WEBVTT - Heroes of the Old Internet: Troy Hurtubise 0:00:05.120 --> 0:00:09.119 Ah, welcome back to it could happen here a podcast 0:00:09.160 --> 0:00:13.440 about things falling apart, sometimes about putting them back together, um, 0:00:13.480 --> 0:00:17.799 sometimes just about enduring difficult times. And it's been a 0:00:17.920 --> 0:00:20.239 rough couple of weeks, what with the mass shooting in 0:00:20.280 --> 0:00:25.640 Tennessee and the Right accelerating their anti transparanoia, the whole 0:00:26.079 --> 0:00:29.280 you know, Trump getting arrested and all that, all that, Yes, 0:00:29.320 --> 0:00:31.280 that has really hit all of us really hard. Yeah, 0:00:31.320 --> 0:00:34.800 and really yeah deeply now that now that Trump is 0:00:35.360 --> 0:00:38.440 has been charged with felonies, he's officially a friend of mine. 0:00:38.520 --> 0:00:43.800 So Trump, now I really convict. I'm really conflicted between 0:00:43.880 --> 0:00:47.600 my acab side my illegalist side. It's really it's really hard. 0:00:48.120 --> 0:00:51.720 I mean, thirty four felonies, that's quite a legalist. Very 0:00:51.720 --> 0:00:54.080 few of the people I know who commit crimes is 0:00:54.120 --> 0:00:59.600 like a vocation, have that many pretty difficult. But at 0:00:59.640 --> 0:01:02.400 any rate, you know, it's been a rough couple of weeks, 0:01:02.440 --> 0:01:05.520 and I thought we could use a lighter episode to 0:01:05.880 --> 0:01:09.640 you know, help everybody everybody feel better. And I know 0:01:09.720 --> 0:01:13.240 that you Mia and you gare are both young uns. Uh, 0:01:13.520 --> 0:01:16.280 you you missed the earlier age of the Internet and 0:01:16.319 --> 0:01:19.800 the heroes of that ancient age you know when I 0:01:19.880 --> 0:01:22.959 was a child, you know, it was Jupiter and uh 0:01:23.000 --> 0:01:26.680 and and all the Greek gods of the old Internet y'all. 0:01:26.760 --> 0:01:28.760 Y'all have come up more in the Roman gods of 0:01:28.760 --> 0:01:31.480 the old Internet era. So yeah, I wanted. I wanted 0:01:31.520 --> 0:01:34.760 to talk about an ancient hero of the Internet. And 0:01:34.880 --> 0:01:37.319 perhaps this will become a series that we do now 0:01:37.319 --> 0:01:40.039 and again where we we talk about we talk about 0:01:40.040 --> 0:01:43.560 the gods of the past and today. The ancient deity 0:01:43.600 --> 0:01:47.040 that we're talking about is kind of like the Internet's Hercules, 0:01:47.080 --> 0:01:50.440 a man named Troy Herdabes. Have you guys heard of 0:01:50.640 --> 0:01:54.680 Troy Herdabes. No, I've not. I've not heard of Troy Hernabes. 0:01:54.760 --> 0:01:57.960 But I do have one correction. Jupiter is actually a 0:01:58.080 --> 0:02:01.240 Roman god. The Greek version is you're right, You're right, 0:02:01.280 --> 0:02:05.200 You're right. Before before some freak dms me and sends 0:02:05.240 --> 0:02:08.560 me like three phs on this, I'm just gonna put 0:02:08.600 --> 0:02:12.280 that out there, do not DM me about this. Yeah, 0:02:12.600 --> 0:02:14.920 wet do that thing where we start, we start including 0:02:14.960 --> 0:02:17.880 one of these every episode that driver just fucking up 0:02:17.919 --> 0:02:20.760 purposefully in order to get people. They love doing it, 0:02:20.800 --> 0:02:23.160 they love being able to hop on. I do, ever, 0:02:23.240 --> 0:02:25.679 we did get recently, we did the liver King episodes 0:02:25.760 --> 0:02:28.040 this week and somebody popped on to be like, hey, guys, 0:02:28.200 --> 0:02:30.840 you're probably not aware of this, but the livers of 0:02:30.919 --> 0:02:37.560 polar bears contain enough vitamin hundred and forty people something 0:02:37.639 --> 0:02:41.320 like that, Um, don't eat polar bear livers. This is 0:02:41.360 --> 0:02:44.440 relevant because we are talking about a man today whose 0:02:44.480 --> 0:02:47.760 lifelong goal was to develop a suit of armor that 0:02:47.800 --> 0:02:50.399 allowed him to fight bears in hand to hand compact. 0:02:51.120 --> 0:02:54.400 I mean or this is actually very applicable to us 0:02:54.440 --> 0:02:57.440 because just last week we went to the theater to 0:02:57.440 --> 0:03:00.760 watch Cocaine Bear. You're right this this man would have 0:03:00.760 --> 0:03:02.960 been one of the only people capable of dealing with 0:03:02.960 --> 0:03:06.280 a cocaine bear. So once upon a time, before the 0:03:06.320 --> 0:03:09.080 breaking of the world, there lived a beautiful maniac named 0:03:09.120 --> 0:03:12.320 Troy Hurdibes. Troy was a simple man. He was born 0:03:12.320 --> 0:03:16.000 in Hamilton, Ontario, in nineteen sixty three. He liked the 0:03:16.040 --> 0:03:20.160 outdoors and he was a dedicated conservationist. The one exception 0:03:20.200 --> 0:03:24.400 to his abiding love of nature was bears. On August fourth, 0:03:24.480 --> 0:03:27.000 nineteen eighty four, when Troy was twenty one years old, 0:03:27.160 --> 0:03:30.880 he went hiking in central British Columbia. Now, he's given 0:03:30.919 --> 0:03:33.080 a couple of versions of this story over the years. 0:03:33.080 --> 0:03:35.120 Some that this happened, say that this happened when he 0:03:35.160 --> 0:03:37.840 was a boy. Others say he was like twenty years old, 0:03:38.120 --> 0:03:41.160 but all agree that he wound up in close proximity 0:03:41.200 --> 0:03:44.120 to a grizzly bear. In the most exciting and almost 0:03:44.120 --> 0:03:47.520 certainly untrue version of the story, the bear knocked Troy 0:03:47.640 --> 0:03:50.280 down and he dropped the twenty two caliber rifle he 0:03:50.360 --> 0:03:52.920 was carrying, which would not have made much difference against 0:03:52.920 --> 0:03:58.200 a grizzly bear. You will only make it more upsets. 0:03:58.720 --> 0:04:01.720 Two is not the up and you want to that situation. 0:04:02.320 --> 0:04:05.480 In a desperate attempt to defend himself, he drew a knife. 0:04:05.600 --> 0:04:08.600 We're gonna talk about Troy's knives in a minute here now. 0:04:09.520 --> 0:04:12.640 In an interview with Mental Floss many years later, Troy 0:04:12.720 --> 0:04:15.560 claimed that seeing the knife, the bear thought better of 0:04:15.560 --> 0:04:21.680 attacking him. After this, Okay, that's not how bears were. 0:04:22.720 --> 0:04:25.760 Has this bear been like involved in other fights? Thus, 0:04:26.880 --> 0:04:31.160 like another mania bear got stabbed behind a seven eleven 0:04:31.200 --> 0:04:33.960 and is like, na, man, I don't grizz don't funk 0:04:34.000 --> 0:04:38.560 with knives no more. I've been through that ship like 0:04:38.560 --> 0:04:42.920 a street gay, like nah brought no bro, a're worth 0:04:42.960 --> 0:04:48.880 it and so um. He later claims an expert told 0:04:48.960 --> 0:04:51.080 him he would have been mauled if there'd been any cubs. 0:04:51.160 --> 0:04:55.880 This I believe bears very rarely attack people. Now, a 0:04:55.920 --> 0:04:58.440 normal man would have taken this number one as boy, 0:04:58.480 --> 0:05:01.239 I sure got lucky, and number two as I should 0:05:01.279 --> 0:05:03.839 be more careful when out in the woods. But Troy 0:05:04.000 --> 0:05:06.919 was not a normal man. His first thought was that 0:05:07.000 --> 0:05:09.840 he needed to invent a new form of mace made 0:05:09.880 --> 0:05:14.400 specifically four bears. He had been beaten and developing bear 0:05:14.440 --> 0:05:17.800 mace by an actual scientist. Although the first paper on 0:05:17.960 --> 0:05:20.760 bear mace was published in nineteen eighty four, so it 0:05:20.839 --> 0:05:23.039 makes sense that it wouldn't have been available at the time. 0:05:23.360 --> 0:05:25.359 It was a reasonable thing to be, like, maybe we 0:05:25.360 --> 0:05:29.800 should have a mace for use against bears. There are 0:05:29.839 --> 0:05:32.919 again several versions of what came next. I'm going to 0:05:33.000 --> 0:05:34.960 quote from one that I found in a write of 0:05:35.120 --> 0:05:38.440 by the spec Now quote from then, he decided that 0:05:38.480 --> 0:05:40.960 his destiny in life was to invent a dependable bear 0:05:41.040 --> 0:05:44.479 spray repellent, but he realized field testing with bears would 0:05:44.520 --> 0:05:47.279 be needed. This would require a protective suit for the 0:05:47.360 --> 0:05:53.120 person doing the test. In his interview with Mental Floss, 0:05:53.160 --> 0:05:55.360 one of the later pieces on the Man, Troy dropped 0:05:55.360 --> 0:05:57.800 the mace story and claimed that he had the idea 0:05:57.880 --> 0:06:00.680 just to make bear resistant armor a year after his 0:06:00.720 --> 0:06:04.200 grizzly encounter when he was watching RoboCop and decided bear 0:06:04.279 --> 0:06:07.880 researchers would need protective armor that would let them test 0:06:07.960 --> 0:06:12.800 bear spray and also safely observed grizzly behavior. Troy is 0:06:12.880 --> 0:06:15.359 something of an unreliable narrator, but I will say I 0:06:15.440 --> 0:06:18.839 do not doubt that the film RoboCop influenced his subsequent 0:06:18.880 --> 0:06:25.719 ass No, he absolutely had this idea that makes the 0:06:25.760 --> 0:06:30.040 most sense out of anything you said. It is very logical, 0:06:30.160 --> 0:06:34.120 So it is now. Troy, it should be noted, is 0:06:34.160 --> 0:06:37.080 not the first, probably not the first man who has 0:06:37.120 --> 0:06:39.800 thought I should develop a suit of armor to allow 0:06:39.800 --> 0:06:42.840 me to grapple with bears in hand to hand combat. Um. 0:06:43.000 --> 0:06:46.760 It is possible that in medieval Europe some people hunted 0:06:46.760 --> 0:06:50.000 bears while wearing full body suits of armor covered in spikes. 0:06:50.640 --> 0:06:53.400 There is debate as to whether or not this really happened. 0:06:53.960 --> 0:06:55.919 The gist of why this is a debate is that 0:06:55.960 --> 0:06:58.560 there's an insane looking suit of armor currently in a 0:06:58.640 --> 0:07:02.360 Houston museum that is probably made in Switzerland or Germany, 0:07:02.400 --> 0:07:05.800 like four hundred dish years ago. Researchers have not conclusively 0:07:05.880 --> 0:07:08.680 determined why it was made or for what purpose, but 0:07:08.760 --> 0:07:11.320 one theory is that it was used for bear abaiting. 0:07:11.640 --> 0:07:14.240 If so, it was used for European bears, which are 0:07:14.280 --> 0:07:17.920 significantly smaller than Presty bears, and as far as we know, 0:07:18.200 --> 0:07:21.600 was never a widespread practice. This is because attempting to 0:07:21.640 --> 0:07:23.320 fight a bear in hand to hand with a suit 0:07:23.360 --> 0:07:26.640 of armor is insane and something only a madman would do. 0:07:26.880 --> 0:07:28.280 But I am going to show you this suit of 0:07:28.360 --> 0:07:31.520 armor because it looks like something from a David Lynch movie. 0:07:31.720 --> 0:07:35.560 Oh I'm so, I'm so thrilled, specifically the face. So 0:07:35.680 --> 0:07:38.360 look at that, look at that beautiful thing. Oh my god. 0:07:39.200 --> 0:07:45.160 Yeahase of that unsettling. But they think probably somewhere around 0:07:45.160 --> 0:07:48.080 Austria or Switzerland, although it's not I don't think known 0:07:48.080 --> 0:07:53.240 to a point of certainty. That looks fucked up. It 0:07:53.240 --> 0:07:55.520 looks like it looks like a like like like a 0:07:55.560 --> 0:07:59.080 metal casting at someone's head, but with like but with 0:07:59.120 --> 0:08:02.920 like the pinhead thing. Yeah, it's a hellrazy. I think 0:08:02.960 --> 0:08:08.600 is the movie. Ye, the face on it is distinctly unsettling, 0:08:09.880 --> 0:08:11.520 like they could have just made a normal helmet. But 0:08:11.720 --> 0:08:14.920 no, no no, there's a nose. It's the guy's face. We 0:08:15.040 --> 0:08:17.280 gotta it's We're not doing this right unless we like 0:08:17.400 --> 0:08:32.280 peek into the uncanny valley with this thing. Troy was 0:08:32.360 --> 0:08:34.960 not interested in the fact that attempting to fight a 0:08:34.960 --> 0:08:38.440 bear in body armor is just objectively nuts, and since 0:08:38.480 --> 0:08:41.040 he was as handy as he was unhinged, he set 0:08:41.120 --> 0:08:44.160 swiftly to building a suit of armor and then testing it. 0:08:44.720 --> 0:08:46.800 I'm going to read another quote from the Specs right up, 0:08:46.840 --> 0:08:50.400 because it's extremely funny. So the suit became his focus 0:08:50.400 --> 0:08:52.680 of attention, putting it through all kinds of tests that 0:08:52.720 --> 0:08:55.240 included being run down by a pickup truck driven by 0:08:55.240 --> 0:08:58.120 his father, rolling off the side of a cliff, and 0:08:58.280 --> 0:09:01.640 being pummeled by bikers with base ball bats. And I'm 0:09:01.640 --> 0:09:05.480 gonna play you a video of Troy um one of 0:09:05.480 --> 0:09:09.480 these tests where Troy gets hit by a tree. It's 0:09:09.480 --> 0:09:12.800 almost exactly that scene from hot Rod. If you've watched 0:09:12.840 --> 0:09:15.800 the movie hot Rod, where they like swing a log 0:09:16.040 --> 0:09:20.080 down at him and hit him. Um, that may in 0:09:20.120 --> 0:09:21.760 fact be what that scene is based on. But I'm 0:09:21.760 --> 0:09:31.199 gonna I'm gonna share that with y'all. Now here a 0:09:31.240 --> 0:09:46.920 little bit. The log is, Oh my gosh, so guys, 0:09:49.280 --> 0:09:52.040 I cannot emphasize enoughten. It looks like half this armor 0:09:52.160 --> 0:09:57.320 is held together by duct tape. Like this looks like 0:09:57.360 --> 0:10:00.760 a fever dream combination of the Wizard of and like 0:10:01.040 --> 0:10:04.720 the and like the Battle of Endor. He walks, he 0:10:04.800 --> 0:10:08.120 walks throwing massive logs. And the guy in the middle 0:10:08.360 --> 0:10:12.360 tin suit. It's white. It's a white suit too. Yeah, 0:10:12.480 --> 0:10:16.800 it looks almost like something from um like speed Racer. 0:10:17.200 --> 0:10:20.280 Is weird. The aesthetic that I would reckon, I would 0:10:20.320 --> 0:10:23.160 closest compare it too. It is kind of like that 0:10:23.240 --> 0:10:28.400 anime robot style design. Yeah, it's it's it's profoundly unhinged. 0:10:28.440 --> 0:10:30.800 So I want to I want to play you a 0:10:30.840 --> 0:10:32.600 clip of him getting the helmet off so you can 0:10:32.640 --> 0:10:37.080 listen to Troy talk and see this man's face better 0:10:37.120 --> 0:10:41.760 than the first. Yeahs, I had that to that stuff 0:10:41.800 --> 0:10:43.680 on my mouth. Yeah, if I have a most piece, 0:10:43.920 --> 0:10:45.960 a mostpiece, you can do that all day long. I 0:10:46.000 --> 0:10:47.600 got the air bags in the back, so my neck 0:10:47.640 --> 0:10:49.120 hasn't got a lot of play, so that'll be perfect 0:10:49.120 --> 0:10:50.720 for the grizzly. I can. I can take what he 0:10:50.760 --> 0:10:54.600 can give me with that log there if that couldn't 0:10:54.640 --> 0:10:57.040 do anything to me, And I feel great, like really great. 0:10:57.080 --> 0:10:59.400 And actually my left hand was asleepis now a week? 0:11:01.559 --> 0:11:09.360 Really you don't say yeah? Damage? Fascinating man, So I'm 0:11:09.360 --> 0:11:11.840 gonna play you now him being attacked by a bunch 0:11:11.840 --> 0:11:14.760 of men with baseball bats as he attempts to move 0:11:14.800 --> 0:11:16.920 in this suit. And I have to emphasize to you, 0:11:17.240 --> 0:11:19.880 he is not capable of moving in this thing. This 0:11:19.960 --> 0:11:22.439 is an immobile suit of armor that he can He 0:11:22.480 --> 0:11:25.200 can almost shuffle in it, but not quite. His idea 0:11:25.280 --> 0:11:28.079 with the with the pickup truck and the bikers. With 0:11:28.120 --> 0:11:30.439 regards to big men, and being an anthropologist, he yet 0:11:31.040 --> 0:11:33.960 he looked at the testings we had originally done with 0:11:34.320 --> 0:11:36.079 normal sized men, you know, one hundred and fifty hundred 0:11:36.080 --> 0:11:37.800 and eighty pound, he said. The public isn't gonna buy it. 0:11:37.840 --> 0:11:41.040 They're they're looking at this monstrous, groovy bear and they're 0:11:41.040 --> 0:11:43.160 looking at a normal size man hitting you with bats 0:11:43.160 --> 0:11:44.800 and boards and stuff like that. They're not going to buy. 0:11:44.920 --> 0:11:53.920 You have to give them reality. This is insane. This 0:11:54.000 --> 0:12:13.920 is so weird, amazing, amazing, like a gang of Venet 0:12:13.920 --> 0:12:20.600 attacking this nerd in a metal suit. Yes, it's so funny. 0:12:20.760 --> 0:12:24.480 It's it's it's extremely funny. They're like and they pick 0:12:24.600 --> 0:12:29.080 like Terminator two looking bikers, like they go out of 0:12:29.120 --> 0:12:34.480 their way. All of the stylization is super super bizarre. Yeah, 0:12:34.520 --> 0:12:36.920 it's it's such a strained documentary. This is from the 0:12:36.920 --> 0:12:41.079 documentary Project Grizzly, and there's Troy gives. In the various interviews, 0:12:41.120 --> 0:12:44.719 he does some pretty incredible quotes, like years after this, 0:12:44.880 --> 0:12:47.320 he wrote, at fifty two, I have to know whether 0:12:47.440 --> 0:12:49.040 or not the suit will hold. It's one of the 0:12:49.120 --> 0:12:52.000 curiosity things. We tested the suit a lot of ways, 0:12:52.080 --> 0:12:55.320 but never went against the Grizzly. And the suit that 0:12:55.360 --> 0:12:57.640 you're seeing is like the first version of his suit, 0:12:57.760 --> 0:13:00.400 the Ursus Mark one. He eventually gets up to the 0:13:00.440 --> 0:13:02.800 Mark six and spends more than one hundred and fifty 0:13:02.840 --> 0:13:08.040 thousand dollars making various versions of these bear suits. Actually, sorry, 0:13:08.040 --> 0:13:09.360 I think the one that we're looking at in the 0:13:09.480 --> 0:13:12.720 documentary is the Mark six because he did eventually, after 0:13:12.880 --> 0:13:15.800 years of this quest, get a documentary and interested and 0:13:15.880 --> 0:13:19.480 the film Project Grizzly was made about his quest. One 0:13:19.600 --> 0:13:22.280 fun piece of trivia about it is that it's one 0:13:22.320 --> 0:13:25.640 of Quentin Tarantino's favorite movies. That makes a lot of sense. 0:13:25.640 --> 0:13:27.560 That makes a lot of sense. It makes Yeah, it 0:13:27.600 --> 0:13:31.000 makes total sense. Now, in order to give you just 0:13:31.120 --> 0:13:34.320 one last piece of context about the personality, what kind 0:13:34.360 --> 0:13:37.440 of man is Troy her to Bees or was Troy 0:13:37.520 --> 0:13:39.679 her Tobes? I am going to play you a clip 0:13:39.679 --> 0:13:43.240 of an interview with this man from the documentary that's 0:13:43.320 --> 0:13:47.520 just perfect. He's holding in this a gigantic booie knife 0:13:47.520 --> 0:13:50.200 in his hand, and he has another booie knife strapped 0:13:50.240 --> 0:13:52.520 across his shoulder in such a way that it's on 0:13:52.559 --> 0:13:55.640 his shoulder but pointed down yea, which is the way 0:13:55.640 --> 0:13:59.840 a crazy man carries a booie knife. He's also, it's worth, 0:14:00.480 --> 0:14:03.960 dressed as like a frontier settler, but wearing like aad 0:14:04.720 --> 0:14:11.000 Harry Paray, I go into the bush. I don't use 0:14:11.000 --> 0:14:13.600 a gun, never, don't believe in guns. I swear by 0:14:13.600 --> 0:14:16.040 my knives. They save your life a thousand times around. 0:14:17.600 --> 0:14:19.120 If a grizzlies gonna come at you. And I'm not 0:14:19.160 --> 0:14:21.280 saying knives are gonna save you, That's not what I'm saying. 0:14:21.480 --> 0:14:23.240 What I'm saying is you've got a gun, and that 0:14:23.360 --> 0:14:25.640 grizzlies fifty feet one hundred feet away from you got 0:14:25.640 --> 0:14:27.480 one shot. I don't give a shit who you are 0:14:27.720 --> 0:14:30.320 or how steady you are. You've got one shot, not Grizzly. 0:14:30.480 --> 0:14:32.680 And if he's still coming at you that gun, you 0:14:32.800 --> 0:14:34.560 might as well use the barrel on him, or you 0:14:34.560 --> 0:14:36.520 can use the stock on that's useless. But if you've 0:14:36.520 --> 0:14:38.480 got some half decent knives, at least you got a 0:14:38.520 --> 0:14:41.400 fighting chance with animals. But that's not the reason why 0:14:41.600 --> 0:14:43.160 when I go into the mountains, or I go into 0:14:43.160 --> 0:14:44.600 the bush, or any man goes into the bush, they 0:14:44.640 --> 0:14:46.560 don't carry knives for the four legged animals. They carry 0:14:46.600 --> 0:14:49.280 knives for the two legged animals. Because nowadays it's a 0:14:49.280 --> 0:14:50.600 lot like the old days. You've got a lot of 0:14:50.600 --> 0:14:53.400 whackos up there, and it's knives you want to close quarters. 0:14:55.800 --> 0:14:58.400 You do, indeed have a lot of whackos up there, 0:14:58.480 --> 0:15:06.800 Troy um. So that's that's a brief introduction to Troy Hertebes. Now, 0:15:07.280 --> 0:15:09.600 the suit that you've seen in the Project Project Grizzly 0:15:09.640 --> 0:15:12.520 documentary weighed one hundred and fifty pounds and it was 0:15:12.560 --> 0:15:14.760 not in any way powered. As you see in the dock, 0:15:14.840 --> 0:15:17.120 he can kind of barely shuffle with it. He is 0:15:17.240 --> 0:15:20.200 unable to move or even stand on uneven ground. He 0:15:20.280 --> 0:15:25.200 falls over very easily. Troy liked the documentary, felt like 0:15:25.280 --> 0:15:28.120 it helped expose his work to a wider audience, but 0:15:28.160 --> 0:15:30.400 he took issue with the fact that the documentary did 0:15:30.400 --> 0:15:33.240 not delve into what he described as the science behind 0:15:33.280 --> 0:15:35.960 it all, adding being able to get hit by the 0:15:35.960 --> 0:15:41.160 truck took years of development, now years of practice of 0:15:41.160 --> 0:15:44.280 getting hit in the trucks. Yeah, it's you can't just 0:15:44.440 --> 0:15:47.720 jump into getting hit by a truck like that. In 0:15:47.760 --> 0:15:50.640 two thousand and two, a trainer who probably should not 0:15:50.720 --> 0:15:53.840 be allowed around animals let Troy get into a cage 0:15:53.880 --> 0:15:57.640 with a Kodiak bear. Now, thankfully the bear was too 0:15:57.680 --> 0:16:00.280 confused by Troy's armor to what to get near him, 0:16:00.400 --> 0:16:04.720 which you might this is technically a wind for Troy. 0:16:05.040 --> 0:16:08.960 The armor did do its job, just scare them away. Yeah, 0:16:09.480 --> 0:16:12.000 you know, the bear just saw that was like, you 0:16:12.000 --> 0:16:16.520 know what, this guy, it's clearly unwell. I do not 0:16:16.600 --> 0:16:22.400 want to be around this person. Right now. Here's mental 0:16:22.440 --> 0:16:27.240 Floss interviewing Troy. She was so terrified she urinated her 0:16:27.320 --> 0:16:31.040 abuse recalls I didn't look human enough. Limited mobility and 0:16:31.120 --> 0:16:35.080 questionable usefulness combined to doom the Mark series. We would 0:16:35.120 --> 0:16:38.680 never use a suit like that, says Lana Sierronello, PhD. 0:16:38.840 --> 0:16:42.160 A bare behavior expert, a solid knowledge of bare behaviors. 0:16:42.200 --> 0:16:44.600 The best thing one can use to avoid being attacked, 0:16:44.800 --> 0:16:47.560 which is rare. And this is this is common whenever 0:16:47.600 --> 0:16:51.320 they talk to actual bear experts and researchers, like do 0:16:51.360 --> 0:16:53.520 you want a suit of armor? They're like, no, that 0:16:53.520 --> 0:16:56.240 that's not at all useful. It's very easy to not 0:16:56.280 --> 0:16:59.640 get attacked by bears. Actually, and again, if you watch 0:16:59.720 --> 0:17:02.920 the documentary Grizzly Man and the man in the documentary, 0:17:02.960 --> 0:17:06.040 Grizzly Man is a similar type of person to Troy Hertabes. 0:17:06.440 --> 0:17:10.200 They are both people. I do believe Troy Hertabes might 0:17:10.280 --> 0:17:12.439 need a suit of bear armor because he seems like 0:17:12.480 --> 0:17:15.120 the kind of person to push grizzly bears past their 0:17:15.119 --> 0:17:18.320 limits of comfort. Very rarely will someone else wind up 0:17:18.320 --> 0:17:22.480 in that situation. Nonetheless, the armor brought Hertabes fame. He 0:17:22.960 --> 0:17:24.879 was all over the internet. I found out about him 0:17:24.880 --> 0:17:27.440 because one of my colleagues at Cracked wrote about him 0:17:27.440 --> 0:17:29.640 in an article, but like you would see this guy 0:17:29.680 --> 0:17:31.400 all the time, I'm sure I I think I also 0:17:31.480 --> 0:17:35.560 ran across him on something awful. Earlier, he would regularly 0:17:35.600 --> 0:17:39.280 put out videos. He had an early kind of understanding 0:17:39.280 --> 0:17:41.479 for how to make yourself into a brand on the 0:17:41.480 --> 0:17:44.000 internet in order to get funding, and so he was 0:17:44.080 --> 0:17:47.240 very successful at raising money in order to make new 0:17:47.240 --> 0:17:50.280 iterations of his armor. He was also recruited on several 0:17:50.400 --> 0:17:53.680 Japanese game shows, and he inspired a two thousand and 0:17:53.720 --> 0:17:56.440 three episode of The Simpsons where Homer constructs a bear 0:17:56.480 --> 0:18:00.440 fighting suit. He even filmed an outie commercial. Of course, 0:18:00.480 --> 0:18:04.560 he always reinvested the proceeds directly into making more suits 0:18:04.640 --> 0:18:07.960 of bear armor. Now, the good news is he eventually 0:18:07.960 --> 0:18:11.000 moved on from wanting to make armor that was specifically 0:18:11.040 --> 0:18:14.000 geared towards fighting bears, but he never got over his 0:18:14.080 --> 0:18:16.879 desire from making a suit of elaborate body armor. So 0:18:16.920 --> 0:18:20.359 he pivoted, claiming that now his brother was in the military, 0:18:20.400 --> 0:18:23.399 and so he wanted to make flexible body armor themed 0:18:23.440 --> 0:18:26.080 after the armor in Halo to help keep soldiers and 0:18:26.200 --> 0:18:30.119 swat officers safe during dangerous raids. His next suit was 0:18:30.160 --> 0:18:32.720 called the Trojan and it featured a compass in the 0:18:32.800 --> 0:18:37.720 dick for reasons that are deeply confusing. Wait, that's not 0:18:37.800 --> 0:18:40.840 even it's not even a useful spot, like put it 0:18:40.840 --> 0:18:45.520 on your watch him. He is adamant that he had 0:18:45.560 --> 0:18:48.399 talked to special Forces guys and they said, right in 0:18:48.440 --> 0:18:50.320 the dick is where you want a compass. It like 0:18:50.400 --> 0:18:53.040 flipped down, so it looks like he has a penis 0:18:53.119 --> 0:18:55.880 that's made out of compass. Okay, that that is kind 0:18:55.920 --> 0:18:58.480 of funny. I'm gonna play you a clip of this armor, 0:18:58.560 --> 0:19:01.920 which I will say looks a lot more professional than 0:19:01.960 --> 0:19:07.240 the last suit, the first ballistic full exoskeleton body suit 0:19:07.280 --> 0:19:10.080 of armor. This came from twenty years of development through 0:19:10.320 --> 0:19:14.080 the Bear suits and about seventeen hundred and fifty hours 0:19:14.080 --> 0:19:18.240 of actual building time. And it came from so many 0:19:18.240 --> 0:19:20.520 calls I got from friends of mine in Iraq and 0:19:20.560 --> 0:19:23.639 an Afghanistan. My brother was in the military, talking about 0:19:24.119 --> 0:19:26.000 is there can you not go in the direction that 0:19:26.040 --> 0:19:28.880 we need, which is you know, against the ieeds improvised 0:19:29.400 --> 0:19:32.960 explosive devices, and you know, build it to the point 0:19:32.960 --> 0:19:36.000 where you've got the flexibility, the lightness, but with the 0:19:36.080 --> 0:19:38.320 strength of what the bear suits were. And that's where 0:19:38.320 --> 0:19:41.800 that's where this came from. So I'm going to tell 0:19:41.840 --> 0:19:44.320 you right now that suit is not going to help 0:19:44.359 --> 0:19:48.480 you against an IED. The gigantic heavy armor you see 0:19:48.480 --> 0:19:51.280 in the hurt Locker only kind of helps you if 0:19:51.320 --> 0:19:54.280 it's a pretty small I eed, what he's built is 0:19:54.280 --> 0:19:57.840 not going to protect you from like an explosively formed 0:19:57.880 --> 0:20:01.520 penetrator or like a five thousand pound fertilizer five hundred 0:20:01.520 --> 0:20:05.920 pound fertilizer bomb or something like that. To test this, though, 0:20:06.200 --> 0:20:09.080 Troy hired a former military marksman, the guy who he 0:20:09.160 --> 0:20:11.560 claimed had previously covered him out in the woods on 0:20:11.640 --> 0:20:15.480 bare expeditions with less lethal amo, and he asked this 0:20:15.520 --> 0:20:17.720 man to shoot him point and blank with a rifle. 0:20:19.160 --> 0:20:23.480 So thankfully, this guy was like Troy, it's illegal to 0:20:23.520 --> 0:20:25.720 point a loaded weapon at a person in our province. 0:20:26.240 --> 0:20:28.400 I'm not going to shoot you directly in the chest 0:20:28.440 --> 0:20:31.399 with a hunting rifle. So Troy had him take the 0:20:31.520 --> 0:20:33.879 armor out of the suit and then shoot at it, 0:20:34.040 --> 0:20:37.800 and the bullet went immediately through the armor. It says 0:20:37.800 --> 0:20:40.439 a lot about Troy that his first instinct was not 0:20:40.920 --> 0:20:43.959 shoot the armor without a human being in it. But um, 0:20:44.200 --> 0:20:47.760 at least he was yeah, at least the guy who 0:20:47.840 --> 0:20:50.480 was testing it did not shoot him directly in the 0:20:50.560 --> 0:20:53.920 chest and kill him. I'm gonna quote again from mental 0:20:53.920 --> 0:20:57.119 Flaws here. Herdibes tweaked the Trojan, which he debuted in 0:20:57.119 --> 0:20:59.840 two thousand and seven to little notice. Eventually, he offered 0:21:00.080 --> 0:21:02.600 is designed to the Canadian military for free, but it 0:21:02.640 --> 0:21:05.560 can take years for armed forces to evaluate new technology, 0:21:05.760 --> 0:21:09.159 and existing contracts with equipment vendors render it near impossible 0:21:09.200 --> 0:21:13.159 for independent inventors without backing or references to succeed with 0:21:13.240 --> 0:21:16.080 industrial military contracts are sewn up and they don't want 0:21:16.119 --> 0:21:19.359 anyone stepping on toes. He says. Engineers pick my brain, 0:21:19.480 --> 0:21:21.720 but I can't be affiliated with them. I'm a loose 0:21:21.800 --> 0:21:25.840 cannon and my methodology is backward. I do not disagree 0:21:25.840 --> 0:21:30.840 with that statement. He did, however, have several other inventions 0:21:30.840 --> 0:21:34.920 over the years. For one thing, Troy invented a burn paste, 0:21:35.080 --> 0:21:38.679 a gooey substance that hardens when exposed to flame in 0:21:38.800 --> 0:21:43.040 order to protect you. Canada's Discovery Channel documented him covered 0:21:43.080 --> 0:21:46.639 in the burn pace, being exposed to temperatures above thirty 0:21:46.640 --> 0:21:49.639 six hundred degrees fahrenheit. He held a blowtorch to his 0:21:49.720 --> 0:21:55.040 helmeted head for ten minutes and it worked. This leaves 0:21:55.040 --> 0:21:57.480 out a fun fact, which is that Troy was inspired 0:21:57.520 --> 0:21:59.800 to make his burn pace because one day, while wearing 0:21:59.840 --> 0:22:03.720 his suit, it overheated, burning most of his body very badly. 0:22:04.840 --> 0:22:07.480 So he needed to make the burnt paste in order 0:22:07.520 --> 0:22:10.720 to protect himself. Yeah, it doesn't seem easy to get 0:22:10.760 --> 0:22:14.479 in and out of. Like, no, it would not be 0:22:14.520 --> 0:22:17.120 easy to dawn your If you look at the helmet there, 0:22:17.200 --> 0:22:19.320 your peripheral version is going to be shit. It's not 0:22:19.359 --> 0:22:21.960 going to be good for like fighting in and it 0:22:22.080 --> 0:22:24.400 is going to exhaust you. Like he builds an air 0:22:24.440 --> 0:22:27.440 conditioner for it, but that's only gonna do so much 0:22:27.880 --> 0:22:33.320 like body armor is always kind of like a trade 0:22:33.320 --> 0:22:37.399 off between mobility and protection, and something like a plate 0:22:37.440 --> 0:22:40.639 carrier is worth it. But full body armor that's not 0:22:40.760 --> 0:22:42.840 powered in a meaningful way just is not going to 0:22:42.920 --> 0:22:45.479 be practical yet. This is why I do not respect 0:22:45.520 --> 0:22:49.639 the Mandalorians. No, no, you you've been vocal about that 0:22:49.720 --> 0:23:03.000 for years. I have. I'm gonna play you a video 0:23:03.080 --> 0:23:06.640 of him testing this firepaste from that Canadian Discovery Channel 0:23:06.760 --> 0:23:11.639 documentary because it's very funny. Troy envisions neighborhoods in the 0:23:11.680 --> 0:23:14.240 path of a forest fire being sprayed with a thin 0:23:14.320 --> 0:23:18.760