Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas.
Speaker 1: First of all, if I sound a little weird on
Speaker 1: today's podcast, I apologize. I recently had some whizisdom teeth
Speaker 1: taken out and my mouth is not completely helled, so
Speaker 1: I may sound a little whistle word. I don't know,
Speaker 1: like you've got cotton in the back of your mouth. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but you might seem wiser, yeah, yes, or at least
Speaker 1: you've dumped that vestigial junk in your mouth and know
Speaker 1: what I'm saying. That's right. We had the whole episode
Speaker 1: in the past on parts of our bodies that we've
Speaker 1: abandoned and no longer need, and yet they're still around,
Speaker 1: and then the question of well, have we really left
Speaker 1: them behind completely? Maybe they do have a purpose, just
Speaker 1: a purpose that we don't have to use as much
Speaker 1: in modern times. So I was thinking about that a
Speaker 1: little bit though in the past few days I've been,
Speaker 1: especially with some of your pinkillers. Yeah, alright, so what
Speaker 1: are we talking about today? Today? We are talking about
Speaker 1: falling out of airplanes. Or falling in airplanes. Either way
Speaker 1: you want to look at it. What is your philosophy
Speaker 1: on this? You've flown, but what is it like? What
Speaker 1: goes through your mind when you're taking off, when you're landing,
Speaker 1: when you're up there? Are you afraid of falling in
Speaker 1: the plane? You have a survival plan in mind? What's
Speaker 1: your dealing I don't really have a survival plan in mind,
Speaker 1: although after this podcast I know I will. But I
Speaker 1: think that everybody to some degree is very frightened of
Speaker 1: the proposition of crashing in a plane, right because a
Speaker 1: plane seems crazy to us at some level that we
Speaker 1: could be thirty thou feet in the air, supported by
Speaker 1: these wings that are just dealing with with the pressure
Speaker 1: of air that's forcing them upwards and keeping us afloat.
Speaker 1: So my feeling is that everybody has had some level
Speaker 1: of anxiety, especially after you've ever experienced a really bad flight,
Speaker 1: or even just a somewhat bad flight. Yeah. I mean,
Speaker 1: on a basic level, we're going to a place where
Speaker 1: man does not belong and and we and and we
Speaker 1: know it. You're up really high, and if that plane
Speaker 1: were to plummet, and sometimes they do, there's a very
Speaker 1: good chance that it would kill us. True, and I
Speaker 1: mean again, you're hurling through the air in a metal capsule.
Speaker 1: You have no control. What's no control. The control of
Speaker 1: the airplane is in the hands of people on the
Speaker 1: other side of often the locked door. You're told to
Speaker 1: set an appropriate place, You're told when to get up,
Speaker 1: when to set down, when you can go to the bathroom.
Speaker 1: And uh, you know, especially if you're a control freak,
Speaker 1: that can be a very intense situation. And adding some
Speaker 1: claustrophobia on top of that, and you've got quite a
Speaker 1: stressful time in a well. And then you look at
Speaker 1: the chump next to you and you think, is this
Speaker 1: person we're going to help out? You know when the
Speaker 1: everything hits the fan? Yeah, I don't know. Well, it's
Speaker 1: been my experience that in the past on flights, I'll
Speaker 1: be kind of concerned taking off where I'm like, oh,
Speaker 1: this could be this could be it, this could be
Speaker 1: the last flight, right, And then as I get going,
Speaker 1: if I am seated near annoying enough people, I'll end
Speaker 1: up focusing on that and by the end of the flight,
Speaker 1: I will be wishing that we would crash into the ocean.
Speaker 1: So it is my irritation with with my fellow humans
Speaker 1: ends up exceeding my fear of death in the airplane.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, before we play into everybody's fears about
Speaker 1: falling and crashing, let's actually talk about how this is
Speaker 1: truly in irrational fear. Yes, okay, so despite the horror
Speaker 1: stories that we hear about plane crashes, that the real
Speaker 1: lesson here is that people will actually make it through
Speaker 1: crashes more often than not. According to the National Transportation
Speaker 1: Safety Board, of passengers involved in plane crashes survived, the
Speaker 1: majority of airplane accidents involve only non fatal injuries and
Speaker 1: aircraft damage. Okay, so me, if you think about a
Speaker 1: flight taking off or landing, that's usually when you have
Speaker 1: some sort of crash situation. So just everybody knows it's
Speaker 1: the rule of plus three minus eight plus the first
Speaker 1: three minutes in the last eight minutes of the flight,
Speaker 1: those are the times when you statistically have the greatest
Speaker 1: chance of something happening. Right, So, yes, that's probably what
Speaker 1: when people are most nervous. But you should know that
Speaker 1: these flights are mostly survival. So let's also talk about
Speaker 1: flying versus driving, because this gives us a really good
Speaker 1: hold on what your chances are of perishing in one
Speaker 1: of these two ways. For starters, I should mention that
Speaker 1: the number of successful flights worldwide and two thousand eleven
Speaker 1: alone thirty eight million, two point eight billion passengers that
Speaker 1: were flying safely in because the year alone, And that
Speaker 1: relates to the fact that I would use early on
Speaker 1: to I mean, I was never like super afraid of flying,
Speaker 1: but I would never go a little tense, and I
Speaker 1: would just remind myself, when is the last time I
Speaker 1: solntvd an entire basketball team was wiped out, or an
Speaker 1: entire roster of a wrestling promotion, or people that fly
Speaker 1: on a regular basis and they're still flying and they've
Speaker 1: been flying on their whole lives. If crashing were really
Speaker 1: that huge for a possibility, it would just be like
Speaker 1: every year you'd see a basketball team just go down
Speaker 1: in flames. And so that's what you see here. An
Speaker 1: enormous number of people fly every day, and the vast
Speaker 1: majority of them are not perishing. And then when you
Speaker 1: look at it compared to cars, all right, if you
Speaker 1: look at the total, we're looking at thirty four thousand,
Speaker 1: two hundred nine transportation fatalities in the US alone in
Speaker 1: two thousand and ten, we break those down, we have
Speaker 1: twelve thousand, four hundred and thirty five from passenger cars,
Speaker 1: pretty extensive, and then we have six hundred seventy two
Speaker 1: from boats recreational boats, and then only four hundred and
Speaker 1: seventy two from all aviation. And I do think it's
Speaker 1: interesting to note to that in two thou eight, the
Speaker 1: US fatality rate was less than one per billion passenger trips, okay,
Speaker 1: and then if you compare that to the US road
Speaker 1: fatalities thirty five thousand and up, that's quite a difference, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1: The global accident rate for Western built planes actually improved
Speaker 1: in two thousand eleven, going from about one crash for
Speaker 1: every one point six Newigan flights to one crash for
Speaker 1: every two point seven million flights. And those stats, by
Speaker 1: the way, are from this awesome infographic that house stuff
Speaker 1: Works created for a curiosity website. I think I've linked
Speaker 1: to it before on the Facebook page, and I'll help
Speaker 1: link to it again with the blog folks that accompanies
Speaker 1: of this podcast. So what we're seeing here is a
Speaker 1: manifestation of our psychological fears. Right. There's a good study
Speaker 1: that actually plays this out, and it's a study of
Speaker 1: the impact of nine eleven on road fatalities. So in
Speaker 1: two thousand and five, Garrett Blaylock wanted to measure the
Speaker 1: psychological effects of fear flying with nine eleven. Of course
Speaker 1: is the context, since the public had suddenly shunned flying
Speaker 1: for fear of more unfolding terrorist plots. Yeah, everyone remembers,
Speaker 1: O this went down. Um, nine eleven occurred. You had
Speaker 1: these hijacked planes, you have these fatalities, and people got
Speaker 1: tense about flying. The flight industry got tense about people flying.
Speaker 1: Everybody was tense, and so a lot of people ended
Speaker 1: up instead of taking that vacation that involved a flight,
Speaker 1: they scaled down and they decided to drive instead. So
Speaker 1: you have more people on the road. They're feeling safer,
Speaker 1: right because when's the last time the terrorist attacked occurred
Speaker 1: on a Honda. Yeah, but exactly. But it's possible, I suppose.
Speaker 1: But this actually increased people's exposure to fatal crashes. Americans
Speaker 1: wound up suffering extra fatalities, and Laylock said that our
Speaker 1: findings reveal an additional two hundred forty two road fatalities
Speaker 1: per month for the period from October two thousand and
Speaker 1: one to December two thousand and one. Yeah, they calculated
Speaker 1: extra fatalities, which is more than died in the nine
Speaker 1: eleven air crashes themselves, just the crashes, mind you. Right, So, okay,
Speaker 1: we've planned some stats that you guys, we're gonna take
Speaker 1: a break and we get back. We're going to talk
Speaker 1: about how to best survive a crash and free fall.
Speaker 1: All right, we're back, and I want to point out
Speaker 1: just to throw one more alarming and comforting stat If
Speaker 1: you're flying, one in five million. That's the approximate odds
Speaker 1: of dying in a plane crash in the United States.
Speaker 1: The odds of dying in a car crash one eight five.
Speaker 1: If you're listening to this prior to your flight, are
Speaker 1: on your flight, breathe a sigh of relief. If you're
Speaker 1: driving home listening to this, look around you tighten up,
Speaker 1: very careful. Maybe turn off the podcast. I don't know. Yeah, yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: so you're up in the air. Let's talk about who,
Speaker 1: statists stickly is going to survive crash. Well, birds obviously
Speaker 1: not all birds, right, Well, driven quite a lot of
Speaker 1: birds crashing with plane lailing. Yeah, insects, beings that are
Speaker 1: composed either of water, or have a less compact body
Speaker 1: system going on, right, okay, all right? According to popuar Mechanics,
Speaker 1: their article how to Fallow feet and Survive by Dan
Speaker 1: Keppel says that statistically, it's best to be a flight
Speaker 1: crew member, a child, or traveling in a military aircraft,
Speaker 1: and that over the past four decades there have been
Speaker 1: at least a dozen commercial air lines crashes with just
Speaker 1: one survivor, and of those documented, four of the survivor's
Speaker 1: were crew in seven more passengers under the age of eighteen. Now,
Speaker 1: for the crew members, it's easy enough to explain this,
Speaker 1: and they have better restraint systems. And as we'll talk
Speaker 1: in a little bit, if you were to survive a
Speaker 1: crash and say that the plane sort of just split
Speaker 1: in half and you were hurtling through the air, would
Speaker 1: be better to me in your seat. But I don't
Speaker 1: want to get into that quite yet. The big question
Speaker 1: is why do children survive? And there's no consensus on this,
Speaker 1: but there is this idea that children under the age
Speaker 1: of four, especially under the age of four, have more
Speaker 1: flexible skeletons, more relaxed muscle tone. Us and we actually
Speaker 1: talked about exactly We talked about this concept before, um,
Speaker 1: I believe it was getting shocked or surviving lightning volts.
Speaker 1: Lightning volts, lightning volts of coursing through your body. That
Speaker 1: if you happen to be picked up by a tornado
Speaker 1: or some other force and dumped on the ground, it
Speaker 1: would be better if you were kind of out if
Speaker 1: you've been hit. I think what the example was if
Speaker 1: you had been hit by say a lamp first, because
Speaker 1: if your body is relaxed, it's much more apt to
Speaker 1: actually deal with the shock of being put down by
Speaker 1: a tornado in another place anyway, Well, this often comes
Speaker 1: up in discussions of drunk driving fatalities as well. Obviously
Speaker 1: that you have a situation where the drunk driver is
Speaker 1: more out of it and therefore they're less tents. Yeah,
Speaker 1: is the sober individual is more tense understandably when someone
Speaker 1: slams into them, and then the survival rate is sometimes
Speaker 1: better for the actual drunk driver in the scenario. So kids,
Speaker 1: they have more relaxed special turnus and so that's what
Speaker 1: we're actually talking about here. And then a higher proportions
Speaker 1: subcutaneous fat which helps to protect internal organs, right, and
Speaker 1: then smaller people whose heads are lower than the seat
Speaker 1: backs in front of them are shielded more so short
Speaker 1: chebby children with a relaxed attitude about life. Yeah, meditating.
Speaker 1: Yeah no, I mean that's not actually funny to talk about,
Speaker 1: but um we can find humor in it. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know we're talking about subject is a
Speaker 1: serious subject. So that is why they think that those
Speaker 1: are the folks that tend to survive crashes. So it's
Speaker 1: good to be in a better restraint system or shrink
Speaker 1: yourself the safest place on the plane. Now, this have
Speaker 1: come up against different information on this. Popular Mechanics analyzed
Speaker 1: data from every commercial jet wreck in the United States
Speaker 1: from nineteen we went to two thousand and five, and
Speaker 1: they included that people sitting near the tail have a
Speaker 1: higher chance of survival than those sitting in the front. Well,
Speaker 1: one of the classic examples will look at in a
Speaker 1: little bit was a tailgun and at the seventeen So yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: And then there's other data that says if you are
Speaker 1: sitting about five seats from the exit doors, then you're
Speaker 1: in better shape. But some other people who say it
Speaker 1: was only in the case of a fire because the
Speaker 1: proximity of the door really gives you an advantage. Another
Speaker 1: good place the escape from New York Air Force one
Speaker 1: escape pod. If you remember this from the movie No,
Speaker 1: I don't. Is this the Bruce willis No, No No.
Speaker 1: This is Kurt Russell and John Carpenter's epic. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: Donald Pleasants played the president estrangely enough, British Donald Pleasants,
Speaker 1: and he climbed in it and it like falls out
Speaker 1: of the plane and bounces. There's another strategy. And then
Speaker 1: there's the Golden time. Yes, the Golden time, which isn't
Speaker 1: as happy and stress free as it sounds. But this
Speaker 1: revers to the critical ninety seconds immediately following impact. So
Speaker 1: in a survival crash, obviously you have fatalities that a
Speaker 1: Kurblin aircraft hits the ground, But then after the plane
Speaker 1: to sit the ground, what happens hasardous chemicals are released,
Speaker 1: Things begin to set fire, things start to get out
Speaker 1: of control. So you have about ninety seconds after you
Speaker 1: hit the ground where you need to flee the vessel. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I think that this is particularly important in takeoff
Speaker 1: and landing crashes, right because these are when they have
Speaker 1: the whole slides and everything that the inflatable slides, because
Speaker 1: the whole idea is something's gone wrong, and even if
Speaker 1: it's just a matter of the plane getting whacked up
Speaker 1: a bit or doing a very rough valley landing, we
Speaker 1: need to get everyone away from it because the vessel
Speaker 1: is potentially compromised at this point, right, So those ninety
Speaker 1: seconds are your chance to calm yourself and try to
Speaker 1: think rationally and logically. Those are the people who tend
Speaker 1: to survive more if they can harness that and not
Speaker 1: panic and freak out. Another thing I wanted to point
Speaker 1: out to is that, according to the f f A,
Speaker 1: using the brace position is three times safer than sitting
Speaker 1: upright in a crash. So there actually is a point
Speaker 1: to the whole the brace you know that can cover
Speaker 1: exactly So just in case you thought that was something
Speaker 1: that was created to make you feel better about the flight,
Speaker 1: like know, sort of like they say, oh, you've got
Speaker 1: your floating cushion underneath, and sometimes I think, really, such
Speaker 1: a psychological you know that actually is helpful as well
Speaker 1: as the floating cushion. So let's say you are falling,
Speaker 1: either the plane has split open and you're you've been
Speaker 1: thrown free of it, or miraculously you've managed to work
Speaker 1: your way to an exit and throwing yourself out of
Speaker 1: the plane. Now you're just you're falling, bon are you
Speaker 1: at this point? Well, gravity is pulling you towards Earth
Speaker 1: and you're going faster. Right, Let's talk about it in
Speaker 1: that perspective. And like any moving object, you create drag
Speaker 1: more as your speed increases, and when downward forced equals
Speaker 1: upward resistance, acceleration stops and you max out. And the
Speaker 1: popular mechanics article put that max about usually like the
Speaker 1: average about a hundred twenty miles per hour. So right
Speaker 1: now you know that unless you can create more drag
Speaker 1: and you can slow down a bit, you're probably going
Speaker 1: to make impact at one per hour on something, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: the terminal velocity things really interesting in terms of survival falls.
Speaker 1: Radio Lab did an episode a couple of years back
Speaker 1: now about falling and they had a segment that dealt
Speaker 1: with the reality of cats falling out of high rise
Speaker 1: windows in New York City, which they do. You know, cats,
Speaker 1: they are locked up inside and they all have that
Speaker 1: intense call of the wild and well, yeah, nine lives
Speaker 1: and they desperately want to get outside and eat some
Speaker 1: grass and puke and eat some birds and puke a
Speaker 1: little more and lay in the dust and roll around
Speaker 1: it and all that stuff. So inevitably somebody opens a
Speaker 1: window leaves it cracked or something, and the cat will
Speaker 1: go out, get a little over excited and plummet and
Speaker 1: in this particular radio but they talked about how there's
Speaker 1: like a lower level range. Of course, cats are very
Speaker 1: agile and they're good at surviving falls from low level,
Speaker 1: so certain lower stories on building everything is good. Then
Speaker 1: there's a mid range where the cat is pretty much
Speaker 1: boned because it's going to be a lethal fall. But
Speaker 1: then there's an upper level where suddenly survivalism kicks back
Speaker 1: in a again. And it has to do with terminal velocity.
Speaker 1: The argument here is in these scenarios, cats fell far
Speaker 1: enough that they achieved terminal velocity and they were spread
Speaker 1: out and then they were able to manage their fall successfully.
Speaker 1: It's kind of the argument here. Well, and then that's interesting.
Speaker 1: You say that there's a stat from the Geneva based
Speaker 1: Aircraft Crashes Record Office and they say that about a
Speaker 1: hundred and eighteen thousand people have died in more than
Speaker 1: fifteen thousand plane crashes between nine and eight okay, Uh,
Speaker 1: confirmed or plausible accounts of lift to tell about incidents
Speaker 1: is only a hundred fifty seven and of those hundred
Speaker 1: fifty seven, only forty two occurring at heights over ten
Speaker 1: thousand feet. So to your point, the higher up obviously,
Speaker 1: the more of a drop in, the more terminal velocity
Speaker 1: you talked about managing the fall. Yes, this is a
Speaker 1: really interesting concept. Well. First of all, as the Popular
Speaker 1: Mechanics article points out, one thing you can do is
Speaker 1: if you see a piece of the plane floating, they're
Speaker 1: falling with you rather not floating. Uh. If you can
Speaker 1: wedge yourself in there, you might have an increased chance
Speaker 1: of survival. Right. The more debris that you can kind
Speaker 1: of land on top of, the better, right. Nine seventy
Speaker 1: two Serbian flight attendant by the name of Vestna Bolivick,
Speaker 1: she was in a d C nine over Czechoslovakia, blows up.
Speaker 1: She ends up following thirty three thousand feet which between
Speaker 1: her seat and a catering trolley in the section of
Speaker 1: the aircraft, and she ends up surviving. So it's severely
Speaker 1: injured but survives thirty three thousand foot drop. There's actually
Speaker 1: a term for this called wreckage. Writing writing. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: if you can kind of gather yourself around that debris,
Speaker 1: the better, and thirty three thousand feet is that is incredible.
Speaker 1: Of course, she sustained some serious injuries, but she lived
Speaker 1: to tell about it. There's another person named Julianne Copecki.
Speaker 1: On Christmas Eve nineteen seventy one, she was on the
Speaker 1: airplane and it was traveling over the Amazon when it
Speaker 1: exploded and she woke up on the jungle floor. She
Speaker 1: was strapped into her seat. Again, this is important. That
Speaker 1: seat helped, you know, with her fall. In terms of
Speaker 1: christening her fall. She was surrounded by falling holiday gifts.
Speaker 1: She remembered advice from her father, a biologist that because
Speaker 1: she obviously she was like, I'm very hurt here, but
Speaker 1: I have survived it, and she sort of just compartmentalized.
Speaker 1: She remembered the advice from her father, which was to
Speaker 1: find civilization. When lost in the jungle, you should follow water.
Speaker 1: So she's got a broken collar bone, she's got maggot
Speaker 1: filled injuries, right, and she's wading through all of these
Speaker 1: streams until she gets to bigger and bigger bodies of water,
Speaker 1: and then finally she finds a canoe. It takes her
Speaker 1: like forever to get in the canoe because again she's injured.
Speaker 1: And she gets to the banks where she finds some
Speaker 1: lumberjacks and it takes two hours to scale this hill.
Speaker 1: Before she can they finally see her. But again this
Speaker 1: is this is really interesting survival information. That is best
Speaker 1: to leave the plane crash if possible, because that's really
Speaker 1: gonna up your chances of survival. But before you can
Speaker 1: leave the plane crash, of course, you have to hit
Speaker 1: the ground. Yes, it's unavoidable. The fall is one thing,
Speaker 1: but it's that sudden stop at the end. There was
Speaker 1: the Kids in the Hall sketch back in the day
Speaker 1: where an individual has a parachute on and they're doing
Speaker 1: skydiving and the first person jumps out is his shoe
Speaker 1: doesn't open and he splats on the ground. The second
Speaker 1: one does it splats on the ground. I think it's
Speaker 1: the third two. And the whole time there's a guy
Speaker 1: back in the line and he's doing running the stats
Speaker 1: in his head. He's like, what are the chances of
Speaker 1: one person dying during a sky dive And he's calculating
Speaker 1: those odds and what are the chances of too what
Speaker 1: are the chances of three? And then he finally convinces
Speaker 1: himself that his best odds are to jump out without
Speaker 1: a shoot and to hit the ground running that if
Speaker 1: he's running fast enough in mid air, he'll survive. Um,
Speaker 1: that is not one of the tactics that we ran across.
Speaker 1: But there are basically two schools of thought. First of all,
Speaker 1: you want to be like that cat. You want to
Speaker 1: be like that skydiver here in the fall. You want
Speaker 1: to spread out so that you can you can flying squirrel. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: so you can achieve terminal velocity well, and because you're
Speaker 1: slowing yourself down a bit and you're able to maneuver
Speaker 1: a little while. Yeah. And of course here's the thing though,
Speaker 1: once you impact is eminent, you got to change your
Speaker 1: body position because that would obviously result in this flat
Speaker 1: right there. According to studying the Journal War Medicine, they
Speaker 1: would argue for staying more or less in this position.
Speaker 1: They're saying wide body impact is ideal, which makes a
Speaker 1: certain amount of sense. I mean, it's kind of like
Speaker 1: if you're on thin ice, you want to spread out right,
Speaker 1: you know, down. But then in nineteen sixty three report
Speaker 1: by the Federal Aviation Agency argued that shifting into the
Speaker 1: classic skydiverse landing stance feed together heels up, flex knees
Speaker 1: and hips was the best to increase survivability because I
Speaker 1: really see the other one as being sort of a
Speaker 1: vehicle for splatness. And then there's this idea of landing
Speaker 1: in water, which perferably you should not. Yeah, perferably you
Speaker 1: shouldn't because ultimately, landing quote unquote in water is going
Speaker 1: to be like landing quote unquote in concrete. The concrete
Speaker 1: is not going to give. There's gonna be no bounce
Speaker 1: to that. Well, there's gonna be some bounce, but it's
Speaker 1: not gonna be the concrete. It's gonna be doing it likewise,
Speaker 1: hitting water to high speed. You've ever done a belly
Speaker 1: flop into a pool, imagine that from thirty feet it's
Speaker 1: gonna be like it in concrete. You're gonna bust apart
Speaker 1: on it. And then those pieces are gonna sink, but
Speaker 1: only after you've made impact unless you position yourself like
Speaker 1: a pencil. Right, And again, it's not attet that you're
Speaker 1: free falling this. You hit it after a thousand feet. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's this idea of the knife like entry, right, Okay,
Speaker 1: so I guess you can think of yourself as sort
Speaker 1: of like just dipping in with your feet as flexed
Speaker 1: as possible. For your flex and for God's sake, clinch
Speaker 1: your button. They do say this. They say this, They
Speaker 1: say for obvious reasons, not joking around here, clench your
Speaker 1: buttocks if you're going in in that direction. And they
Speaker 1: do talk a bit about divers. In of Poco cliff divers,
Speaker 1: they do a position where they go head first. They're
Speaker 1: jumping off cliffs, not airplanes, right, obviously, lock their fingers
Speaker 1: and only their fingers, hold that above their head, and
Speaker 1: do so in a way that protects they had because
Speaker 1: that's the big thing. Your head is obviously a very
Speaker 1: essential part of your anatomy, and if it's hitting the
Speaker 1: water anywhere near first, it's gonna need protection, even though
Speaker 1: nobody wants to take it right in the face, because
Speaker 1: you know, obviously that's the money maker if you had
Speaker 1: to choose better, the front of the face in the
Speaker 1: back of the head, right, right, So just don't worry
Speaker 1: about vanity. If you had to, that's what you would
Speaker 1: want to expose that part of your head. Right now,
Speaker 1: most of the world is water, so there's a good
Speaker 1: chance you won't have any choice but to land in water.
Speaker 1: But if you're over land, your options are a little different. Obviously,
Speaker 1: you don't want to aim for the concrete. That would
Speaker 1: be bad. A big, giant, fluffy pile of cotton would
Speaker 1: be ideal. Yes, something that's gonna give this gonna cushion
Speaker 1: the fall. But amazingly enough, things like a glass roof
Speaker 1: can actually help. All right, Right, this is a World
Speaker 1: War two right, Yeah, this is a man. We mentioned
Speaker 1: the B seventeen earlier. The seventeen was a plastic American
Speaker 1: bomber from World War two, beautiful aircraft. This guy was
Speaker 1: the tail gunner Alan McGhee. His B sevent team was
Speaker 1: blown up in a nine mission over France. He survived
Speaker 1: a twenty foot crash into a train station through a
Speaker 1: glass glass roof, and then he was subsequently captured by
Speaker 1: German troops. But that's amazing you under arrest, and if
Speaker 1: you're gonna be captured by the German straining World War two,
Speaker 1: better that you're in aviation dude, because they did receive
Speaker 1: better treatment. Obviously, this guy probably got a few slaps
Speaker 1: on the back from these guys in a couple more ribs.
Speaker 1: But the thing is he fell through the glass, and
Speaker 1: even though nobody wants to fall through a pane of glass,
Speaker 1: it does cushion the fall a little bit. It slows
Speaker 1: you down a little before you hit the stone underneath,
Speaker 1: and he eventually hits you know, concrete or stones. You
Speaker 1: see a similar thing, oddly enough, in pro wrestling, wherein
Speaker 1: some of the matches that involve people falling, they'll fall
Speaker 1: through tables. And I'm sure a lot of you have
Speaker 1: seen this where they'll have like a folding table set
Speaker 1: up at ringside. Somebody will fall off the top of
Speaker 1: the turnbuckle and they'll go through the table and then
Speaker 1: hit the concrete floor, and the crowd tends to go
Speaker 1: wild because it makes this awesome noise and you see
Speaker 1: wood breaking and it looks like a train wreck, and
Speaker 1: then it's awesome in its own way, and it's perfectly realist. Well,
Speaker 1: nothing has been messed away. Sometimes the tables have been
Speaker 1: pre cut to facilitated better fall. But it's weird because
Speaker 1: in the US, anyone living in the US knows what
Speaker 1: kind of tables we're dealing with, These big folding tables
Speaker 1: like you have it like a I don't know, like
Speaker 1: a church. Yeah, I was gonna say, like a basement church,
Speaker 1: basement church, food orally or in the school cafeteria. Second
Speaker 1: of thing. In Japan, they don't seem to have those.
Speaker 1: The Japanese version of a folding table is a much
Speaker 1: more torturous looking, smaller, slimmer table, So in Japan, when
Speaker 1: someone falls to the table, they go through those. But
Speaker 1: in either case, even though it seems more devastating and
Speaker 1: it's more dramatic, it's actually better for the person who
Speaker 1: is falling off of that turnbuckle or whatever it is
Speaker 1: helping to cushion their fall before that, ye, same principle,
Speaker 1: before they hit that concrete. And incidentally, one of the
Speaker 1: articles we were looking at did point out that wrestlers
Speaker 1: and acrobats have a better chance of surviving a plane crash.
Speaker 1: That was that the one from the sixties. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: they were saying something like, if you practice martial arts
Speaker 1: that you could apply some I guess some of the
Speaker 1: psychology of it to your plane crash, which I suppose,
Speaker 1: but I don't know. The karate chop the air. So
Speaker 1: obviously aim for something if you can, if you have
Speaker 1: any choice, and you can position yourself to do so,
Speaker 1: aim towards something softer, be that grass ground that's great,
Speaker 1: swamp even better, a stacked pillow factory. Pine trees not
Speaker 1: so much kind of like they can slow you down,
Speaker 1: but they can also impale you. Okay, So this is
Speaker 1: what we know so far about what's happening during a crash.
Speaker 1: But pretty soon we may have an actual better idea
Speaker 1: of actual principles at hand. And the reason is because
Speaker 1: on equal this year, two twelve of Boeing seven seven
Speaker 1: was deliberately crash landed in a remote and uninhabited Mexican desert.
Speaker 1: On board were cameras and crash test dummies that were
Speaker 1: used for the experiment, and this was pulled off for
Speaker 1: a documentary by Discovery Channel and Channel four. And this
Speaker 1: documentary is due to be aired later this year and
Speaker 1: should really give us actually some insight into what go
Speaker 1: going on during a fatal crash. I'll just mention to
Speaker 1: you it's filled with crashed on these not not any um,
Speaker 1: no actual discovery or TLC talent. I don't no, no,
Speaker 1: I hope we haven't had interfears too much and we
Speaker 1: actually give you some good information on free falling and
Speaker 1: what that's like. And actually, with the chances are that
Speaker 1: you would be involved in a fatal crash, I should
Speaker 1: add that in my own experiences with flying, and again,
Speaker 1: I never suffered from anything even resembling like crippling fear
Speaker 1: of flying. You got to where I would look at
Speaker 1: it from a point of view like, all right, it
Speaker 1: is out of my control what happens, and and if
Speaker 1: I crash and die, then well that's going to happen.
Speaker 1: And the best thing that I can do given that
Speaker 1: slight chance, is to realize, hey, I've had a good
Speaker 1: run so far. Or if I'm traveling with my wife,
Speaker 1: I'll remind myself I'm with the person that means the
Speaker 1: most to me. So you know, mnfol just told her
Speaker 1: hand and see what happens, which is good device. But
Speaker 1: you should know that for twenty of the public, they
Speaker 1: actually suffer from fear of flying, a phobia. And so
Speaker 1: it's very hard to say like I'm gonna step on
Speaker 1: this plane, I'm gonna go on vacation, and I'm going
Speaker 1: to face the possibility of my impending mortality. Yeah, but again,
Speaker 1: if you die, all right, so well, I mean it's
Speaker 1: gonna happen. Death is one of those things. Sure it's
Speaker 1: something to be afraid up, but everybody does it, so
Speaker 1: it can be that much thing to everybody's doing it.
Speaker 1: Everybody's going to do it eventually, and if you go
Speaker 1: out in a plane crash, it's at least gonna be
Speaker 1: um substantial. I don't know, all right, Okay, Well on
Speaker 1: that note, Well, my mouth is growing tired, so I'm
Speaker 1: only going to read one quick listener mail, but I
Speaker 1: promise we'll catch up on some of the awesome stuff
Speaker 1: that we're hearing from other folks in future episodes. Here's
Speaker 1: one from Matthew, and Matthew writes in in regards to
Speaker 1: contact lenses of the Gods, I was immediately cast into
Speaker 1: whirlwind of imagery revolving around the traditional assembly line workers
Speaker 1: and their transition from assembly to control of machinery that assembols.
Speaker 1: This led to the thought of our current medical system
Speaker 1: and the idea of our medical schools requiring its applicants
Speaker 1: to be intelligent in the future. My mind pictures hospitals
Speaker 1: in the nature of an assembly line, with a host
Speaker 1: of unskilled labors making sure that the machines are functional
Speaker 1: and occasionally troubleshoot the aspect of the current educational system
Speaker 1: crumbling in the phase of technology. I feel that until
Speaker 1: we are able to perfect AI, there will always be
Speaker 1: the need for those who can retain and develop new knowledge.
Speaker 1: Cyborg does a definition I believe will start drifting to
Speaker 1: that of robots becoming more human. I believe that his
Speaker 1: technology develops, humans will trend away from machinery and resort
Speaker 1: to biomechanical and then eventually the regrowth of appendages and tissue,
Speaker 1: which we currently replace with tool of objects. So there
Speaker 1: you go. I love it when podcast stars people's minds
Speaker 1: regarding the future of our civilization. Indeed, all right, my
Speaker 1: cyborg friend, where can people find us? If you're on Facebook,
Speaker 1: you can find us at stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: You can do a search on that end that will
Speaker 1: take you right to us. And if you're on Twitter,
Speaker 1: you can find us via the handle below the mind
Speaker 1: one word, and you can also drop us a line
Speaker 1: at Blow of the Mind at Discovery dot com. For
Speaker 1: more on this and thousands of other topics, visit how
Speaker 1: staff works dot com.