Speaker 1: Ah, welcome back to it could happen here a podcast
Speaker 1: about things falling apart, sometimes about putting them back together, um,
Speaker 1: sometimes just about enduring difficult times. And it's been a
Speaker 1: rough couple of weeks, what with the mass shooting in
Speaker 1: Tennessee and the Right accelerating their anti transparanoia, the whole
Speaker 1: you know, Trump getting arrested and all that, all that, Yes,
Speaker 1: that has really hit all of us really hard. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and really yeah deeply now that now that Trump is
Speaker 1: has been charged with felonies, he's officially a friend of mine.
Speaker 1: So Trump, now I really convict. I'm really conflicted between
Speaker 1: my acab side my illegalist side. It's really it's really hard.
Speaker 1: I mean, thirty four felonies, that's quite a legalist. Very
Speaker 1: few of the people I know who commit crimes is
Speaker 1: like a vocation, have that many pretty difficult. But at
Speaker 1: any rate, you know, it's been a rough couple of weeks,
Speaker 1: and I thought we could use a lighter episode to
Speaker 1: you know, help everybody everybody feel better. And I know
Speaker 1: that you Mia and you gare are both young uns. Uh,
Speaker 1: you you missed the earlier age of the Internet and
Speaker 1: the heroes of that ancient age you know when I
Speaker 1: was a child, you know, it was Jupiter and uh
Speaker 1: and and all the Greek gods of the old Internet y'all.
Speaker 1: Y'all have come up more in the Roman gods of
Speaker 1: the old Internet era. So yeah, I wanted. I wanted
Speaker 1: to talk about an ancient hero of the Internet. And
Speaker 1: perhaps this will become a series that we do now
Speaker 1: and again where we we talk about we talk about
Speaker 1: the gods of the past and today. The ancient deity
Speaker 1: that we're talking about is kind of like the Internet's Hercules,
Speaker 1: a man named Troy Herdabes. Have you guys heard of
Speaker 1: Troy Herdabes. No, I've not. I've not heard of Troy Hernabes.
Speaker 1: But I do have one correction. Jupiter is actually a
Speaker 1: Roman god. The Greek version is you're right, You're right,
Speaker 1: You're right. Before before some freak dms me and sends
Speaker 1: me like three phs on this, I'm just gonna put
Speaker 1: that out there, do not DM me about this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: wet do that thing where we start, we start including
Speaker 1: one of these every episode that driver just fucking up
Speaker 1: purposefully in order to get people. They love doing it,
Speaker 1: they love being able to hop on. I do, ever,
Speaker 1: we did get recently, we did the liver King episodes
Speaker 1: this week and somebody popped on to be like, hey, guys,
Speaker 1: you're probably not aware of this, but the livers of
Speaker 1: polar bears contain enough vitamin hundred and forty people something
Speaker 1: like that, Um, don't eat polar bear livers. This is
Speaker 1: relevant because we are talking about a man today whose
Speaker 1: lifelong goal was to develop a suit of armor that
Speaker 1: allowed him to fight bears in hand to hand compact.
Speaker 1: I mean or this is actually very applicable to us
Speaker 1: because just last week we went to the theater to
Speaker 1: watch Cocaine Bear. You're right this this man would have
Speaker 1: been one of the only people capable of dealing with
Speaker 1: a cocaine bear. So once upon a time, before the
Speaker 1: breaking of the world, there lived a beautiful maniac named
Speaker 1: Troy Hurdibes. Troy was a simple man. He was born
Speaker 1: in Hamilton, Ontario, in nineteen sixty three. He liked the
Speaker 1: outdoors and he was a dedicated conservationist. The one exception
Speaker 1: to his abiding love of nature was bears. On August fourth,
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty four, when Troy was twenty one years old,
Speaker 1: he went hiking in central British Columbia. Now, he's given
Speaker 1: a couple of versions of this story over the years.
Speaker 1: Some that this happened, say that this happened when he
Speaker 1: was a boy. Others say he was like twenty years old,
Speaker 1: but all agree that he wound up in close proximity
Speaker 1: to a grizzly bear. In the most exciting and almost
Speaker 1: certainly untrue version of the story, the bear knocked Troy
Speaker 1: down and he dropped the twenty two caliber rifle he
Speaker 1: was carrying, which would not have made much difference against
Speaker 1: a grizzly bear. You will only make it more upsets.
Speaker 1: Two is not the up and you want to that situation.
Speaker 1: In a desperate attempt to defend himself, he drew a knife.
Speaker 1: We're gonna talk about Troy's knives in a minute here now.
Speaker 1: In an interview with Mental Floss many years later, Troy
Speaker 1: claimed that seeing the knife, the bear thought better of
Speaker 1: attacking him. After this, Okay, that's not how bears were.
Speaker 1: Has this bear been like involved in other fights? Thus,
Speaker 1: like another mania bear got stabbed behind a seven eleven
Speaker 1: and is like, na, man, I don't grizz don't funk
Speaker 1: with knives no more. I've been through that ship like
Speaker 1: a street gay, like nah brought no bro, a're worth
Speaker 1: it and so um. He later claims an expert told
Speaker 1: him he would have been mauled if there'd been any cubs.
Speaker 1: This I believe bears very rarely attack people. Now, a
Speaker 1: normal man would have taken this number one as boy,
Speaker 1: I sure got lucky, and number two as I should
Speaker 1: be more careful when out in the woods. But Troy
Speaker 1: was not a normal man. His first thought was that
Speaker 1: he needed to invent a new form of mace made
Speaker 1: specifically four bears. He had been beaten and developing bear
Speaker 1: mace by an actual scientist. Although the first paper on
Speaker 1: bear mace was published in nineteen eighty four, so it
Speaker 1: makes sense that it wouldn't have been available at the time.
Speaker 1: It was a reasonable thing to be, like, maybe we
Speaker 1: should have a mace for use against bears. There are
Speaker 1: again several versions of what came next. I'm going to
Speaker 1: quote from one that I found in a write of
Speaker 1: by the spec Now quote from then, he decided that
Speaker 1: his destiny in life was to invent a dependable bear
Speaker 1: spray repellent, but he realized field testing with bears would
Speaker 1: be needed. This would require a protective suit for the
Speaker 1: person doing the test. In his interview with Mental Floss,
Speaker 1: one of the later pieces on the Man, Troy dropped
Speaker 1: the mace story and claimed that he had the idea
Speaker 1: just to make bear resistant armor a year after his
Speaker 1: grizzly encounter when he was watching RoboCop and decided bear
Speaker 1: researchers would need protective armor that would let them test
Speaker 1: bear spray and also safely observed grizzly behavior. Troy is
Speaker 1: something of an unreliable narrator, but I will say I
Speaker 1: do not doubt that the film RoboCop influenced his subsequent
Speaker 1: ass No, he absolutely had this idea that makes the
Speaker 1: most sense out of anything you said. It is very logical,
Speaker 1: So it is now. Troy, it should be noted, is
Speaker 1: not the first, probably not the first man who has
Speaker 1: thought I should develop a suit of armor to allow
Speaker 1: me to grapple with bears in hand to hand combat. Um.
Speaker 1: It is possible that in medieval Europe some people hunted
Speaker 1: bears while wearing full body suits of armor covered in spikes.
Speaker 1: There is debate as to whether or not this really happened.
Speaker 1: The gist of why this is a debate is that
Speaker 1: there's an insane looking suit of armor currently in a
Speaker 1: Houston museum that is probably made in Switzerland or Germany,
Speaker 1: like four hundred dish years ago. Researchers have not conclusively
Speaker 1: determined why it was made or for what purpose, but
Speaker 1: one theory is that it was used for bear abaiting.
Speaker 1: If so, it was used for European bears, which are
Speaker 1: significantly smaller than Presty bears, and as far as we know,
Speaker 1: was never a widespread practice. This is because attempting to
Speaker 1: fight a bear in hand to hand with a suit
Speaker 1: of armor is insane and something only a madman would do.
Speaker 1: But I am going to show you this suit of
Speaker 1: armor because it looks like something from a David Lynch movie.
Speaker 1: Oh I'm so, I'm so thrilled, specifically the face. So
Speaker 1: look at that, look at that beautiful thing. Oh my god.
Speaker 1: Yeahase of that unsettling. But they think probably somewhere around
Speaker 1: Austria or Switzerland, although it's not I don't think known
Speaker 1: to a point of certainty. That looks fucked up. It
Speaker 1: looks like it looks like a like like like a
Speaker 1: metal casting at someone's head, but with like but with
Speaker 1: like the pinhead thing. Yeah, it's a hellrazy. I think
Speaker 1: is the movie. Ye, the face on it is distinctly unsettling,
Speaker 1: like they could have just made a normal helmet. But
Speaker 1: no, no no, there's a nose. It's the guy's face. We
Speaker 1: gotta it's We're not doing this right unless we like
Speaker 1: peek into the uncanny valley with this thing. Troy was
Speaker 1: not interested in the fact that attempting to fight a
Speaker 1: bear in body armor is just objectively nuts, and since
Speaker 1: he was as handy as he was unhinged, he set
Speaker 1: swiftly to building a suit of armor and then testing it.
Speaker 1: I'm going to read another quote from the Specs right up,
Speaker 1: because it's extremely funny. So the suit became his focus
Speaker 1: of attention, putting it through all kinds of tests that
Speaker 1: included being run down by a pickup truck driven by
Speaker 1: his father, rolling off the side of a cliff, and
Speaker 1: being pummeled by bikers with base ball bats. And I'm
Speaker 1: gonna play you a video of Troy um one of
Speaker 1: these tests where Troy gets hit by a tree. It's
Speaker 1: almost exactly that scene from hot Rod. If you've watched
Speaker 1: the movie hot Rod, where they like swing a log
Speaker 1: down at him and hit him. Um, that may in
Speaker 1: fact be what that scene is based on. But I'm
Speaker 1: gonna I'm gonna share that with y'all. Now here a
Speaker 1: little bit. The log is, Oh my gosh, so guys,
Speaker 1: I cannot emphasize enoughten. It looks like half this armor
Speaker 1: is held together by duct tape. Like this looks like
Speaker 1: a fever dream combination of the Wizard of and like
Speaker 1: the and like the Battle of Endor. He walks, he
Speaker 1: walks throwing massive logs. And the guy in the middle
Speaker 1: tin suit. It's white. It's a white suit too. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it looks almost like something from um like speed Racer.
Speaker 1: Is weird. The aesthetic that I would reckon, I would
Speaker 1: closest compare it too. It is kind of like that
Speaker 1: anime robot style design. Yeah, it's it's it's profoundly unhinged.
Speaker 1: So I want to I want to play you a
Speaker 1: clip of him getting the helmet off so you can
Speaker 1: listen to Troy talk and see this man's face better
Speaker 1: than the first. Yeahs, I had that to that stuff
Speaker 1: on my mouth. Yeah, if I have a most piece,
Speaker 1: a mostpiece, you can do that all day long. I
Speaker 1: got the air bags in the back, so my neck
Speaker 1: hasn't got a lot of play, so that'll be perfect
Speaker 1: for the grizzly. I can. I can take what he
Speaker 1: can give me with that log there if that couldn't
Speaker 1: do anything to me, And I feel great, like really great.
Speaker 1: And actually my left hand was asleepis now a week?
Speaker 1: Really you don't say yeah? Damage? Fascinating man, So I'm
Speaker 1: gonna play you now him being attacked by a bunch
Speaker 1: of men with baseball bats as he attempts to move
Speaker 1: in this suit. And I have to emphasize to you,
Speaker 1: he is not capable of moving in this thing. This
Speaker 1: is an immobile suit of armor that he can He
Speaker 1: can almost shuffle in it, but not quite. His idea
Speaker 1: with the with the pickup truck and the bikers. With
Speaker 1: regards to big men, and being an anthropologist, he yet
Speaker 1: he looked at the testings we had originally done with
Speaker 1: normal sized men, you know, one hundred and fifty hundred
Speaker 1: and eighty pound, he said. The public isn't gonna buy it.
Speaker 1: They're they're looking at this monstrous, groovy bear and they're
Speaker 1: looking at a normal size man hitting you with bats
Speaker 1: and boards and stuff like that. They're not going to buy.
Speaker 1: You have to give them reality. This is insane. This
Speaker 1: is so weird, amazing, amazing, like a gang of Venet
Speaker 1: attacking this nerd in a metal suit. Yes, it's so funny.
Speaker 1: It's it's it's extremely funny. They're like and they pick
Speaker 1: like Terminator two looking bikers, like they go out of
Speaker 1: their way. All of the stylization is super super bizarre. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's such a strained documentary. This is from the
Speaker 1: documentary Project Grizzly, and there's Troy gives. In the various interviews,
Speaker 1: he does some pretty incredible quotes, like years after this,
Speaker 1: he wrote, at fifty two, I have to know whether
Speaker 1: or not the suit will hold. It's one of the
Speaker 1: curiosity things. We tested the suit a lot of ways,
Speaker 1: but never went against the Grizzly. And the suit that
Speaker 1: you're seeing is like the first version of his suit,
Speaker 1: the Ursus Mark one. He eventually gets up to the
Speaker 1: Mark six and spends more than one hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: thousand dollars making various versions of these bear suits. Actually, sorry,
Speaker 1: I think the one that we're looking at in the
Speaker 1: documentary is the Mark six because he did eventually, after
Speaker 1: years of this quest, get a documentary and interested and
Speaker 1: the film Project Grizzly was made about his quest. One
Speaker 1: fun piece of trivia about it is that it's one
Speaker 1: of Quentin Tarantino's favorite movies. That makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 1: That makes a lot of sense. It makes Yeah, it
Speaker 1: makes total sense. Now, in order to give you just
Speaker 1: one last piece of context about the personality, what kind
Speaker 1: of man is Troy her to Bees or was Troy
Speaker 1: her Tobes? I am going to play you a clip
Speaker 1: of an interview with this man from the documentary that's
Speaker 1: just perfect. He's holding in this a gigantic booie knife
Speaker 1: in his hand, and he has another booie knife strapped
Speaker 1: across his shoulder in such a way that it's on
Speaker 1: his shoulder but pointed down yea, which is the way
Speaker 1: a crazy man carries a booie knife. He's also, it's worth,
Speaker 1: dressed as like a frontier settler, but wearing like aad
Speaker 1: Harry Paray, I go into the bush. I don't use
Speaker 1: a gun, never, don't believe in guns. I swear by
Speaker 1: my knives. They save your life a thousand times around.
Speaker 1: If a grizzlies gonna come at you. And I'm not
Speaker 1: saying knives are gonna save you, That's not what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: What I'm saying is you've got a gun, and that
Speaker 1: grizzlies fifty feet one hundred feet away from you got
Speaker 1: one shot. I don't give a shit who you are
Speaker 1: or how steady you are. You've got one shot, not Grizzly.
Speaker 1: And if he's still coming at you that gun, you
Speaker 1: might as well use the barrel on him, or you
Speaker 1: can use the stock on that's useless. But if you've
Speaker 1: got some half decent knives, at least you got a
Speaker 1: fighting chance with animals. But that's not the reason why
Speaker 1: when I go into the mountains, or I go into
Speaker 1: the bush, or any man goes into the bush, they
Speaker 1: don't carry knives for the four legged animals. They carry
Speaker 1: knives for the two legged animals. Because nowadays it's a
Speaker 1: lot like the old days. You've got a lot of
Speaker 1: whackos up there, and it's knives you want to close quarters.
Speaker 1: You do, indeed have a lot of whackos up there,
Speaker 1: Troy um. So that's that's a brief introduction to Troy Hertebes. Now,
Speaker 1: the suit that you've seen in the Project Project Grizzly
Speaker 1: documentary weighed one hundred and fifty pounds and it was
Speaker 1: not in any way powered. As you see in the dock,
Speaker 1: he can kind of barely shuffle with it. He is
Speaker 1: unable to move or even stand on uneven ground. He
Speaker 1: falls over very easily. Troy liked the documentary, felt like
Speaker 1: it helped expose his work to a wider audience, but
Speaker 1: he took issue with the fact that the documentary did
Speaker 1: not delve into what he described as the science behind
Speaker 1: it all, adding being able to get hit by the
Speaker 1: truck took years of development, now years of practice of
Speaker 1: getting hit in the trucks. Yeah, it's you can't just
Speaker 1: jump into getting hit by a truck like that. In
Speaker 1: two thousand and two, a trainer who probably should not
Speaker 1: be allowed around animals let Troy get into a cage
Speaker 1: with a Kodiak bear. Now, thankfully the bear was too
Speaker 1: confused by Troy's armor to what to get near him,
Speaker 1: which you might this is technically a wind for Troy.
Speaker 1: The armor did do its job, just scare them away. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, the bear just saw that was like, you
Speaker 1: know what, this guy, it's clearly unwell. I do not
Speaker 1: want to be around this person. Right now. Here's mental
Speaker 1: Floss interviewing Troy. She was so terrified she urinated her
Speaker 1: abuse recalls I didn't look human enough. Limited mobility and
Speaker 1: questionable usefulness combined to doom the Mark series. We would
Speaker 1: never use a suit like that, says Lana Sierronello, PhD.
Speaker 1: A bare behavior expert, a solid knowledge of bare behaviors.
Speaker 1: The best thing one can use to avoid being attacked,
Speaker 1: which is rare. And this is this is common whenever
Speaker 1: they talk to actual bear experts and researchers, like do
Speaker 1: you want a suit of armor? They're like, no, that
Speaker 1: that's not at all useful. It's very easy to not
Speaker 1: get attacked by bears. Actually, and again, if you watch
Speaker 1: the documentary Grizzly Man and the man in the documentary,
Speaker 1: Grizzly Man is a similar type of person to Troy Hertabes.
Speaker 1: They are both people. I do believe Troy Hertabes might
Speaker 1: need a suit of bear armor because he seems like
Speaker 1: the kind of person to push grizzly bears past their
Speaker 1: limits of comfort. Very rarely will someone else wind up
Speaker 1: in that situation. Nonetheless, the armor brought Hertabes fame. He
Speaker 1: was all over the internet. I found out about him
Speaker 1: because one of my colleagues at Cracked wrote about him
Speaker 1: in an article, but like you would see this guy
Speaker 1: all the time, I'm sure I I think I also
Speaker 1: ran across him on something awful. Earlier, he would regularly
Speaker 1: put out videos. He had an early kind of understanding
Speaker 1: for how to make yourself into a brand on the
Speaker 1: internet in order to get funding, and so he was
Speaker 1: very successful at raising money in order to make new
Speaker 1: iterations of his armor. He was also recruited on several
Speaker 1: Japanese game shows, and he inspired a two thousand and
Speaker 1: three episode of The Simpsons where Homer constructs a bear
Speaker 1: fighting suit. He even filmed an outie commercial. Of course,
Speaker 1: he always reinvested the proceeds directly into making more suits
Speaker 1: of bear armor. Now, the good news is he eventually
Speaker 1: moved on from wanting to make armor that was specifically
Speaker 1: geared towards fighting bears, but he never got over his
Speaker 1: desire from making a suit of elaborate body armor. So
Speaker 1: he pivoted, claiming that now his brother was in the military,
Speaker 1: and so he wanted to make flexible body armor themed
Speaker 1: after the armor in Halo to help keep soldiers and
Speaker 1: swat officers safe during dangerous raids. His next suit was
Speaker 1: called the Trojan and it featured a compass in the
Speaker 1: dick for reasons that are deeply confusing. Wait, that's not
Speaker 1: even it's not even a useful spot, like put it
Speaker 1: on your watch him. He is adamant that he had
Speaker 1: talked to special Forces guys and they said, right in
Speaker 1: the dick is where you want a compass. It like
Speaker 1: flipped down, so it looks like he has a penis
Speaker 1: that's made out of compass. Okay, that that is kind
Speaker 1: of funny. I'm gonna play you a clip of this armor,
Speaker 1: which I will say looks a lot more professional than
Speaker 1: the last suit, the first ballistic full exoskeleton body suit
Speaker 1: of armor. This came from twenty years of development through
Speaker 1: the Bear suits and about seventeen hundred and fifty hours
Speaker 1: of actual building time. And it came from so many
Speaker 1: calls I got from friends of mine in Iraq and
Speaker 1: an Afghanistan. My brother was in the military, talking about
Speaker 1: is there can you not go in the direction that
Speaker 1: we need, which is you know, against the ieeds improvised
Speaker 1: explosive devices, and you know, build it to the point
Speaker 1: where you've got the flexibility, the lightness, but with the
Speaker 1: strength of what the bear suits were. And that's where
Speaker 1: that's where this came from. So I'm going to tell
Speaker 1: you right now that suit is not going to help
Speaker 1: you against an IED. The gigantic heavy armor you see
Speaker 1: in the hurt Locker only kind of helps you if
Speaker 1: it's a pretty small I eed, what he's built is
Speaker 1: not going to protect you from like an explosively formed
Speaker 1: penetrator or like a five thousand pound fertilizer five hundred
Speaker 1: pound fertilizer bomb or something like that. To test this, though,
Speaker 1: Troy hired a former military marksman, the guy who he
Speaker 1: claimed had previously covered him out in the woods on
Speaker 1: bare expeditions with less lethal amo, and he asked this
Speaker 1: man to shoot him point and blank with a rifle.
Speaker 1: So thankfully, this guy was like Troy, it's illegal to
Speaker 1: point a loaded weapon at a person in our province.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to shoot you directly in the chest
Speaker 1: with a hunting rifle. So Troy had him take the
Speaker 1: armor out of the suit and then shoot at it,
Speaker 1: and the bullet went immediately through the armor. It says
Speaker 1: a lot about Troy that his first instinct was not
Speaker 1: shoot the armor without a human being in it. But um,
Speaker 1: at least he was yeah, at least the guy who
Speaker 1: was testing it did not shoot him directly in the
Speaker 1: chest and kill him. I'm gonna quote again from mental
Speaker 1: Flaws here. Herdibes tweaked the Trojan, which he debuted in
Speaker 1: two thousand and seven to little notice. Eventually, he offered
Speaker 1: is designed to the Canadian military for free, but it
Speaker 1: can take years for armed forces to evaluate new technology,
Speaker 1: and existing contracts with equipment vendors render it near impossible
Speaker 1: for independent inventors without backing or references to succeed with
Speaker 1: industrial military contracts are sewn up and they don't want
Speaker 1: anyone stepping on toes. He says. Engineers pick my brain,
Speaker 1: but I can't be affiliated with them. I'm a loose
Speaker 1: cannon and my methodology is backward. I do not disagree
Speaker 1: with that statement. He did, however, have several other inventions
Speaker 1: over the years. For one thing, Troy invented a burn paste,
Speaker 1: a gooey substance that hardens when exposed to flame in
Speaker 1: order to protect you. Canada's Discovery Channel documented him covered
Speaker 1: in the burn pace, being exposed to temperatures above thirty
Speaker 1: six hundred degrees fahrenheit. He held a blowtorch to his
Speaker 1: helmeted head for ten minutes and it worked. This leaves
Speaker 1: out a fun fact, which is that Troy was inspired
Speaker 1: to make his burn pace because one day, while wearing
Speaker 1: his suit, it overheated, burning most of his body very badly.
Speaker 1: So he needed to make the burnt paste in order
Speaker 1: to protect himself. Yeah, it doesn't seem easy to get
Speaker 1: in and out of. Like, no, it would not be
Speaker 1: easy to dawn your If you look at the helmet there,
Speaker 1: your peripheral version is going to be shit. It's not
Speaker 1: going to be good for like fighting in and it
Speaker 1: is going to exhaust you. Like he builds an air
Speaker 1: conditioner for it, but that's only gonna do so much
Speaker 1: like body armor is always kind of like a trade
Speaker 1: off between mobility and protection, and something like a plate
Speaker 1: carrier is worth it. But full body armor that's not
Speaker 1: powered in a meaningful way just is not going to
Speaker 1: be practical yet. This is why I do not respect
Speaker 1: the Mandalorians. No, no, you you've been vocal about that
Speaker 1: for years. I have. I'm gonna play you a video
Speaker 1: of him testing this firepaste from that Canadian Discovery Channel
Speaker 1: documentary because it's very funny. Troy envisions neighborhoods in the
Speaker 1: path of a forest fire being sprayed with a thin
Speaker 1: layer of firepaste, effectively starving out the fire. And according
Speaker 1: to Troy, clean up is a breeze due to firepace
Speaker 1: only weakness water. See it turns back into a paste.
Speaker 1: See I'm already into a layer. It's just past now
Speaker 1: which is firepiece. This is its natural steam. And when
Speaker 1: it dries. See I'm already slopping it off. Now there's
Speaker 1: the is there It turns to the peace. This is
Speaker 1: what's gonna happen on your host. Now it's a he's
Speaker 1: chewing it up. Oh and oh that's so cross. He's
Speaker 1: just spitting it all over his house. The dog comes along,
Speaker 1: takes a little in his mouth, washes it around and
Speaker 1: spits it out. Nothing's gonna happen. It's biden ridable, non topsic.
Speaker 1: Don't have to worry abe anything happening. So how would
Speaker 1: a homeowner remove the firepace from the outside of their home?
Speaker 1: This is gonna be Bob fus next door. Bob Sulst
Speaker 1: is gonna be fine. The next day he's gonna come
Speaker 1: up with his garden the holes of a cannabier and
Speaker 1: in two hours he'll be ready for the football game.
Speaker 1: Oh what, there goes to the house. After ten minutes,
Speaker 1: Troy inspects the firepaced house. Look at look at this.
Speaker 1: Look at this. There's a little barbie. She's all kay.
Speaker 1: Barbie's fire Barbie's sister. The barbie is clearly sin. Now
Speaker 1: he does note again that the only weakness of the
Speaker 1: fire paste is water. This might reduce its efficacy, but
Speaker 1: I think he envisions it being dumped on neighborhoods in
Speaker 1: the path of a fire. They decided not to do this. Now,
Speaker 1: why why does he keep giving platforms? Like? Why why
Speaker 1: does he continue? He was because because this was really
Speaker 1: funny to everyone on the Internet. So a documentary that
Speaker 1: came out would get shared all over. People would watch it.
Speaker 1: It would get him attention, he would get donations. There
Speaker 1: was like one point where he had to he had
Speaker 1: to sell his body armor. He had to like sell
Speaker 1: it to a pawn shop because he was broke, and
Speaker 1: a fan bought it back from the pawn shop and
Speaker 1: gave it to him so he could continue. Yeah that's nice. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he had a fan base. Like I said, he was
Speaker 1: a hero of the old Internet. He did eventually succeed
Speaker 1: in making an armor suit that was resistant to twelve
Speaker 1: gage shotgun shells, which he acts like is very impressive.
Speaker 1: Shotgun shells are not good at penetrating armor. Most soft
Speaker 1: body armor vests will stop a shot shell from penetrating it.
Speaker 1: Shotguns are not for penetrating armor, there for damaging meat.
Speaker 1: But Troy made a big deal about how this would
Speaker 1: save the lives of soldiers in war. His next invention,
Speaker 1: as he was continuing to iterate his body armor, was
Speaker 1: something called the Godlight device. Now, Troy never gave much
Speaker 1: detail on what the Godlight was, but he says it
Speaker 1: shrunk tumors in mice as well as his sister's tumor,
Speaker 1: and he would tell interviewers he was pretty sure it
Speaker 1: could cure Parkinson's disease. Light is extremely effective against certain cancers.
Speaker 1: All I did was take all spectrums of light electromagnetic
Speaker 1: radiation and put them together and it works. I don't
Speaker 1: know why, but I think that's how you get cancer.
Speaker 1: But okay, funny, funny, you mentioned that. So obviously his
Speaker 1: claims about the Godlight were never validated by any outside force,
Speaker 1: in part because shining whatever the fuck he's invented on
Speaker 1: a bunch of sick people has ethical considerations to it.
Speaker 1: But Troy turned the light on himself and experienced what
Speaker 1: he calls the hide effect. I think as in Doctor jekyline,
Speaker 1: mister Hyde, his hair fell out and he lost twenty
Speaker 1: pounds curious a mystery. Then he claims the godlight mysteriously
Speaker 1: stopped working and he didn't have the money to fix
Speaker 1: it up. There are amazing I love this man. It's
Speaker 1: it is. It is fascinating that the closer society comes
Speaker 1: to this complete collapse, we get more of these little
Speaker 1: weirdos who are like trying to figure out how to
Speaker 1: survive the apocalypse and exactly the wrong way. Yes, um,
Speaker 1: I'm going to read another quote from Mental Floss article today.
Speaker 1: Hertabes operates a scrapyard in Ontario and dismisses notions of patents.
Speaker 1: The stuff is too easy to duplicate and it costs
Speaker 1: eighty thousand dollars to file an application. He rejects offers
Speaker 1: to outright sell his creations like Firepaste, because he frequently
Speaker 1: sells off shares to fund their development. By the time
Speaker 1: I got Firepace to the point of testing, seventy percent
Speaker 1: of it was owned by investors, so when a university
Speaker 1: wants it, I only have thirty percent left. They're not
Speaker 1: interested in that. And yet Hernabes can't stop inventing. He
Speaker 1: still feels compelled to put in twenty one hour days
Speaker 1: refining his projects. His current plan is to find funding
Speaker 1: for the Apache, the latest version of his Rosian suit,
Speaker 1: which he says protects ninety three percent of a user's
Speaker 1: body and offers ninety six percent flexibility. A prototype will
Speaker 1: cost seventy thousand dollars. It'll take six to eight months
Speaker 1: to build by hand. I'll try to market it to
Speaker 1: law enforcement like SWAT. He needs another one hundred thousand
Speaker 1: dollars to rebuild the Godlight, renamed the EMR five, which
Speaker 1: he now claims will only cure breast cancer. He wants
Speaker 1: to take it to John's Optics for testing. So well,
Speaker 1: I'm excited for SWAT teams to be using his inventions. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: I do support that. Thanks to that dit compass, they'll
Speaker 1: never get lost at the wrong house again. Could really
Speaker 1: save a lot of lives. That's the problem SWAT teams
Speaker 1: have is poor land nav. I think so. I think
Speaker 1: the SWAT team should wear that. Every SWAT team member
Speaker 1: should be forced to wear that barrasuit for everything they do. Yes,
Speaker 1: the only thing Swat could get du so. Tragically, Troy
Speaker 1: died in like twenty twelve, I think in a fiery collision. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he drove right into a few tanker. Oh yeah, it's
Speaker 1: very sad. He was fifty four years old old. His
Speaker 1: widow says that he swerved his car or the police
Speaker 1: say that he swerved his car into the pathway of
Speaker 1: the truck. He had been very depressed because he'd encountered
Speaker 1: financial difficulties and had not been able to sell his inventions. Um,
Speaker 1: obviously this is very sad for them. He seems like,
Speaker 1: despite everything, he was a fun guy to be around,
Speaker 1: and then yeah, fell on hard times. Um it is.
Speaker 1: It is a depressing end to the story. But Troy
Speaker 1: lives on in the documentary project Grizzly, and in the
Speaker 1: impact he had on all of our hearts, and in
Speaker 1: the memory that you know, even if your dreams are
Speaker 1: are crazy, you should you should try and live them
Speaker 1: because who knows, Maybe maybe you'll develop a suit that
Speaker 1: allows you to fight a Grizzly bar in hand to
Speaker 1: hand combat. Anyway, That's that's this Hero of the Internet
Speaker 1: episode I hope you all found it edifying. That is
Speaker 1: that is an inspiring in ringtail. Yeah, um, it's it's
Speaker 1: it's you know, he's fucking more of an inventor than
Speaker 1: Elon Musk has been. And he would have been a
Speaker 1: better ruler of Twitter, if that's true, was in charge
Speaker 1: of Twitter. He's he's really the last guy from the
Speaker 1: old error of capitalism where you would actually like return
Speaker 1: your profits into into R and D instead of just
Speaker 1: like paying Elon Musk like forty seven million dollars to
Speaker 1: hire a bunch of consultants who also make forty seven
Speaker 1: million dollars. Yeah. One thing you have to say about
Speaker 1: Troy is he was not He was not in this
Speaker 1: for the money. This was a man who believed more
Speaker 1: strongly than I think I've ever believed in anything about
Speaker 1: the idea of building a suit of armor to fight
Speaker 1: grisly bears, um and whatever else you can say about Troy,
Speaker 1: he was absolutely, absolutely honest in that belief. And I
Speaker 1: think I'm going to end by playing a brief montage
Speaker 1: of him testing out his first version of the armored suit,
Speaker 1: which looks more or less like a set of heavy
Speaker 1: base ball armor. Like it looks like someone wearing body
Speaker 1: armor and a baseball helmet or a sorry, a football helmet.
Speaker 1: In fact, I think it just is a football helmet.
Speaker 1: But yeah, here's here's Troy's early tests in nineteen eighty eight.
Speaker 1: That's definitely a ball helmet. That one looks kind of cool.
Speaker 1: That one looks pretty cool too. Yeah. They look increasingly
Speaker 1: Space Marini in this period, and he has some range
Speaker 1: of motion, doesn't even have his helmet on, just knocking
Speaker 1: him down with what looked like to buy force. It doesn't.
Speaker 1: It does look more Oh my gosh, he just he
Speaker 1: keeps getting he walks right in the face. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's just amazing. That last one looks super space Marine
Speaker 1: as Yeah. Yeah, some of them looked pretty cool. Um,
Speaker 1: and he didn't die from anything related to the suit testing,
Speaker 1: So you got to give him one thing. He knew
Speaker 1: how to make a suit of armor that would not
Speaker 1: get you killed doing the kind of shit Troy Hertabes
Speaker 1: like to do. It seems like he was good with
Speaker 1: like with like blunt force trauma armor. Did anyone ever
Speaker 1: do like a CTE skit like test on him every dime?
Speaker 1: Because this man had a thousand micro head injuries. Absolutely
Speaker 1: I mean, I think the real lesson here is that
Speaker 1: he was able. He was he was able to continue
Speaker 1: his work thanks to Canadian healthcare. Um. He was probably
Speaker 1: like five percent of the entire Canadian healthcare system budget
Speaker 1: just dealing with all of Troy's concussions. Yeah. Anyway, that's
Speaker 1: the story of Troy Hertabies. I hope you've all found
Speaker 1: it useful. Um, go into the world, and if your
Speaker 1: dream is to create a suit of powered armor that
Speaker 1: will allow you to defeat a grizzly bear in unarmed combat,
Speaker 1: then by god, you know, shoot for the stars. It
Speaker 1: could happen here as a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
Speaker 1: cool zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Speaker 1: You can find sources for It could Happen here, updated
Speaker 1: monthly at coolzonemedia dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.