Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. Everybody pipe down.
Speaker 1: We've got to get started. There's Chuck, I'm Josh, Cherry, etcetera.
Speaker 1: Let's go, let's go stop laughing. Boy, that that's never
Speaker 1: gonna get old, is it? Not? To me? Probably to
Speaker 1: other people, but not me. We're going to start getting
Speaker 1: emails where people are like, I like short stuff, but
Speaker 1: I always feel so anxious. Right, yeah, well join the club. Pal. So.
Speaker 1: I wrote this article on smoke signals many many years ago.
Speaker 1: I know it's a good one, you think, sure, al right,
Speaker 1: it's a I mean, it's a fairly short topic. Like
Speaker 1: even when you go research elsewhere outside of your brilliant article,
Speaker 1: there's not that much more to it. You know, it's
Speaker 1: like pretty straightforward stuff. But I think the thing the
Speaker 1: first thing to kind of cover with smoke signals is
Speaker 1: that they actually were real. It's not something that like
Speaker 1: Hollywood invented from like Cowboy and Indian movies or something
Speaker 1: like yeah, which that seems like it could have been
Speaker 1: the case. The one thing that got me in reviewing
Speaker 1: this again and then originally when I was doing it
Speaker 1: years ago as an article, was just like, how brilliant
Speaker 1: this is? It really is. It is also, Chuck. The
Speaker 1: one thing that struck me when researching, it's just how
Speaker 1: stressful it would be because if you screw it up,
Speaker 1: it's not like there's a signal for wait, let me
Speaker 1: start over. Well, maybe there was. I hope there was
Speaker 1: for for people like me, for neurotic Native Americans. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess so. All right, so we're talking about smoke signals, which, um,
Speaker 1: like you said, they were real, and they are still real.
Speaker 1: It's not like, you know, they're still smoke and they're
Speaker 1: still wet blankets, right exactly. But Native Americans and not
Speaker 1: just Native Americans, as we learn we'll learn here in
Speaker 1: a second, but Chinese soldiers along the Great Wall of China.
Speaker 1: You know, they couldn't communicate long distances. But if you
Speaker 1: have a big fire with white smoke, you can see
Speaker 1: that for you know, a thousand miles maybe let's just
Speaker 1: say a million miles Chuck, Yeah, a million miles. And
Speaker 1: and they were so smart they figured out, hey, this
Speaker 1: is a great way to send a kind of rudimentary
Speaker 1: message right over a long distance. Yeah. And that's a
Speaker 1: really important point too, is you're not sending like, hey,
Speaker 1: how's it going, what's up with Alexander, how's his foot
Speaker 1: doing right now? I'll wait for your reply Alexander the
Speaker 1: Apache yeah exactly, or the Chinese soldier what are the two? Yeah? Um,
Speaker 1: this is just strictly like like everything's okay, um, or
Speaker 1: I am here, or please please God send help. Something
Speaker 1: really horrible is going down, like really broad stroke communications
Speaker 1: that you would need to send over long distances. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it could be, I mean, depending on the tribe
Speaker 1: and what they are arranged. Because kind of the beauty
Speaker 1: of smoke signals is it's just puffs of smoke, so
Speaker 1: you can have it mean whatever you want to mean
Speaker 1: as long as you I'll talk about it beforehand. Get
Speaker 1: everyone on the same page. Although they didn't have pages,
Speaker 1: they had smoke so that that you couldn't use that.
Speaker 1: Turn back. Then get on the same puff. Get everyone
Speaker 1: in the same puff. I'm gonna start using that. Um.
Speaker 1: As long as you had everyone together, you could send
Speaker 1: more complex messages. It's not just like hey, someone's invading.
Speaker 1: It could be like, hey, we're really uh sick over
Speaker 1: here and could use some help, right or hungry or whatever. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And because everyone could see it, you had to kind
Speaker 1: of have like an previously agreed upon um message or
Speaker 1: meaning to each of the messages between you and who
Speaker 1: you're sending it to, so that you it was encoded
Speaker 1: in a way, I guess you could say, yeah, and
Speaker 1: as far as China on the Great Wall of China,
Speaker 1: and that's kind of a perfect scenario, best case scenario
Speaker 1: for sending a smoke signal, because it's sort of wide
Speaker 1: open um, and you know, you can see it for many,
Speaker 1: many miles, and they had watch towers so you could
Speaker 1: convey from you know, you could string along from one
Speaker 1: watch tower to the next, and all of a sudden
Speaker 1: you're sending messages over a few hours, you know. Three. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I saw that the earliest accounts of smoke signals being
Speaker 1: used is with the Chinese along the Great Wall of China. Well,
Speaker 1: I think interesting about the whole idea of smoke signals
Speaker 1: is that it's just such a such a great idea
Speaker 1: that it evolved independently in different parts of the world,
Speaker 1: like with Native Americans. As far as we know, they
Speaker 1: never had any contact with the Chinese the book fourteen
Speaker 1: twenty one notwithstanding. But the Native Americans in the Southwest
Speaker 1: and in the plains, we're using smoke signals at the
Speaker 1: same time that the Chinese were, you know, half a
Speaker 1: world away, just because it's just such a basically good idea,
Speaker 1: but they were using virtually the same the same yeah
Speaker 1: and and technique, you know, yeah, the depending on you know,
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about the best stuff to burn.
Speaker 1: But in China they burned apparently saltpeter, sulfur, and wolf
Speaker 1: dung to create really dense smoke. And I can't imagine
Speaker 1: what that must have smelled like. I'll bet it smell
Speaker 1: a lot like poop and saltpeter and salt would Yeah, sulfur, dude,
Speaker 1: that's that's the that's the icing on the case that
Speaker 1: the kicker, Yeah, just throwing a little eggy smell on
Speaker 1: top exactly. It's like, did you now it's the fire?
Speaker 1: That guy's always saying it's the fire, not the fire.
Speaker 1: He's always blaming it on his dog or the fire. Oh, Alexander, Uh, well,
Speaker 1: should we take a break and then talk about how
Speaker 1: to do this? I guess so all right, let's do it.
Speaker 1: K Okay, Chuck, we're back. And before we we really
Speaker 1: get to the nuts and bolt of ale as, I
Speaker 1: want to say I also saw a lot of mention
Speaker 1: of how tribes in North America used mirrors too to
Speaker 1: sick and I was like, did they have mirrors? And
Speaker 1: though it's like polished mica, but they they used those
Speaker 1: over long distances as well. And body positions too, like
Speaker 1: you could see how somebody was like standing or sitting
Speaker 1: or crouching, and that, um indicated something to other other
Speaker 1: people in their tribe who were say like also going
Speaker 1: through the woods with them, that they had seen something
Speaker 1: or who they had seen, or that there was a
Speaker 1: bear or whatever, um, which is pretty ingenious. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: wonder if they got respect from And by the way,
Speaker 1: I'm going to stop using the word settlers. Did you
Speaker 1: see that email? Did I don't recall us using the
Speaker 1: word settlers, did we Well, I mean I've said the
Speaker 1: word settlers a lot of the years, I'm sure, um yeah,
Speaker 1: But I mean have we said it recently, I don't know.
Speaker 1: But it was just a very nice email, one of those.
Speaker 1: It was like, oh, you know, I never really thought
Speaker 1: about it. It was already settled. They weren't settlers. They
Speaker 1: were you know, conquerors, invaders, invaders, interlopers. Yeah, So I
Speaker 1: just wondered if the invaders from Europe. Uh, if they
Speaker 1: saw these things, I know they were always like, you know,
Speaker 1: these rudimentary savages. I wonder if they ever saw the
Speaker 1: genius and some of these things, hopefully, you know, I
Speaker 1: mean surely, yeah, I'm sure that there were people who
Speaker 1: adopted smoke signals after they learned how to do it,
Speaker 1: like white Europeans who figured it out from from watching them,
Speaker 1: maybe even from being taught. They're like smoke signals, we
Speaker 1: use pigeons far more advanced. Get with the times, all right,
Speaker 1: So this is still relevant today. The Boy Scouts of
Speaker 1: America still teaches smoke signaling, and it sounds still to
Speaker 1: think about. But if you are ever in the woods
Speaker 1: and you were hurt or injured or lost and alone
Speaker 1: or you know, can't get help, this is just lonely
Speaker 1: need a friend. This is still away that you can
Speaker 1: send a message. Uh. And wilderness people understand if they
Speaker 1: see three, like clear wilderness people, if they see three
Speaker 1: distinct puffs of smoke, then that's a signal that says, hey,
Speaker 1: somebody needs help, get me out of here. Pretty much. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's the that's a universal one. You can also
Speaker 1: do that with your gun if you're lost to the woods,
Speaker 1: you can shoot three times in the air. It's the
Speaker 1: same in car horn, car horn YEP. The one thing
Speaker 1: you don't want to use like that old joke is, um,
Speaker 1: you don't want to shoot your bow and arrow three
Speaker 1: times in the year. It doesn't really do anything. When
Speaker 1: I'm sitting at a traffic light behind someone on their
Speaker 1: cell phone and it turns green, I go huh huh huh,
Speaker 1: and they always go, what do you need? What do
Speaker 1: you need? All right? Are you lost in the woods?
Speaker 1: That's how that is down. Yeah, So, um to to
Speaker 1: do this for first, you have to start with the fire, obviously,
Speaker 1: but you have to start with a pretty good fire.
Speaker 1: You have to let your fire get going to start
Speaker 1: sending smoke signals because you're going to do your best
Speaker 1: to smother that fire from time to time repeatedly. Um.
Speaker 1: So you want to get a really good raging fire
Speaker 1: going that won't easily go out right, that's step one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and part of the being able to see if you
Speaker 1: want that good thick, dense white smoke. If you've ever
Speaker 1: been camping, you know, if you throw greenery on a
Speaker 1: fire or something that's even a little bit wet it's
Speaker 1: gonna turn really really white and thick, and that is
Speaker 1: sort of theft. After you get your fire going really good,
Speaker 1: that's when you put on um, the more green timber
Speaker 1: and leaves and stuff like that, or if you're glamping
Speaker 1: you have someone do that for you exactly. So that's
Speaker 1: another reason you want a really good fire going, because
Speaker 1: you don't want it to be so weak that the
Speaker 1: grass or the green um sticks or whatever, don't you know,
Speaker 1: put the fire out. So you're creating this nice, white,
Speaker 1: dense smoke and you get the thing going pretty well,
Speaker 1: maybe you've got somebody's attention. They're like, you don't see
Speaker 1: that kind of smoke every day? What's going on over there?
Speaker 1: You want to you want to have a blanket with you.
Speaker 1: It's actually it's vital that you do have some sort
Speaker 1: of blanket or some sleeping roll or something like that.
Speaker 1: Um that you can wet. That's another thing too, because
Speaker 1: I was thinking, like in the American Southwest, like that was,
Speaker 1: you know, kind of an investment of your water to
Speaker 1: wet a whole blanket enough to send a smoke signal.
Speaker 1: But you want to take a wet blanket and you
Speaker 1: throw it over your fire and hold it there until
Speaker 1: there's no smoke coming out. Right, And we don't mean
Speaker 1: Alexander who was a total wet blanket. We mean a
Speaker 1: real wet blanket, right, like the the literal wet blanket,
Speaker 1: as the hipsters would say. Yeah, So, I mean, I
Speaker 1: imagine you could do it with it's something dry, as
Speaker 1: long as it's you're sending like one quick signal. Um,
Speaker 1: but obviously something dry you run the escope catching it
Speaker 1: on fire. So if if you have no access to
Speaker 1: any water, you could probably still get by, but you
Speaker 1: definitely want a wet something. It's gonna make it a
Speaker 1: stressful form of communication even more stressful. So um, you
Speaker 1: hold it on there long enough to for smoke to cease, uh,
Speaker 1: and then you pull the blanket off, or I guess
Speaker 1: you kind of flap it off is probably the better
Speaker 1: way to do it. And while you have that wet
Speaker 1: blanket over the fire, smoke was still building up. So
Speaker 1: when you pull the blanket off, a big puff of
Speaker 1: smoke comes up, and there's your first signal. And if
Speaker 1: you if you just stop right there, what you've just
Speaker 1: told the world is, Hey, how's it going, I'm here. Well,
Speaker 1: it could these that our research were specifically Apache UM,
Speaker 1: and a single plume basically is yeah, sort of an
Speaker 1: attention getter. Um, maybe something's going on, but like you
Speaker 1: don't need to send in reinforcements or anything, but maybe
Speaker 1: just keep an eye on the sky as things play out.
Speaker 1: It could also mean something like I've arrived. Like somebody's
Speaker 1: watching for your signal and you're saying like I made
Speaker 1: it across the valley or over the mountain or across
Speaker 1: the desert. Whatever. It's just basically a generic signal, just saying,
Speaker 1: so this person is still alive. Um. If you are
Speaker 1: really good, you can do too in a row. And
Speaker 1: that's saying what chuck. If you're an Apache, well, uh,
Speaker 1: if you wren Apache, that meant everything's fine. Um. You
Speaker 1: may have seen my one puff signal that meant to
Speaker 1: you know, we're not so sure about things, but now
Speaker 1: my two puff signal means everything's good. We've established our camp.
Speaker 1: We're all safe. Um. You just stay where you are
Speaker 1: unless you hear something else or see something else rather uh.
Speaker 1: And this was important because they would, you know, they
Speaker 1: would travel around that you know, they had some more
Speaker 1: permanent encampments, but they also went where the food was
Speaker 1: depending on the season and where you could hunt better
Speaker 1: and get you know, more resources, right exactly, And yeah,
Speaker 1: you're right. I'm sorry I confused the boy Scout technique
Speaker 1: with the Apache technique. There the boy Scouts, one puff
Speaker 1: is just here, I am, whereas with the Apache it
Speaker 1: was like something weird was going on. Yeah exactly. And then,
Speaker 1: like you said, already, three puffs in any language, a
Speaker 1: boy Scout or Apache means there's something bad going on. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like come and help us. We need you know, whether
Speaker 1: or not we have all been befallen with an illness,
Speaker 1: or there's an invader, or we have no food. We
Speaker 1: definitely need some help. And I saw also, I mean
Speaker 1: almost across the board it was just puffs. Basically was
Speaker 1: was the way that um smoke signals are communicated. But
Speaker 1: I did see reference to one tribe from Texas called
Speaker 1: the Carrakawa, I believe, and they could get super fancy.
Speaker 1: They could do spirals and zigzags and stuff like that,
Speaker 1: which is pretty pretty impressive. I'd be stressed out with
Speaker 1: just the puff system, let alone having to make a
Speaker 1: spiral or a z zag. It would be kind of
Speaker 1: cool to know how to do that, though, and then
Speaker 1: of course the Snoop Dog tribe used the puff Puff
Speaker 1: pass exactly. That meant come on over exactly, the doors open.
Speaker 1: Well that's it for this episode of short Stuff on
Speaker 1: Smoke Signals. Hope you enjoyed it. Until next time, So
Speaker 1: long Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeart
Speaker 1: Radios How Stuff Works. For more podcasts for my Heart Radio,
Speaker 1: visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
Speaker 1: listen to your favorite shows.