the scene. Um, it's really interesting. I read this article
Speaker 1: called the Historical Foundations of Prescribed Burning for Wildlife colon
Speaker 1: a Southeastern Perspective Beautiful by A. Sydney Johnson and Philippe Hale,
Speaker 1: and it was I think it was an academic paper
Speaker 1: or something, but it started dawn on me when they
Speaker 1: were talking about the founding of America. Why we ended
Speaker 1: up like we ended up. Um, it just kind of
Speaker 1: all came together for me. I love reading stuff like
Speaker 1: that that connects dots that weren't connected before, and this
Speaker 1: was a simple dot I should have connected before. But basically,
Speaker 1: in the northeast of the United States, it was largely
Speaker 1: settled by people from the southern lowlands of England, people
Speaker 1: that lived in cities and people that had not for
Speaker 1: the most part, lived on farms and didn't have a
Speaker 1: lot of experience with agriculture, and certainly not with prescribed burning,
Speaker 1: which is another name for a controlled burn. Uh. And
Speaker 1: then in the south, particularly the southeast, we were more
Speaker 1: populated by people from rural areas of the UK and
Speaker 1: Scotland and Ireland and western England. They had a lot
Speaker 1: of experience with farming. And then I started to think, oh,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, that all just makes total sense. That's
Speaker 1: why the Northeast became industrialized. Why the South we're a
Speaker 1: bunch of yokels. They were agrarian, and uh, it just
Speaker 1: sort of it was very obvious thing, but it just
Speaker 1: sort of like coalesced in my mind. Yeah. I knew
Speaker 1: that part already, the industrialization aspects of it. But one
Speaker 1: of the things that coalest for me was wondering how
Speaker 1: much of the Civil War was driven by by rivalries
Speaker 1: that go back to England and Scotland and Ireland rather
Speaker 1: than you know, the just the context of North America
Speaker 1: in the US. Absolutely, because I think for the most part,
Speaker 1: once people came over here, they did things like they
Speaker 1: did them were there, which makes sense. Like Scarlett O'Hara's
Speaker 1: father had Irish brogue. Remember, No, Yeah, her dad he had.
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure he didn't. I'm losing my mind. R. Well,
Speaker 1: it's been a while since i've seen that movie. H
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure I believe it. But it makes sense.
Speaker 1: And like you said, maybe the attitudes came along with that.
Speaker 1: Maybe that carried over into how people felt about each
Speaker 1: other pre Civil War. Yeah, I'll bet it. But the
Speaker 1: point of all this is that up north there was
Speaker 1: fire suppression that was the key driver, right, Like they
Speaker 1: would they would try to keep fires from breaking out
Speaker 1: under any circumstances. Yeah, and don't get confused, because a
Speaker 1: suppressing fire is a controlled burn. Fire. Suppression is putting
Speaker 1: out fires. So maybe we should just say up north,
Speaker 1: they didn't think that starting fires on purpose was smart. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they were like and down south they said no, no, no,
Speaker 1: this is We've been doing it in England for years.
Speaker 1: They were like fire, Yeah, fire is a good way
Speaker 1: to manage things. Yeah, and that's how the sation was divided,
Speaker 1: at least at first, and then the Civil War happened,
Speaker 1: and interestingly, UM the Yankees came down and said, hey,
Speaker 1: this old plantation, UM will make a really great hunting preserve,
Speaker 1: and I'm going to buy it now that I own
Speaker 1: this enormous tract of land in the South, I'm a
Speaker 1: Yankee and we don't believe in fire, so I'm gonna
Speaker 1: make sure no fire ever breaks out here, even though
Speaker 1: everybody's been using UM fire techniques for generations. Yeah. And interestingly,
Speaker 1: to the fire techniques that the founders in the South
Speaker 1: used where the same kind that the Native Americans in
Speaker 1: the area used, so like they're on the same page,
Speaker 1: thousands of miles apart, and basically came and kind of
Speaker 1: started doing the same thing or kept doing the same
Speaker 1: thing that Native Americans were doing. And what makes that
Speaker 1: even more interesting is that UM It's using fire is
Speaker 1: not universal to ecosystems like you. There's different techniques or
Speaker 1: not using it at all, depending on the type of
Speaker 1: ecosystem you're dealing with. Well, yeah, because in the in
Speaker 1: the UH Southern Lowlands, apparently the forests were like fire
Speaker 1: sensitive hardwoods and spruce tree. So it's sort of depended
Speaker 1: on what kind of forest you had, right, I guess
Speaker 1: there's weren't as flammable, right, or inflammable, which is a
Speaker 1: word I think we should just get rid of entirely. Inflammable. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it means the same thing, is flammable, but it sounds
Speaker 1: like it means the opposite. It's just a stupid word. Really, Yeah, inflammable,
Speaker 1: I've never heard of it. Well, that's great, that's all
Speaker 1: the more reason to get rid of it. That's crazy.
Speaker 1: Inflammable means flammable. What's the point, man? What a dumb language.
Speaker 1: So um, the point of the whole thing is that
Speaker 1: fire is a natural feature of a living, thriving ecosystem.
Speaker 1: It's it's something humans terrified of, but on the on
Speaker 1: the environmental level, on the ecological level, it's a necessary
Speaker 1: component to keep any or most ecosystems healthy. Right, And
Speaker 1: some groups of people understood this. The people who ended
Speaker 1: up running the show after the Civil War did not
Speaker 1: believe this, and it actually has had a very large
Speaker 1: impact throughout the twentieth century in the United States, which
Speaker 1: were just now overcoming. We can actually thank one guy
Speaker 1: for changing the attitude toward fires and using them for
Speaker 1: um wildfire management. And we'll talk about him right after this.
Speaker 1: All right, So you tease the name drop it did
Speaker 1: right before the break uh in Well, there was there
Speaker 1: was this one particular northern landowner that came down south
Speaker 1: and brought up a bunch of plantations. Name was Henry
Speaker 1: Bedell and he hated fire. Uh. Fire had burned his
Speaker 1: favorite horse maybe you never know, Um, so he hated fire.
Speaker 1: He was appalled at the idea of burning land. And uh,
Speaker 1: but other people, you know, like we're saying, in the South,
Speaker 1: so now it's a good thing. So in uh they
Speaker 1: commissioned the U. S. Bureau of Biological Survey, which was
Speaker 1: precursor to the Fish and Wildlife Service, and uh it
Speaker 1: was headed up at the time by guy named Herbert L. Stoddard,
Speaker 1: who was the name that you teased. And Stoddard actually
Speaker 1: the thing that kicked it off the most was that
Speaker 1: these guys who um, who bought these huge plantations and
Speaker 1: turn thement and preserves, they like to hunt quail, and um,
Speaker 1: they right, and they noticed that the Bob white quail
Speaker 1: population was declining every year and they had no idea why.
Speaker 1: So they brought Stoddard it in and Stoddard became a
Speaker 1: Bob White quail expert. Well he already was. Oh, he
Speaker 1: was already that's why they brought him in. Yeah, he
Speaker 1: was the He wrote a book about it, and um,
Speaker 1: this guy was awesome. He he helped found the literally
Speaker 1: helped found a profession of wild life management. Right, the
Speaker 1: whole field is like basically this guy. Yep, he wrote
Speaker 1: like some legendary books that are still used today. Uh.
Speaker 1: He was like literally the first critic of industrialized agriculture.
Speaker 1: He's just this sort of champion and a Georgian, a
Speaker 1: transplant to Georgia. Yeah, yeah, I think he things from Chicago,
Speaker 1: but did a lot of work here for sure. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So he Um, he starts looking into the quail situation
Speaker 1: down here and he's like, well, you need to burn him.
Speaker 1: There's your problem. You guys have a woody undergrowth problem.
Speaker 1: And I looked into this and Bob white quail requires
Speaker 1: some of the most complex habitats you've ever heard of. Right,
Speaker 1: So they thrive in areas where you've got what's called
Speaker 1: woody cover, which are dense shrubbery that's like mostly woody.
Speaker 1: That they can use is what's called umkovie headquarters. It's
Speaker 1: like little escaped patches, and they need them all over
Speaker 1: the place. But in addition to this, they also need
Speaker 1: food sources, so they need like crops of a certain variety,
Speaker 1: and then they also need some grassy areas. And they
Speaker 1: need all this stuff in certain proportions. And if you
Speaker 1: have the proportions right, which apparently they did, the quail
Speaker 1: populations thrive. But if you have too much of one thing,
Speaker 1: then the coil populations diminished. And that one thing that
Speaker 1: had that had grown up was the woody undergrowth. And
Speaker 1: the reason the woody undergrowth was allowed to grow up
Speaker 1: was because the Yankees came in and stopped using fire.
Speaker 1: That's right, and that interesting. So it was all because
Speaker 1: these rich guys, um, these rich industrialists who wanted to
Speaker 1: hunt quail were like, war's all the quail, and they
Speaker 1: hired the government to come look into it. And this
Speaker 1: government guy came in and was like, oh, here's the problem.
Speaker 1: You guys need to set this on fire. But the
Speaker 1: thing is is no one listened to him. Well, no,
Speaker 1: he had he had a few people that um I
Speaker 1: mean they hired him for his expertise, so he had
Speaker 1: a few people that got on board. But he fought
Speaker 1: for many many years. UM. Like the history of control burning,
Speaker 1: it wasn't until post World War two is when it
Speaker 1: started to catch on a little bit, and then in
Speaker 1: the fifties and sixties it became more commonplace. But it
Speaker 1: wasn't until ninety one that the U. S. Forest Service
Speaker 1: had their very first symposium on UH on prescribed burns,
Speaker 1: and that's what really turned the tide. But this was
Speaker 1: the nineteen twenties, and it took all the way till
Speaker 1: the nineteen seventies for it to become like completely accepted
Speaker 1: that's the right way to do things. And in the
Speaker 1: meantime we had a lot of unnecessary wildfires well. And
Speaker 1: one of the reasons too was apparently all the forestry
Speaker 1: um workers in the South were from the North UH
Speaker 1: and so they had these bad experiences in England and
Speaker 1: elsewhere with like devastating fires that kill people in wiped
Speaker 1: out villages. And apparently they also had this German influence,
Speaker 1: like a protectionist influence from Germans in forestry school that
Speaker 1: was taught to them that way, so they were they
Speaker 1: were doing it all wrong. Well, one of the other
Speaker 1: explanations I saw for why the forestry services like, no,
Speaker 1: you can't burn down here is because um one I
Speaker 1: guess one of the spoils of winning the Civil War
Speaker 1: was the North came down and just clear cut the
Speaker 1: south of its pine and they figured, well, the pine
Speaker 1: forests have been so devastated for what for timber uh huh,
Speaker 1: that we can't let any fire happen or else. No, no,
Speaker 1: this pine is never gonna recover, so we really can't
Speaker 1: do any burning now. And yeah, so eventually everybody started
Speaker 1: listening to Stoddard and um. Now we use fire um
Speaker 1: pretty much everywhere in the United States. And there's a
Speaker 1: couple of reasons to set fires on purpose. And the
Speaker 1: coolest one is that if you set fires on purpose,
Speaker 1: you actually prevent wildfires down the down the line. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And and you know we're not talking about like completely
Speaker 1: burning down every tree in the forest. Yeah, they're mainly
Speaker 1: burning uh that that you know, the stuff that will
Speaker 1: catch everything on fire, like the the understory, the underbrush,
Speaker 1: the dead leaves, dead branches, stuff on the ground, right,
Speaker 1: and if you if you burn that on purpose, you
Speaker 1: burn out the fuel for again a future out of
Speaker 1: control wildfire. One of the other things you do is
Speaker 1: you open up the canopy, right, So you're burning out
Speaker 1: some trees, but for the most part, the older, more
Speaker 1: established trees can survive. And since that canopies opened up,
Speaker 1: more sunlight can come through. And when more sunlight can
Speaker 1: come through, you have smaller trees that can start to grow,
Speaker 1: so there's more reproduction. Actually, yeah, and and if you're
Speaker 1: listening thinking, well, this all sounds great, but uh, doesn't
Speaker 1: that release a ton of carbon emissions in the air
Speaker 1: when you're burning things? And if you're burning thousands and
Speaker 1: tens of thousands of acres a year on purpose, aren't
Speaker 1: you just adding to the problem? No, I was being KOI,
Speaker 1: But the answer is no. Well it depends, so it's
Speaker 1: a little bit of both. I thought this was a
Speaker 1: little strange for the way that this was parceled out.
Speaker 1: So on the one hand, in this article it says, nope,
Speaker 1: Actually they've done studies and the the large established trees
Speaker 1: that can survive a controlled burn actually lock in more
Speaker 1: carbon um in the long run than uh, So the
Speaker 1: control burn releases less than say, a wildfire that's burning
Speaker 1: out a control that burns those trees and unlocks that carbon. Right.
Speaker 1: And then later on in the last like section of
Speaker 1: this article, the authors like, Yeah, that really just depends
Speaker 1: on what kind of forest you're talking about. In some forests,
Speaker 1: it doesn't make a difference at all. And and yes,
Speaker 1: and in that case it's bad for the for the environment.
Speaker 1: I don't know about that last part. I'm the same.
Speaker 1: I just think it was weird. Well, I think it's
Speaker 1: cool though, Like what you just said, the the large
Speaker 1: trees capture that carbon, and if you burn off the
Speaker 1: small stuff underneath what you said earlier, it's gonna open
Speaker 1: up that canopy and let those big trees grow bigger.
Speaker 1: And uh, that's gonna you know, that's gonna be good
Speaker 1: in the long run, short long term gain for a
Speaker 1: short term carbon emission output. Right. So and then also
Speaker 1: in addition to opening up that canopy allowing more sunlight
Speaker 1: so reproduction can happen, there's actually they found, um some
Speaker 1: species of trees that depend on fire to reproduce. In
Speaker 1: chief among them is the giant sequoia in Yosemite. And
Speaker 1: I think the sixties, Yeah, the sixties. Um, they were like,
Speaker 1: the sequoias aren't reproducing. What's going on? And somebody, a
Speaker 1: guy in aimed um. Dr Richard Hartsfeldt said, I think
Speaker 1: it has to do with fire. We stopped doing fire,
Speaker 1: and we want to do fire, so let's do some fire.
Speaker 1: And they're like, shut up. Hearts felt you can't even
Speaker 1: talk right. And he's like, I'm gonna go burn some
Speaker 1: stuff and prove you guys wrong. So he started doing
Speaker 1: some tests. He did, he'd do fire tests, and um,
Speaker 1: he found that when fire was applied to a sequoia forest,
Speaker 1: the sequoia cones opened up and their seeds could germanate. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and the big daddies are very fire resistant. So they
Speaker 1: were like, I'm a little hot underneath in the undercarriage,
Speaker 1: but it feels nice. But it feels pretty good, and
Speaker 1: I'm gonna stand strong. But what I'm gonna do, like
Speaker 1: you said, is I'm gonna open my cones. Uh. And
Speaker 1: the other thing it does is, you know, when you
Speaker 1: drop seeds, if you have a woody understory and understories
Speaker 1: another word for that under brush under what'd you call it? Uh?
Speaker 1: Under cover under coverage? What do you cover for a
Speaker 1: Bob White coil. That's what the Bob White coils call
Speaker 1: it amongst themselves. All right. So imagine a seed dropping
Speaker 1: from a pine cone from a hundred feet up and
Speaker 1: the ground is covered in leaves and sticks and things.
Speaker 1: That seed might fall on a pile of leaves six
Speaker 1: inches deep and just sit there, just sit there and
Speaker 1: be like I'm unfulfilled. A ka. It never makes contact
Speaker 1: with the soil where it needs to be to establish roots, right,
Speaker 1: or even if it did, the sunlight is being blocked
Speaker 1: out by that understory. And fire solves all those problems.
Speaker 1: It does. Because fire pops that pine cone open, the
Speaker 1: seeds come out. Uh, they are in the newly burned ground,
Speaker 1: which has a lot of carbon fertilizer now in the
Speaker 1: form of ashes and um, lots of sunlight coming through
Speaker 1: because the understoy has been burned away. So fire is
Speaker 1: the greatest thing ever. Pretty amazing. Um. But again we
Speaker 1: said before, it depends on the ecosystem, right. So, especially
Speaker 1: out in California, they got kind of burned happy. They're like, oh, wait,
Speaker 1: fire can actually suppress wildfires. We have tons of wildfires
Speaker 1: out here. We need to burn all the time. And
Speaker 1: they started burning and burning and burning in southern California
Speaker 1: and it had zero impact on, um, diminishing wildfires, and
Speaker 1: they couldn't figure out why. And they finally said, well,
Speaker 1: maybe we should study the ecosystem we're setting on fire
Speaker 1: and see what's what. And they found that they really
Speaker 1: shouldn't be burning the the southern California ecosystem to prevent wildfires.
Speaker 1: So that actually makes it worse in this case. Yeah,
Speaker 1: in southern California, they have what's called chaparral, and it's
Speaker 1: the uh I mean, if you've ever been to southern California,
Speaker 1: you know that. Um it looks lovely now in the
Speaker 1: neighborhoods because people planted stuff everywhere, but the hillsides are
Speaker 1: kind of gross. They're brown in there, forny and they're shrubby.
Speaker 1: It's like all tumbleweeds. Yeah, it's just it's not uh,
Speaker 1: it's just just sort of gross in those canyons. And
Speaker 1: that's just my opinion. Yes, well that's chaparral, right, yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: and uh that chaparral. Uh, well, if you leave everything
Speaker 1: to itself there, apparently it's super fire resistant, so every
Speaker 1: like if you left it naturally, it would only catch
Speaker 1: flame every hundred years or so, right, But they were
Speaker 1: setting fire to this every few years um in order
Speaker 1: to try to prevent wildfires. And what they were ultimately
Speaker 1: doing was burning the chaparral, which was naturally flame resistant, right,
Speaker 1: And in favor of the chaparral. What was since it
Speaker 1: took a long time to grow back, the stuff that
Speaker 1: was beating the chaparral out that could grow faster, was
Speaker 1: actually very flammable. So they were promoting the growth of
Speaker 1: wildfire fuel in southern California by burning these the chaparral.
Speaker 1: Too much good stuff, it is, it's really interesting, all right. Well,
Speaker 1: let's take a break and we'll come back and talk
Speaker 1: about a little bit about climate change and how that
Speaker 1: factors in, and then how you can do your un
Speaker 1: control burn all right. By the way, I was kidding,
Speaker 1: no one should try this ever ever. Ever, we should
Speaker 1: have probably not broken for a minute or so before
Speaker 1: you said that. I don't think anyone just paused and said,
Speaker 1: oh my gosh, I'm gonna run out because we didn't
Speaker 1: teach him yet. Oh that's a good point. You should
Speaker 1: never start a fire. Yeah, don start fires. Okay, I
Speaker 1: got that out of the way. Uh, climate change is
Speaker 1: having an impact on these wildfires. Um. From between nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy nine, there's a season of fire, wildfire season, we
Speaker 1: talked about it in our episode, when it's just more
Speaker 1: likely to happen. In between nineteen the global fire season
Speaker 1: increased by almost nineteen Yeah, which means like the fire
Speaker 1: season grew longer around the world by that much, which
Speaker 1: is bad. And at the rate of eight hundred and
Speaker 1: sixty four million acres worldwide of wildfire that burned every year,
Speaker 1: which is an amazing number. Um. Apparently that emits more
Speaker 1: than half the amount of carbon that fossil fuels put
Speaker 1: out in the atmosphere. Yeah, so that's awful. That's a
Speaker 1: tremendous amount, right. Yeah. And it's a feedback loop. It
Speaker 1: is because um it the it contributes c O two
Speaker 1: to the atmosphere, which promotes the greenhouse effect. Right. The
Speaker 1: greenhouse effect creates drought conditions, It heats things up, it
Speaker 1: lowers humidity. Um. And it becomes a vicious cycle, right
Speaker 1: because when you have drought conditions, you have more dead
Speaker 1: trees that provide more fuel for more wildfires, and more
Speaker 1: wildfires put more c O two into the air, which
Speaker 1: promotes the greenhouse effect and it gets worse and worse
Speaker 1: and worse. More wind to problem. Yeah. I was reading
Speaker 1: about the Fort McMurray wildfire um up in Canada, and
Speaker 1: apparently they just had some freak weather, the Fred McMurray wildfire. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he was like, I got no Fred Mury to um
Speaker 1: he uh? When not? He the city for McMurray, like
Speaker 1: a little outside town there. They think the fire started
Speaker 1: somewhere out there. They're not sure what did it yet,
Speaker 1: but they had some freak weather where it was like
Speaker 1: ninety one degrees. They still have like frozen lakes up
Speaker 1: there right now. But the temperature was like one degrees,
Speaker 1: humidity was at like and winds right about forty five
Speaker 1: miles an hour. So it was just ripe for a wildfire.
Speaker 1: And now it's up to like about four hundred fifty hectares,
Speaker 1: which is exactly a ton of acres. I think, Yeah, man, alright,
Speaker 1: so how do you start a controlled burn? How do
Speaker 1: you do this carefully? Well, first of all, you want
Speaker 1: to work for for a service or fishing game or Yeah,
Speaker 1: the the author of this article says, go to local authorities.
Speaker 1: I'm like, you can do this if you're not a
Speaker 1: local authority, Yeah, but I guess you could. Like He
Speaker 1: also mentions the landowner in the pine bearings of NuGen
Speaker 1: that does his own control burns. Surely you have to
Speaker 1: get you got permitted and if you're doing it yourself, right, Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: he's saying go to local authorities. But I was surprised that, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you can do it if you're not a local authority. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I didn't know that either. In fact, I'm still not
Speaker 1: quite convinced at the very least you want to collaborate
Speaker 1: closely with local authorities if you're not one, that's right, Okay,
Speaker 1: uh so yeah, I mean this beginning stuff is you know,
Speaker 1: get your permits, find out what the best time a year,
Speaker 1: and all that stuff. What you need to do is
Speaker 1: just leave it to the people who do it best.
Speaker 1: But this is what they're gonna do. Um. But the
Speaker 1: first thing that you want to do after you've gotten
Speaker 1: all your equipment and all that good stuff is look
Speaker 1: at the weather and pick out a good time to
Speaker 1: do it. Yeah. You want it kind of damp, Sure,
Speaker 1: you want the humidity above, low winds. Yeah, basically everything
Speaker 1: the opposite of the weather like it was in Fort
Speaker 1: McMurray on May one. Yeah, less than eighty degrees ideally. Um.
Speaker 1: And then once you've got everything all set up and
Speaker 1: you've got a great day picked out, um, you're going
Speaker 1: to start a tiny little test fire in a corner. First,
Speaker 1: you want to wake up and have a complete breakfast.
Speaker 1: Then you can go start your test fire. UM. Test
Speaker 1: fire basically just look at it and say, how are
Speaker 1: you gonna behave today? Yeah? Um, Well, even before you
Speaker 1: set the test fire, you've got you want to plan
Speaker 1: out your area that you want to burn, and in
Speaker 1: the area, you want to identify natural fire breaks. These
Speaker 1: are things like roads, bodies of water, that kind of stuff,
Speaker 1: things that the fire is not going to spread across,
Speaker 1: right ideally, And then you want to create even more
Speaker 1: fire breaks around it where there aren't natural ones. You
Speaker 1: want to plow and dig and cut and um basically
Speaker 1: create an area to where the fire can't spread outside
Speaker 1: of the place you want to contain it into. I
Speaker 1: wonder if dropping an atom bomb on a wildfire woodwork
Speaker 1: operation plash here. Sure, I don't think so. Probably, I
Speaker 1: think that would make everything a lot worse. So, once
Speaker 1: you've got all your fire breaks, both natural and the
Speaker 1: ones that you've just made yourself with your hands. You
Speaker 1: want to start your first fire, called the backfire, and
Speaker 1: the backfire is down wind. It's against that fire break,
Speaker 1: so you know it's only gonna be going in one direction. Um,
Speaker 1: it's against the wind, so it's not gonna be super fast,
Speaker 1: and you're gonna be able to control it. Like you're
Speaker 1: kind of starting off nice and easy. Yeah, just don't
Speaker 1: cut yourself out of the gate. Yeah, just take it
Speaker 1: nice and easy, like you said. Then after you got
Speaker 1: the backfire going, you create flank fires, one on each side,
Speaker 1: right and um, they are not necessarily going against the wind,
Speaker 1: so they're gonna burn a little bit faster. Yeah, they're
Speaker 1: right angles to the wind. Um. And one of the
Speaker 1: neat things about fire when you're creating a control burn
Speaker 1: is the places you're burning first actually create fire breaks
Speaker 1: themselves as they burn the fuel. Have you ever seen
Speaker 1: the gods must be crazy too, didn't see the second one.
Speaker 1: There's like a bush fire and um, I can't remember.
Speaker 1: The main guy's name is awesome. Um. He saves his
Speaker 1: like companions by um setting fire to the grass around
Speaker 1: them so that the brush fire has nothing to burn
Speaker 1: when it gets to them, so he creates a firebreak
Speaker 1: basically by burning the area around him before the fire
Speaker 1: gets there, so he controlled it himself. Was that good
Speaker 1: the sequel? Sure? Yeah, yeah, both of them are really good.
Speaker 1: And I remember that when it came out, it was
Speaker 1: like kind of one of the first, uh foreign sort
Speaker 1: of indie movies that made a big dust up. I
Speaker 1: feel like, you know, they got a lot of attention.
Speaker 1: It's good to be crazy. Holds up, does it not?
Speaker 1: To check it out again? Uh? So where were we?
Speaker 1: We've got our flank fires, we've got our back fires,
Speaker 1: were creating larger fire breaks. And then you want to
Speaker 1: ignite the big daddy, the head fire. The head fire,
Speaker 1: it goes in the direction of the wind. It's it's
Speaker 1: up wind, so it blows very quickly downward and spreads quick.
Speaker 1: But because you said it last, there's less fuel for
Speaker 1: it to burn. It's gonna finish out the fire for
Speaker 1: you pretty quick, but it's not gonna go beyond the
Speaker 1: areas that have already been burned because you just created
Speaker 1: those fire breaks by burning them on the backfire and
Speaker 1: the flank fires. So after that happens, your fire should
Speaker 1: be done and you can go home, just forget about it.
Speaker 1: After you set that head fire, just getting your truck
Speaker 1: and go home. No, there's a little bit more. You
Speaker 1: gotta stay there with my friend until afterward. And then
Speaker 1: they call it mop up duty when you obviously put
Speaker 1: out all the flame is completely with water, cut down
Speaker 1: any little trees that are on fire, and just extinguish
Speaker 1: everything and leave it a big, smoldering, nasty mess that
Speaker 1: is actually going to be good for the environment. And
Speaker 1: you gotta tell everybody who drives by and shouts at
Speaker 1: you for setting a fire that you're doing this because
Speaker 1: it's better off in the long run. Say, the end
Speaker 1: justifies the means pretty neat. Yeah. Another tip, don't wear
Speaker 1: rubber clothing when you're part of a fire setting crew
Speaker 1: because it can melt and stick to your skin. I
Speaker 1: wonder this is something I didn't look into. I wonder
Speaker 1: if the surely they're they're they're just wildfire fighting teams
Speaker 1: that are doing this. Right, it's the same people, right,
Speaker 1: I would guess. I would guess I would hope, because
Speaker 1: the thing is is like, yes, you can, you can
Speaker 1: be told how to set a fire. I think that's
Speaker 1: probably the easy part, like figuring out how to adjust
Speaker 1: when it starts to get out of control or doesn't
Speaker 1: do what you think it's gonna do, or the weather
Speaker 1: conditions change, or if it jumps that firebreak that you
Speaker 1: think is big enough, Right, that's when I think you
Speaker 1: need somebody who's like experienced it's gonna be. There should
Speaker 1: be the same people doing this who know what they're doing.
Speaker 1: I'm sure it is. And if that's what you do,
Speaker 1: we want to hear from you, so shout out to us. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think we heard from some fire jumpers in the
Speaker 1: last episode we did from the wildfire one, and that
Speaker 1: was a good one to go back and listen to that.
Speaker 1: Everybody do it now. If you want to learn more
Speaker 1: about controlled burns, you can take those words in the
Speaker 1: search part house to works dot com since they said
Speaker 1: search parts time for listener, ma'am, I'm gonna call this
Speaker 1: mind blown, not my mind listeners, pind Hey, guys, I
Speaker 1: was listening to the Landfills episode and the most important
Speaker 1: issue you brought up the song Powerhouse by the Raymond
Speaker 1: Scott Quintet. Josh had hummed a snippet and Chuck said
Speaker 1: it was Leoney Tunes. That was a moment of cognitive
Speaker 1: dissonance that rivaled almost anything I've suffered in my forty
Speaker 1: one years, because Josh was actually humming a bit of
Speaker 1: love Villa or Levia Strangiato by Rush, not some dumb
Speaker 1: fifties ban I know that song. So this scot my
Speaker 1: attention powerhouses from the thirties, and it was like an
Speaker 1: orchestral right on the fifties band. This guy out of
Speaker 1: his mind? Well maybe so. I couldn't believe you were
Speaker 1: singing a part of one of my favorite songs by
Speaker 1: one of my favorite bands and crediting someone else. As
Speaker 1: I watched the Raymond Scott video, though, the universe refocused,
Speaker 1: like when the candle holder resolves into faces, or the
Speaker 1: Canadian flag is irreversibly changed into two angry guys pressing
Speaker 1: their foreheads together case closed. Have you ever seen that
Speaker 1: the Canadian flag? No, and I've seen when that says
Speaker 1: like Jesus loves you or something like that. I never
Speaker 1: knew that the Canadian flag, if you look at a
Speaker 1: certain way, looks like two guys. Uh. I went and
Speaker 1: looked into sort of what about the man on the moon?
Speaker 1: You ever seen that? I don't know, But well then
Speaker 1: you haven't. Okay, you would know. Yeah, it's it's kind
Speaker 1: of like, yeah, I guess I can see that. It's
Speaker 1: like the arrow and the FedEx logo, like once you
Speaker 1: see it, you can't unsee it unless you really want to,
Speaker 1: and then you can't. Okay, I don't see what this
Speaker 1: guy is talking about with the Canadian flag. Well, you
Speaker 1: have to type in Canadian flag faces and then someone
Speaker 1: will have It's a bit of a stretch. If you
Speaker 1: ask me, have you ever seen any Sister Wendy stuff. No, Um,
Speaker 1: she is a nun who um it just understands art
Speaker 1: and art history like no one else on the planet.
Speaker 1: And she had like a PBS show for a little while,
Speaker 1: and she just she would just point out things in
Speaker 1: art that you just never think to look for, like
Speaker 1: in the negative space, like the sometimes but also more
Speaker 1: like um, like the shadows surrounding a family and being
Speaker 1: it makes him look isolate and you're like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: I didn't really put my finger on that or whatever.
Speaker 1: She's just got this really great knack for explaining art
Speaker 1: and really interesting way. And I think it's online for free. Alrighty,
Speaker 1: sorry about that. Now that's all right, So where are
Speaker 1: we Canadian Flag too angry. Guys, thanks for broadening my
Speaker 1: understanding of one of the first Rush songs I learned
Speaker 1: to play on drums and then I found this on
Speaker 1: song facts dot com and it sounds credible. Apparently this
Speaker 1: was an issue, and Rush did not give credit to
Speaker 1: Scott for using Powerhouse. By the time Raymond Scott's publisher
Speaker 1: notified the band's management of the infringement, the statute of
Speaker 1: limitations had expired of the challenge, but rusha's management, out
Speaker 1: of deference to Mr or Mrs Scott uh and being
Speaker 1: the class act that they are, offered a one time
Speaker 1: penance payment, feeling it was the ethical thing to do
Speaker 1: all involved. We're happy with the resolution and Rush has
Speaker 1: no further financial obligations under the story. I know under
Speaker 1: the settlement they were required not required to uh accord
Speaker 1: Raymond Scott partial songwriting credit on the Beast. So apparently
Speaker 1: Powerhouse and rushes Labilla strangeata or similar and they nicked
Speaker 1: it from there. Huh. Never knew I didn't either, Uh.
Speaker 1: And that is uh. From Ken Wrinker in Colorado Springs.
Speaker 1: Thanks a lot, Ken, and he says best to Jerry
Speaker 1: in the game. Jerry says thanks. I think yeah, uh, Ken,
Speaker 1: that was awesome. I take back that you're out of
Speaker 1: your mind. You're interesting instead, how about that? Uh. If
Speaker 1: you want to get in touch with us, you can
Speaker 1: tweek to us as by Eska Podcast. You can join
Speaker 1: us on Instagram as by Eska podcast too. You can
Speaker 1: join us on Facebook dot com h slash stuff you
Speaker 1: Should Know. You can send us an email to stuff
Speaker 1: Podcast at how stuff Works dot com and has always
Speaker 1: joined us at our home on the web, Stuff you
Speaker 1: Should Know dot com. For more on this and thousands
Speaker 1: of other topics, is it how stuff Works dot com