Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to short stuff, the very brief stuff
Speaker 1: you should know. I'm Josh, there's Chuck, there's Jerry. Welcome. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is a cool one. I remember I remember hearing
Speaker 1: about this, and it may have been when this article
Speaker 1: was written by by our friend Debbie Ronka, but I
Speaker 1: remember hearing about this and it was the first time
Speaker 1: I've ever heard about this odd superstition in Korea and
Speaker 1: thinking this can't be true. I know, I keep waiting
Speaker 1: for Crea to be like, guys, we have this onion
Speaker 1: like publication over here that made this up. It's been
Speaker 1: a national jokes in the seventies. You guys really took
Speaker 1: it seriously. But no, they seem to have tripled, quadrupled,
Speaker 1: octupled down on this over the years. Yeah. So, just
Speaker 1: very briefly, there is a superstition in Korea that if
Speaker 1: you sleep with a fan on in your room at night,
Speaker 1: you could die. Yeah, just might be old fan might
Speaker 1: even be likely that you'll die. And you call it superstitions.
Speaker 1: Some people call it folklore, other people call it an
Speaker 1: urban legend. In Korea, they call it fact. It's fan
Speaker 1: death right. And not only is it is like the
Speaker 1: the average Korean person believes that there that that you
Speaker 1: will die, like believes this is true. Um, Like the
Speaker 1: makers of fans put warnings about this stuff on their fans.
Speaker 1: They say may cause death. Um if if you leave
Speaker 1: this on overnight, Like the fans and Korea have timers
Speaker 1: on them so that if you fall asleep with it on,
Speaker 1: it will shut off. People sleep with their windows open
Speaker 1: and their fan on in the heat of the summer
Speaker 1: so that they don't die overnight. It's it's like, it's
Speaker 1: very much a widely held belief in Korea. Yeah, not
Speaker 1: only that, like you said, tripled and quadrupled um. Their
Speaker 1: Consumer Protection Board in two thousand five, two thousand five
Speaker 1: not eighteen issued a warning that said beware summer hazards
Speaker 1: exclamation point. And there were a lot of warnings, but
Speaker 1: one of them had to do with electric fans, and
Speaker 1: it said leave your doors open when using a fan
Speaker 1: while sleeping. You could possibly de hydrate, die of hypothermia,
Speaker 1: or die from decreased oxygen. Which are all their heads
Speaker 1: in their bets there, because there's a lot of explanations
Speaker 1: for this. Yeah. And in that same summer hazards warning
Speaker 1: report or whatever, it attributed twenty deaths between two thousand
Speaker 1: three and two thousand fives. Two fans, not fans landing
Speaker 1: on someone, no, or cutting your your face off or something,
Speaker 1: just fans. Yes, the air blowing from fans killing you
Speaker 1: because you you slept with one blowing on your face overnight, right,
Speaker 1: And there are apparently in Korea. And I should say,
Speaker 1: if you'll notice, we're saying Korea, not South Korea or
Speaker 1: North Korea, just in case they've unified by the time
Speaker 1: this comes out. I wonder if it's it's probably true
Speaker 1: in both though, don't you think I would very much
Speaker 1: assume that although it's entirely possible that it is just
Speaker 1: South Korea because they took away all the fans in
Speaker 1: North Korea. Well, no, I mean Korea was divided in
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty. By nineteen fifty, if not sooner. This this
Speaker 1: started in the early nineteen seventies. I actually can point
Speaker 1: to not necessarily the first news report or the first
Speaker 1: day that it happened, but it definitely started in the
Speaker 1: early seventies, which is kind of bizarre because Korea, both
Speaker 1: North and South, had had fans since nineteen hundred, that
Speaker 1: back when there was just one Korea. Toshiba was making
Speaker 1: fans that people had in their homes all the way
Speaker 1: back in nineteen hundred, and from nineteen hundred to nineteen seventy,
Speaker 1: no fan deaths, and then all of a sudden, there's
Speaker 1: such a thing as fan deaths. Yeah. And some people
Speaker 1: point to a seventies ad campaign to conserve electricity, uh,
Speaker 1: and maybe like the from it and got involved and said, hey,
Speaker 1: if we cook up the story about fan DEAs, it'll
Speaker 1: get people to turn off their fans or put them
Speaker 1: on a timer and we can conserve electricity. I don't
Speaker 1: fully rule that out. Actually I don't either. But what
Speaker 1: you've just said is an urban legend within an urban legend.
Speaker 1: Is it really it's mind Yeah, because it's not verified
Speaker 1: as facts. It's just people are kind of ascribing that
Speaker 1: it's it's it's as made up as fan death really,
Speaker 1: from what I understand you, Um, but it's fascinating and
Speaker 1: I don't really rule it out either. Apparently the leader
Speaker 1: during the time of the um oil embargo from OPEC
Speaker 1: that led to this energy crisis was was of that.
Speaker 1: Like you wouldn't put it past him actually, uh, to
Speaker 1: propagandize this. Yeah, just too. He was very much dedicated
Speaker 1: to Korea becoming self sufficient at any cost, and that
Speaker 1: would be a pretty cheap cost, like just tricking everybody
Speaker 1: into thinking fan deaths a thing. Well, and here's the
Speaker 1: thing too, what likely is happening? And we'll get to
Speaker 1: in a bit like all the real reasons and kind
Speaker 1: of debunk those. But what likely is happening is is
Speaker 1: they find a dead person. It's usually an old person
Speaker 1: who died of natural causes probably or from drinking or
Speaker 1: drugs or something, and a fan is on in the room,
Speaker 1: and because it's a thing, they attribute it to fan death.
Speaker 1: But it's weird to me that they weren't like that, Uh,
Speaker 1: it's mattress death, yeah, or whatever, anything in the room
Speaker 1: right right, it's um, it's ugly shag carpet death. No.
Speaker 1: But I'm with you because what what you just said
Speaker 1: is like probably the origin of fan death, or at
Speaker 1: least the popularization of it. That somebody walked into a
Speaker 1: room found a dead body sleep in its or dead
Speaker 1: in its bed, and the only thing that was going
Speaker 1: on in the room was the fan blowing on them,
Speaker 1: and that's something in their brain just went wrong, and
Speaker 1: they're like they saw the fan like a murderer standing
Speaker 1: over a dead body like they just caught it or
Speaker 1: something like that, even though they have absolutely nothing to
Speaker 1: do with one another. Yeah, and here's the deal, our
Speaker 1: very own e p A here in the United States
Speaker 1: says when it's really really hot during a big heat wave.
Speaker 1: They even say, don't direct the flow of a of
Speaker 1: a fan right towards yourself when the temperature is hotter
Speaker 1: than ninety degrees fahrenheit, which is super super hot to
Speaker 1: be in a room like I can't even imagine. I
Speaker 1: can't imagine a room being that hot. And this warning
Speaker 1: is basically it's rooted in the fact that fans in
Speaker 1: an enclosed room when it's that hot, could evaporate evaporate
Speaker 1: moisture from the body faster, which would ostensibly, I guess,
Speaker 1: dehydrate you to death. But the thing is checked the
Speaker 1: It's really weird that the e p A is saying
Speaker 1: something like that because that actually lends like a tiny
Speaker 1: bit of legitimacy or credence um to one of the
Speaker 1: theories about fan death. Yeah, you want to take a
Speaker 1: break and get to the theories, let's do it. Okay, Okay,
Speaker 1: So Chuck, we're talking fan death. It's a thing. Even
Speaker 1: our own E p A says it might be a
Speaker 1: thing in a roundabout way. Well, yeah, it's if you're
Speaker 1: in an oven, literally in an oven, yeah degrees fahrenh height,
Speaker 1: don't blow a fan on you, and you could look
Speaker 1: like a brisket. At ninety degrees you pretty much could.
Speaker 1: You could cook an egg on your hairy naked chest.
Speaker 1: But they're they're that actually, Like I said, it legitimizes
Speaker 1: one of the theories that they have in Korea for
Speaker 1: for an explanation for fan death, and one of them
Speaker 1: is that when it's hot out, you start sweating more,
Speaker 1: and that the fan blowing on you cool you off
Speaker 1: or evaporates the sweat a lot faster than under normal circumstances.
Speaker 1: Hence you will dehydrate to death overnight if you sleep
Speaker 1: with a fan on you. That is, that's one theory
Speaker 1: behind fan death or the other one of the others,
Speaker 1: which I love for it's it's craziness, is that the
Speaker 1: fans blades chop up oxygen into carbon dioxide in the
Speaker 1: CEO two and you die from a lack of oxygen
Speaker 1: because you can't breathe. Yeah, that's a good one. It is.
Speaker 1: I also saw that it didn't chop it up into
Speaker 1: into carbon dioxide, because that's just nuts, but that it
Speaker 1: mutilated the oxygen okay, molecules and so therefore there was
Speaker 1: less available when you die. So mutilating is different than
Speaker 1: chopping up way different man. Another one that to a
Speaker 1: serial killer, Well, yeah, it's true, it is true. You
Speaker 1: make a good point. I'm sure there's somebody out there listening.
Speaker 1: I wonder how many serial killers we have listening to
Speaker 1: our show. I bet at least ten. Well listen, guys,
Speaker 1: stop what you're doing and just go turn yourselves in,
Speaker 1: right or the very least to stop what you're doing.
Speaker 1: I say both because I don't know. If you're a
Speaker 1: serial killer. You might be addicted to this kind of thing,
Speaker 1: and and maybe you can't trust yourself to just stop,
Speaker 1: so you need help e g. Being locked up. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I don't like this to train. I think people will
Speaker 1: want if they are out there, they want to find
Speaker 1: us now, Okay, well maybe we'll decide to the south. Okay.
Speaker 1: So um. I saw another one that was you would
Speaker 1: just straight up suffocate, uh and if the fan killed
Speaker 1: you by by basically blowing the air hot air around
Speaker 1: the room and affecting the amount of oxygen available in
Speaker 1: that way, rather than chopping it up and mutilating it,
Speaker 1: it would it would just make less of it available
Speaker 1: recirculating carbon dioxide, and then you would suffocate. That one
Speaker 1: actually is that maybe the closest one to it. But
Speaker 1: the problem is is how is they're not built air
Speaker 1: tight but just not and so you're not going to
Speaker 1: suffocate in the house even with all the windows and
Speaker 1: doors closed. You you just can't um but to be safe,
Speaker 1: one of the things that a lot of Korean people
Speaker 1: will do while they're sleeping with fan on or just
Speaker 1: have a fan on the general is crack a window
Speaker 1: or keep the doors open to their room. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: one of these articles too, says that sometimes in Korea
Speaker 1: they will even crack their windows in their car because
Speaker 1: their air conditioner fan. Yeah, it's a fan. I got
Speaker 1: I gotta start paying attention to that. Now. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: start looking around h Mark and just be like, do
Speaker 1: you have your window cracked and it's really hot? Uh?
Speaker 1: And then the only other explanation I saw was that
Speaker 1: it could possibly cause hypothermia, would make the temperature drop
Speaker 1: solo that you would it would cause hypothermia and then
Speaker 1: you would die, which is which is not true because well,
Speaker 1: for a lot of reasons. A you probably want to
Speaker 1: have a fan on if it's in the dead of
Speaker 1: winter anyway, And that's just chuck talking um. But x
Speaker 1: perts say, of course, a fan doesn't even drop the temperature.
Speaker 1: It moves the air around in that air is a
Speaker 1: certain dempature. But it doesn't actually cool it. That's a
Speaker 1: big one. Yeah, it just circulates there, it doesn't cool it.
Speaker 1: But I mean, you can kind of see where the
Speaker 1: kernel of like um knowledge is is growing into like
Speaker 1: a misshapen thing, right with with the idea that your
Speaker 1: body does cool at night because your metabolism slows. And
Speaker 1: what they're saying is that while you're already right there
Speaker 1: on the edge, and the fan pushes you over the
Speaker 1: edge and you die of hypothermia. Yeah. So, as far
Speaker 1: as doctors are concerning Korea, any time that they give
Speaker 1: a cause of death of fan death, which sometimes doctors
Speaker 1: will actually sign that piece of paper, um, they say
Speaker 1: it's death of afphixiation caused by fan. And at the
Speaker 1: Samsung Medical Center, they say that when a fan blows
Speaker 1: on your face, that air currents reduce uh, the atmospheric
Speaker 1: pressure in front of your face by as much as
Speaker 1: could cause a drop in oxygen. But that is a
Speaker 1: big reach if you ask me. Yeah, that's from a
Speaker 1: skeptoid article. And Brian Dunning went on to like calculate
Speaker 1: how much it would take in like UM six and
Speaker 1: fifty kilometer per hour wind to to cause a change
Speaker 1: in air pressure that substantial. So that's not doing it either.
Speaker 1: But I think one of the bigger arguments against fan death,
Speaker 1: I think snows related out like this was like, you
Speaker 1: don't like, no one attributes fan like death by fan
Speaker 1: anywhere else in the world, and all over the world
Speaker 1: people sleep with fans, and you don't have anything like this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: just the mirror fact that it's only in Korea largely
Speaker 1: is kind of says that it's just superstition and folklore
Speaker 1: that was passed down from family to family. But apparently
Speaker 1: Korean person will counter, well, maybe there's something unique about
Speaker 1: Koreans or Korea that makes us susceptible to it. Interesting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're hanging on to that one for sure. All right,
Speaker 1: So that's fan death. If you want to know more
Speaker 1: about it, give it a shot. But don't blame us, Okay, agreed.
Speaker 1: As a matter of fact, don't give it a shot
Speaker 1: just in case it is real. Thanks for joining us.
Speaker 1: If you want to hang out with us, join us
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Speaker 1: next time. Everybody, good day.