June 16, 2015 • 52 mins
You should never BASE Jump. It is one of the most genuinely dangerous sports on the planet. But with that out of the way, you should definitely learn all about this pastime where people jump from tall structures and outcroppings for fun and thrills.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to you stuff you should know fromhouse stuff Works
dot com. Hey, welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
There's Charles Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry. We are dancing on
the ceiling. Whoa, what a feeling. That song holds up
(00:21):
by the way, I heard it recently. Oh yeah, why
don't Richie holds up? Man? Yeah, sure, that's the Commodore's
great stuff, great great stuff. I think like two of
the most underrated bands of the seventies were earth Wind
and Fire in the commod Wars, Gareth Wind and Fire
was underrated. They were super well group underrated as far
(00:44):
as like today, Like, I don't know, you don't hear
a lot about that kind of thing. It's all like
about the big rock bands. Yeah, oh you mean like
bad Finger and Foreigner and yeah, is that what you mean? Yeah,
maybe they weren't underrated. How about this, Two of the
best bands from the seventies were the Commodores and earth
(01:04):
Winn and Fire. I agree, Man rated it just perfectly.
I've said well, and I don't mean to be argumentative.
I mean I've said that before, Like I wonder if
earth Win and Fire is possibly the greatest band that's
ever been. They're pretty amazing. They are amazing, and the
different sounds that they took on like it was never
just like you know, we hit it and we're gonna
(01:25):
stick with it. They were not like a C d
C in in other words, and a C d C
is great. Man, they got their thing, but they figured
it out from song one and they're still doing it today.
Simple rock riff played over and over and over. Yeah,
but it works for him. Earth Win and fire Man
they tried it all. Yeah, and please don't write in
about the complexity of a C d C. I love
(01:45):
a C d C. But they will even admit that
they do one thing well, yeah, which is rock. Yeah,
it's a blues riff. I used to think they were
heavy metal when I was a kid, which is very
funny to think about. Yeah, you know, for seving metal
it at all? Who was? I always here Black Sabbath,
but I suspect it goes back before that. Sabbath is
(02:05):
usually kind of counted as the first, but it's all
sort of variations of the blues still, right, you know,
all comes down to the blues. That's right now. Nobody
live here without singing the blues. Can you name that movie?
Is it Crossroads? You would think, no, it's the opposite
movie of Crossroads, Adventures in Babysitting. That's the opposite of
(02:28):
a cross road. That's funny. Yeah, I remember that part.
Uh So, bass jumping has nothing to do with the
Blues unless you die, right, unless you're one of the
base jumping fatality and one of the dudes, which I
will touch on later wrote on a big base jumper
wrote an article like like how to Get Started tom Allo,
(02:50):
and one of his frightening things he says this, if
you are not ready to die base jumping, then you're
not ready to basse jump. Yeah. I ran across that
on a sentiment too, um, like, the dangers are so
vast that you can anticipate being injured almost certainly at
(03:11):
some point if you do a lot of base jumping.
That's right, That's absolutely true. I mean like it's pretty
much the next step in danger is to just jump
off a cliff without any parachute at all. Yeah, And
I think one of the that's if you, like, I
don't think a lot of people base jump once. Then
they're like that was kind of neat, yawn like it
(03:32):
kind of because it's your like it becomes one of
your driving forces in your life. Base jumpers are all in. Yeah,
that's the best way to say it. Um, And I
remember kind of like came up in the nineties, wasn't it.
It was like it became a big deal in the nineties.
That's when I became aware of it. But it's it's
way older than that. Well, it's a couple of decades older.
(03:54):
It's about a decade older than the nineties. It's from
the late seventies. I guess it's another way to put it. Well,
before we get into history, let's at least say what
base jumping is, because some people might live under a
rock and they don't know what base jumping is. It's
actually an acronym. It is was it stand for uh.
It stands for buildings, antenna's spans, a K bridges, and
(04:18):
earth a K cliffs. Buildings are probably quite a rush
to jump off of, but they're tough to get in
and you're most certainly doing something illegal. Yeah, you're there's
pretty much not a building in existence you're legally allowed
to jump off of. No, unless you have a special arrangement.
I'm sure you've lined the mayor's pockets with cash. Yeah,
(04:41):
or if you're doing you know, imagine some of like
the Red Bull team arranges for a famous jump and
Red Bull lines the mayor's pockets there you go. Uh.
Antennas are super popular, um because they're not as heavily guarded,
but they're still really tall and usually out in the
middle of nowhere. Right. That's very feeling less risky, um,
(05:02):
not death, but less for being caught, right and for
um causing injury to other people, which is a big
thing with buildings. Yeah. Yeah, antennas. It's like you're gonna
injure a cow that you run into. You know who
cares uh spans Uh. These are very popular, not only
because it's fun and gorgeous to leap off of a
(05:23):
bridge like the New River Gorge Bridge in West Virginia.
Doing that connects this podcast to bridges, um, but because
sometimes it is legal, like the one day of the
year that they have bridge Day there. Yeah. Um, there's
also one in Idaho where it's legal year round. Oh
really with that without a permit you can just go
(05:45):
and jump. There was actually a fatality there, Like guy said,
his parachute on fire is part of a stunt and
oh I pulled that article. That was just a few
weeks ago. Was it that recent? It was in late May.
I had the impression it was a couple of years
back or whatever. He said his parachute on fire and died. Yeah,
it's seventy three year old, guys, right, yeah, yeah, yeah,
unless it was just a version, then it is old.
(06:09):
But it's new unless it's but yeah, he set his
parachute on fire with the aim of throwing another parachute out,
and it's just not a very smart thing. No, his
his flaming parachute I think continued on without him, and
I guess his other parachute. I think he just came
out of his other parachute. It never deployed. It's on YouTube,
(06:32):
which is sad that they don't have that stuff. There's
a lot of that on there's a lot of base,
base jumping and skydiving deaths on YouTube, tons of well
you know why, because they all film each other. Well yeah,
thanks to the GoPro you know. Um and finally Earth
and that is when you're jumping off like ilk cappy
tan or a cliff or a fiord pretty what, it's
(06:58):
just like the words out like the list could have
just kept going indefinitely. You know, I do like the
word feword though it's a good word. You rarely see
an F and a J next to each other. Yeah,
that's true. You don't get along historically, all right, So
you wanna talk about the history. Yeah, I think before
we get started we should say chuck that, um, no
one should basse jump. Ever, we certainly aren't saying that
(07:20):
you should. We're just talking about bass jumping. Well you
should definitely, um do what we talked about later, which
is how to get started in bass jumping and follow
those rules. Get started in bass jumping, think about bass jumping,
and then don't do it. I think it's super cool,
Like I can watch those videos all day long, but um,
(07:41):
not for me. Yea, as far as execution, I have
to say. Also, I ran across a video that to
me is even scarier than a bass jumping video, and
it was these two dudes. I don't know if they
were Ukrainian. They're part of the former so it states, Um,
(08:02):
I don't remember where their phone. I'm sorry, but they
just climb stuff. I've seen it, dude, and they climb
their iPhones are like, look at where we are. Yeah,
like no ropes, no harnesses, no parachute, no nothing. It
makes me want to vomit. I almost fainted and literally
almost fainted watching this video. They were climbing the world's
second tallest but I can't remember what it was called.
(08:24):
But the um it's in China, and the tops of
other skyscrapers are hundreds of feet below them. There's cloud
the cloud line is below them, and they're just standing
on this antenna connected to nothing. I mean, there's there's
no fear going whatsoever. They're not capable of it, Like
you have to be just completely out of your mind,
(08:47):
like they're they're like they're broken in some way shape
to be able to do that and not just like
I think I'd probably just be like I just let
go because I want the terror to be over one
way or another, you know what I mean. And these
guys are just like, hey, how's it going? Like giving
each other five stuff. The whole thing just makes me nervous.
Have you seen the trailer for the New You know
they're making a movie about the the the guy who
(09:11):
did the highware walk between the I did see that
before Mad Max, which is did you like it? I
left Mad Max and I was like, I want to
go buy all the Mad Max toys now. I wanted
to see all the sequels are going to make right now? Yeah,
I just it was a great movie. Well you came
in wearing the iron face mask. I thought it was interesting.
(09:32):
I made it myself. Could you tell out of aluminum
foil and rubber bands? Long story short, which is not true? Uh?
That that trailer for the Robert Zemeckis movie with Joseph
Gordon Levitt Um that made me want to vomit when
he just he was waiting for it too. Didn't hit
(09:53):
me like that. Man, Well, it's just a teaser. He
just basically like walks up to the top and looks
and says like in his mind I want to do this,
but just stands up on the edge. I just I
can't take that. And it's based on the guy who
actually did that in real life for and they made
a documentary about it, I think back in the seventies
called Man on Wire. It's fantastic Um and a dude
(10:14):
in the mid seventies who is a high wire artist
illegally went up to the top of the World Trade
Center and climbed from one tower to the other on
a high wire. Great documentary, and uh faith in this movie.
And I think it's in three D, isn't it? Or
it's going to be I'm sure I can't imagine that
one though in three D. I saw Tintin in three D.
(10:36):
It was all right, yeah, I'm letting do it. I mean,
I know what you're saying, did you see Mad maxim
three D? I didn't either. I don't see three D anymore,
is what I'm saying. Did you see did you ever see?
Was it? Friday the Thirteenth? Part three came out in
three D? That was a good one. That was back
when three D stunk? Yeah, you know, oh yeah, when
(10:57):
it was like things look still kind of blew in
red at the same time. Yeah, like now it's supposedly good,
I just don't enjoy it. And the cardboard glasses were
cutting into the bridge of your nose and you were
bleeding on. Man, we can get sidetracked. Although that wasn't
much of a sidetrack because we talked about you know
how wire walking it's an extreme sport, that's right, just
(11:19):
like base jumping. So we're talking, we're going to talk
about the history of base jumping. Yes. Uh, if you
talk about the distant history, um, early nineteenth century, there
were some things going on that is essentially like basse jumping.
There was a dude named Frederick Rodman Law and he
(11:40):
jumped um off the Brooklyn Bridge at one point, and
the Statue of Liberty Yeah, and the Bankers Trust building
on Wall Street. And this is in like the nineteen tens. Yeah,
so I mean technically he was bass jumping, but these
were just one off stunts at this point. Yes, the
same as in ninety five when Owen Quinn left from
the World Trade Center and uh, there was another guy
(12:01):
named Ron Boyle's who jumped from the Royal Gorge Bridge
in Colorado. So all this is happening, these little one
off stunts. And then in this girl named this guy
named Carl Banish. There's a documentary about him actually called
Sunshine Superman. Yeah that look did you see the trailer?
It doesn't looks really good and I think that is
(12:23):
like now that that one's coming in. Um, so he
gets this idea. He goes to Yosemite to film some
hang gliders. And these hang gliders there's three dudes on
a single hang uh or a glider, I guess you
call it. And once they get out over the land,
two of them drop off and I think they're flying
(12:43):
off El Capitan, which is like a few thousand feet tall, right,
I don't know how tall it is, it's pretty tall.
I think it's like three thousand feet tall. I mean,
i've seen it, but from the bottom. Very impressive. Um.
So these two dudes, Rich Piccarelli and Brian Johnson, they
dropped off, they parachuted into the valley below, and Carl
(13:06):
Banish was like, very interesting. I think we're onto something here, fellas,
And so he got Rich Piccarelli and night he said,
let's do it, brother, and let's go to El Capitan
and jump off of it. Right, Like, forget the hanglider,
leave that at home. Yeah. Apparently, when they went scouting
(13:29):
the place to see if you could just basically base
jump off of it. Um, they lowered Banish over the
edge on like a rope and they heard him shout eureka,
we can jump from here. Now pull me back up please.
All the from what I gather from this guy who's
probably like, you guys can just go. I'm gonna hang
out here for a while. Yeah, that's true. So in
(13:51):
August he took this new crew back to that location
and uh he I think was just filming at the time,
and one by one they jumped. And if you look
at this documentary footage on the trailer of Sunshine Superman,
these guys like way before the go pro, they were
like these toaster robbins on their head, essentially attached to
(14:14):
helmets because even back then they wanted to film stuff.
Oh yeah, apparently Carl Banish, like for that first jump,
he had a number of different cameras going for different
angles and um, when he was documenting it, he would
make people like do different takes of like walking into
frame and stuff like that would be like, okay, go
back and do that again. He was like walk again. Yeah.
(14:37):
Well that's why they have with that great old footage still,
I guess thanks to him. Um. Sadly he died, uh
basse jumping bass jumping, but he was doing it solo,
I guess. In um he did a solo jump off
a cliff in Norway and um, no one saw him die,
but they figured that he probably was steered into the
(14:59):
cliff um that he jumped from, which is called an
off heading jump. Right, which is one of the bigger
dangers in basse jumping, as we'll see. Well that's where
he originally UM. I don't think we mentioned that. These
two guys, Michael Pelki and Brian Schubert, were the first
two that he heard of that actually did jump from
el cappy tan. But they did it with the old
(15:21):
school around paratrooper parachutes, and they got slammed into the
cliff face again and again and again, breaking bones and
foots and legs and things like that. There's that's another video.
There's a UM a woman who skied or who base jumped,
and she got um, she got she went on to
an offheading opening. Is that what it's called. I believe
(15:45):
it is um And you just see like she's getting
just directed right into the cliff face again and again.
You just I can't imagine. I mean, it killed her,
but I can't imagine how anybody could survive something like
that because you're going so fast and all of that
velocity is just being slammed into a cliff face and
(16:07):
then you'll bounce off and float away and then just
come back in again. Yeah, you're at the mercy of
nature at that point, right, But that's what happened with
those two dudes in the sixties, the first two to
parachute off of El capitan Um, and Karl Banish was like,
I don't think they're The idea of jumping off of
El Capitan with the parachute was wrong. I think their
(16:28):
gear was just wrong. And that's why Carl Bainish is
credited as being the father of um of basse jumping,
because he applied the techniques that are now the hallmarks
of base jumping and the and the equipment. Yeah. Yeah,
and he was also the guy if you complete all
four phases, the B, the A, the S and the E,
(16:51):
then you are assigned a number, and he's the one
that started at but he was based number four though
he wasn't even number one because he was filming people,
I think because his wife was Base three. And uh
so he was a feminist as well. He wasn't like
good good to be in front of you. Uh So
Base one was Phil Smith from Texas and as of
(17:13):
now it's hard to get numbers. Then they point out
pretty reasonably that a lot of these things happened in
our cover of night and they're not reported necessarily, but
as best as we can tell, they're they're up to
like base plus at this point. That's what I thought,
and that's who is. Those are people who have completed
again all four phases buildings, an tennis, spans and uh
(17:37):
earth Earth And originally it wasn't called base, it was
called best. It was going to be uh buildings, earth
span and tower. Yeah, so they just rearranged it a bit. Yeah.
Apparently Carl Vanish's wife Jean said she liked best best,
but Carl like basse um, particularly because the first definition
(18:00):
of the word was a platform on which something stands.
So it makes sense. And before I knew, I've known
for a while I was an acronym, but before I
knew it was an acronym, I just thought that's what
it meant, Like, you go stand on some base and
you jump. You know, Karl Baynis would have been proud.
That's right, all right, So let's take a break and
then um we will talk about some of that gear
(18:21):
right after this stump. Alright, dude, So if you want
(18:42):
a base jump, you just get an old nineteen sixties
Army parachute and you go at it, right, yep. Add
some get a weight vest. Yeah, he's scuba diving. Yeah,
and um, you know, pair of sunglasses maybe, yeah, drink
a gallon of whiskey, yeah, and just fall off of
(19:02):
the cliff. That's right. No, no, no, no, no no.
What you need is the right gear. And what they
found out pretty quickly was that something called a ram
air parachute. And these are the ones that you see nowadays.
You don't even see the round parachutes anymore. I guess
you do if you jump from outer space or if
you're like a kind of a hipster vintage. We need
(19:26):
to do one on skydiving, I guess. But yeah, I
guess we haven't, no, because I was like, this doesn't
sound familiar, like we've spoken about it before. So I
was like, we're doing basse jumping before skydiving. Yeah. I
like that. That's the opposite of what you're supposed to do,
especially if you're actually base jumping. Well, that's true. Um,
So the ram air parachute is the one that you
(19:47):
see a lot now mostly now, which is the one
that is rectangular, and they give you a lot more
control on where you're going because you want to be
able to steer this thing quickly, right, So you don't
slam into the rock, because that's one of the two dangers,
is slamming into the rocks or slamming into whatever the building. Right.
(20:10):
The two dangers are slamming into the thing you jump
you jumped off of, which is apparently the more frequent danger,
or other things around I guess, right, or slamming into
the ground. Sure, and like you're shooting, not opening or
something like that. Yeah, I think mostly though, most injuries
occur from slamming into structures and not improper deployment. Right.
(20:34):
And the thing about the ram air parachute is it's
this rectangular parachute that allows you to maneuver yourself, guide yourself,
increase or decrease your speed. You're much more in control
than you are with around parachute, which basically just slows
your acceleration towards earth. Right, that's right, um, And with
with a ram air parachute, Uh, it works so well
(20:59):
that when you are base jumping, your face with a
problem because when you're skydiving, you have a lot of time.
You're jumping at like a well over ten thousand feet usually, right,
you get the free fall for a while and then
say about two thousand feet, you open your shot, and
your shoe can just take all the time in the
world to open. It's pretty yeah, but it's it's not
(21:23):
like packed and then open. There's a there's a process
that does take place over the course of maybe a
second a second and a half that makes a lot
of difference in going from free fall to floating right
as far as your body is concerned, and as far
as changing your velocity and direction. Well, with base jumping,
(21:45):
you don't have that amount of time. You need your
shoot to open pretty quick and so when you when
you open a ramar shoot, all of a sudden, it
can basically snap your neck. It open so so quickly
and jerks you up right end. Since you have a
lot of velocity because you're in free fall when your
(22:05):
shoot opens and all of a sudden, you're not free
falling any longer, you're transferring some of that velocity to
the shoot, which can slam you into that cliff side.
So there's some some things that you have to to
deal with if you're a base jumper that a skydiver
wouldn't have to deal with, and there's been some clever
solutions to those things. Yeah, there's one device called a
(22:27):
slider that basically reduces the rate at which those parachute
lines spread out, so it's not gonna deploy as quickly
and snap your neck in half or not your neck,
but well I'm not sure what would happen buying or
something could tear you clean in half. Okay, but a
sliders just like this piece of fabric that that slides
(22:48):
down the lines, and by doing that, it gives you
a measure of um control over how fast your shoot opens.
You know, the little pilot shoots. If you've ever seen
a sky diver, there there's that little shoot that comes
out and then that helps deploy the big shoot. Same
with funny cars, did they have a pilot? Really? The
(23:11):
good ones to? Uh, So you have a larger pilot shoot.
If you're a base jumper, because you talked about velocity,
there is some velocity, but not like your skydiving, so
you're actually going a lot slower in most cases unless
you're really, like you know, jumping off something super super tall,
So you're not gonna be a like terminal velocity, which
(23:33):
is what you count on for that shoot to open
real fast. So because you're not going as fast, you
want a larger pilot shoot, so it can gather more
air to deploy the real shoot faster. Right, And since
you don't have that velocity, you also don't have the
same amount of air pressure you would if you were
at terminal velocity, so that larger pilot pilot shoot gathers
(23:53):
more air. Even in this it balances out the fact
that you have less air pressure. Right, So yeah, it's
gonna open your shoe faster. And um, you talked about
if you were skydiving normally, if your shoot malfunctions or
something not good, but you've got your backup shoot and
you have time, which is key. Just think, well, things
(24:14):
aren't going well with my regular shoot, let me deploy
the backup shoots. Don't even have to make some toast.
I'll eat my toast and then I'll deploy my backup
shoot and the toast of it on my head. But um,
a lot of times space jumpers don't even have backup
shoots because there's just not enough time. Anyway. It's not
like they're like screw it, man, although they probably are,
(24:37):
you know, they're extreme dudes and ladies. But even if
they were, like, I don't want to screw it. I
really want to backup shoot. They're they're they're totally useless. Basically,
Josh wants to backup para shoot. All right, so let's
talk about that shoot. Uh, and the accessibility. Um, if
you've ever seen a base jumper jump off with the
(24:58):
parachute wadded up in their hand end, that is a
thing you can do if it's a shorter jump, because
you just want to be able to throw that thing
out almost right away. Um, not a lot of freefall
going on in that case. No, if it's a little
higher than that, they might just pack that pilot shoot
like in their pocket or something like that. But that
leaves their hands free and then they'll just reach into
(25:20):
the pocket and pull out the pilot shoot rather than
using a rip chord to deploy it. Yeah, most of
the base jumping, I think most of the rigs today
have like a velcro flap type of scene that they use.
It's not even a rip chord necessarily just sort of
packed in a pouch of velcrow pouch and you just
pull the velcrow off I think so, and just rip
(25:40):
that away again. I will never do this, so I'm
just going on research alone here. No interest. Um, if
you're below three hundred feet. You might even have to
use a static line. And that is when the there's
a line actually attached I think to the thing you're
jumping off of, right, and it just immediately opens up. Yeah,
(26:04):
it like pulls your pilot shoot out. Um, and then
it disconnects from it hopefully. Yeah. And um, that guy
Frederick Rodman Law who jumped off of the Statue of Liberty,
that was a static line jump. Yeah. Like when you
see paratroopers like one after the other in a in
a plane, A lot of times those are static line jumps. Yeah,
(26:26):
they're leaving. Yeah, when they're leaving, there was there's a
cord that's left behind after they jumped out that things
just pulled their pilot shoot out. That's right. That's a
low altitude jump technique. That's right. Um, I think offheading opening.
Is that what you're talking about earlier? Yes, that's when
you deploy the shoot again and um, you just start
going crazy. Yeah. Because again, you especially if you're in
(26:48):
free fall, if you have a couple of seconds to
to go into free fall with no shoot deployed, no
resistance other than your body, Um, you can build up
pretty decent amount of velocity and when your shoot opens,
all of a sudden, you transfer that velocity to your shoot,
and your shoot can spin you around in another direction,
and all of a sudden, you're going back towards the
(27:09):
cliff or back towards the building, or and you you
can be in big, big trouble. Yeah. And while you
have some control, it's not the kind of control that
you're used to, Like, let's in a car or something.
You know, you can't just be like, oh, let me
stop immediately and go in the other direction. Yeah. And
even if you are an experienced bass jumper or skydiver,
(27:30):
it's not like you're you You are using the chords
on your parachute as often as you are like on
your car, So it's not necessarily as uh natural reaction
as it is to like steer your steering wheel out
of the way of an oncoming truck. So it can
be very easy to pull the wrong way or do
the wrong thing, or not react quite in time. Even
(27:52):
though that ram or parachute is giving you more control
you you you you have to think so fast and
under such sudden stress that you might not make the
right decision. Yeah. Well, that's one of the things that
um Tom Aello says, Uh, think about if it's right
for you. He said that, Um, it's a good fit,
or it could be a good fit. If you are
(28:13):
intellectually curious, you have good reactions, you respond quickly and
correctly without having to think during an emergency, and you're
very organized in detail oriented like if you're sloppy, if
you're lazy, if you take too much time to suss
out an emergency, you're not going to be a good
based jumper. Do you don't even try it? Don't even
(28:35):
try it? So, UM, body positioning is important. Um. When
you deploy that shoot, and I think the super safe
way to base jump, if you call it that would
just be to jump off head first in that traditional
facedown form. Of course, now you see him doing like
flips and tumbles and joining hands and spinning each other,
(28:55):
and those are like the serious, seriously experienced people. But
even when you do jump off and your your face
towards the earth right and you're horizontal parallel to the
earth with the shoot deploying behind you, UM, you you
don't want to take necessarily the um normal skydiving pose
(29:18):
with your arms out and your legs splayed. You want
to keep your arms on the side and your legs
together and basically turn yourself into a bullet going away
from the structure that you just jumped off of. It's
called tracking, and it can um reduce your chances of
an off heading opening. Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. You
want to get as far as far away from the
(29:39):
thing that you just jumped off of as possible, exactly,
and the best way to do that is to turn
your body into a bullet that's being directed in the
opposite direction. Yeah. And I just let me correct something
when I said that these um people now tumble and
flip and do all those things they do, but they
still when they go to deploy, the shoot will end
up in that traditional position right right. It's not like
(30:00):
they're upside down. They're like, this is a great time
to throw out my parish. You know. Um, there was
a pretty cool video that surfaced in the last year
or two. I think of some guys who jumped off
the New World Trade Center tower at night. It's just crazy.
A lot of base jumping happens at night for obvious reasons,
which seems super scary. So we'll we'll talk about um
(30:24):
the legalities and the ins and outs of base jumping
right after this stop? All right, so why my friend, uh,
(30:51):
is base jumping a fringe sport besides the fact that
you could kill yourself? Well, it's a it's kind of
a sport of outlaws, that's right. The grabster wrote this article,
and as he puts it, even if the jump itself
aren't is an illegal. Gaining access to prime jumping spots
often involves trespassing, picking locks, climbing fences, and deceiving security guards.
(31:16):
I'm sure that is all part of the rush. Deceiving
security guards as a felony offense. What's that, rummer? Do
you just make it up? It's kind of a daze
and confused reference. Yeah, campering with mailboxes federal offense? Who's
this felony offense? And some of the small parts in
that movie, I'm pretty convinced we're just regular folks. They
(31:40):
weren't actors. Oh yeah, I'm sure they're just friends of
link Letter who lived in Austin for a lot of
the adults like the comedian store guy, and he showed
up and I think he's in boyhood. Yeah, he played
the convenient store kind of boyhood. He's a convenient store dude. Um,
so the National Parks Service. Obviously, national parks are pretty
(32:02):
popular because they have tall things and they don't have
many people, and they don't have many cops or park rangers.
I mean, if you talk about the land mass, you're
not gonna see a park ranger for days sometimes. So
the National Parks are like, sure, base jump all you want, right, No,
for a little while. Um, certain parks would allow it
with a permit. Um, you have somebody in El Capyitan.
(32:24):
They let that happen for like a few months before
they realize it's probably not a good idea to be
on the hook. Yeah. Well, I mean the Park Service
experience with base jumping from the start was a bad one.
These two guys who jumped in the sixties had to
be rescued and like metivact out of there at great costs. Yeah,
the the National Park Service had to flip that bill.
(32:47):
So just from the get go they were like, yeah,
base jumping sucks, please don't do it here. But there's
and there was a law already on the books against
having a parachute in the National parks and apparently, um
it was to prevent hunters from resupplying using parachutes. Oh really, Yeah,
they had nothing to do with base jumping. Interesting, So
(33:08):
like a supplied drop, So like, no, if you want supplies,
you have to go out and then come back. Yeah,
I guess. So they're like, oh, needs more AMMO to
blow some deuce's head off. I want a parachute. So nowadays,
you're gonna get fined a couple of grand or more. Um,
you're gonna uh get arrested. You're going to have to
(33:32):
pay for any cost of META backing you out. They're
gonna take your gear. It's an expensive proposition if you
get busted in a national park base jumping. Yeah, it
sounds like such a school principal move. Yeah, I'm taking
your parachute. Your your parachute has been confiscated and they
put it in the drawer At the end of the
(33:53):
chattering Teeth in the right, um, buildings is always is illegal,
Almost alwheels always illegal. I didn't see one single building
where it wasn't illegal. I didn't either, but the fact
that the article says almost makes me think there might
be one, or maybe it meant if there's an arrangement,
(34:14):
Like there's a great video of two guys I think
they were red bull jumping off of the building in Dubai. Yeah,
did you see that thing? That was nuts? Dude, Vince
Retha and Fred Fugan And again thanks to the go
pro and you can get all of this stuff. Like
(34:34):
the footage is amazing because you always have someone jumping
with you, at least one other person with a camera,
um just filming you, and then they have camera setup
for the wide shots. And I mean these dudes, did
they flew in a spiral around the building. Yeah, they
did some pretty amazing stuff. Yeah. I could watch this
stuff all day. It's amazing. Again, not interested in doing it.
(34:58):
I would skydive, though, I'm gonna do that at some point.
That seems less risky. It is much less risky. And
I mean when you go, you they like sit you
through a class and like it's just much more structured
and formalized. One of the things about base jumping is
that you um, like normally, if you're a base jumper,
(35:22):
you're doing it after you've already become an experienced skydiver,
and you're probably being taken under the wing of an
experienced base jumper, Whereas with skydiving, it's like this is
a business comes sit down in this airplane hangar and
watch this video, and UM, I'm gonna teach you exactly
what you need to know. We're gonna go up. And
(35:43):
it's been We've already done it fifty times today. Yeah,
it's like for a tandem jump, it's like, if you've
got seventy and sign a waiver, then you can jump
out of a plane this afternoon exactly, which is and
they're still very scary. Have you ever done that? H
did a tandem jump, and yeah, it's very scary, but
I can't I just can't imagine a base jump. Did
(36:04):
the person The one thing I worry about with the
tandem jump is I would just want the person to
shut up behind me that's attached to me. Yeah, like
I would want to experience it just myself and not
have someone in my ear going like, bro, check it
out and it's awesome. I think if that happens, the
skydiving company gives you a free another free one if
(36:25):
you're like the guy was saying, bro in my ear,
I wanted I demand another jump that's uninterrupted. See I
figured all of them did that, like you having fun? Man?
This great? I don't know, I mean not not that
I know of, because I would have felt bad saying
I'm very excited, please keep it down. Can you shut up?
I'm experiencing the majesty of this experience. Well, I just
(36:46):
don't want to be reminded that someone's attached to my
my butt. Dude. There's a video of a woman who
is um doing a tandem jump. First to start off with,
she's holding onto the side to the plane and is
pushing back on the guy who's trying to push her
out the tandom jumping. He has to grab her wrists
(37:07):
and pull them in and and then push her out.
Is that legal? I wouldn't think so. And then secondly,
she's obviously not. She's not wearing a suit, she's just
wearing her street clothes. So she's got like her arms
in the harness, not hooked into the harness, just her
arms are, and almost immediately she starts to slide out,
(37:29):
so she's doubled up with like her legs in her arms,
like at her face, her feet sticking into the air.
In Turkey, just hanging out. I don't know where it was,
but just it. It didn't appear to be in Dollywood. Um,
but Dolly would never allow something like that in her part,
and she survived. They lived. But like the shoot, it's
(37:51):
just like the pilot. She was just hanging out at first,
and you're like, what is going to happen? It is
so scary, and to start, the woman obviously didn't want
to do this. She gets forced out of the plane
and then like almost slides out of the harness. Well
it sounds like she was like doing her taxes and
someone abducted her. Kind of look that way. Actually send
(38:12):
me that video, will you will? Very interesting and it's
not a movie. You sure it didn't look like a movie.
I'm like, wait, that's Kathleen O'Hara. That's Romancing the Stone. Uh,
that's Kathleen Turner. And I think it's Catherine. It made
me think of Romancing the Stone. Yeah, I hear you, Um,
Katherine O'Hara, Yeah, I think it is. I don't know
(38:34):
why I thought of her. She just seems like someone
who'd be down with that. Yeah. She was the mom
and home alone, among many many many other things. Right,
that's right, that's Catherine Oha. Right, Okay, she's an setv vet.
I think so. Jerry just nodded. So at least she
knows what SETV is. Um. It says guarding your spots.
(38:59):
What based jumpers don't want to do is is mess
it up for other base jumpers. So they say, like,
the worst thing you can do is either get hurt
or killed, because that's going to be a dead giveaway
um literally um or just you know, being a jerk
getting arrested drawing attention to this otherwise cool spot to
(39:20):
base jump. It's very secretive thing. Yeah, it's among the code.
The code. I couldn't find the where what it referenced,
but apparently there was a base jumper in Atlanta who
got caught trying to jump off of a building and
some other base jumpers like went to his house and
beat them up, like bringing heat onto their sport locals
only Um yeah point break, Yeah, well the new point
(39:44):
break is our base jumpers. Why why can't Hollywood come
up with a brand new concept, Like even if all
of the good ideas have been used before, right and
and everything is still a category like us buy a movie,
a bank robber movie, a um, a romantic comedy, like
all of these things are still just categories and there's
(40:07):
still room for creativity. Still that you don't have to go.
What movie was big in the eighties, Let's remake it
except worse. It's it drives me crazy, man, I've not
seen one remake, with the exception of Bad Max that
was worthwhile. Well, that wouldn't a remake at all. Was
it supposed to be like a prequel or something like that.
It's just it's I guess you think you would call
(40:29):
it a reboot. It's just like a reboot. Here's a
new version of a character that's already been established. But
it's not like Cannon as they say, Oh, yeah, you
know what I'm saying. Yeah, But but do you do
you agree? Oh? Of course? Can you think of okay,
can you think of one thing that was already done
from the eighties, like a good movie from the eighties
(40:51):
that was redone recently or even added to that was better,
that was even good. Um, I'd have to look. I
mean there's probably a couple, but not many. You know,
it's always seems like a bad idea for sure. Let's
remake Ghostbusters or just let Ghostbusters exist as great. I'm
reserving judgment on that one. Well, it may be good.
(41:12):
They've got a great director, and who is it? I
think it's Paul Feig from he directed Bridesmaids, but he
was uh he did a lot of the freaks and
geeks back in the day. Okay, he's a very smart
and funny guy. For some reason, I thought you were
talking about Mike Figgis and I'm like, yeah, that seems
directing Ghostbusters. Um. Can I read a little more about
(41:35):
how to Get started from this guy? Tom? I yell o,
I think this was in? Was this an apex from
the apex website? Um? So, after checking yourself to see
if you're a good fit, like I said, if you're
have good reaction time and handle emergency as well and
all that good stuff, then make the decision to do so.
(41:55):
And he said, in my short time in the sport,
I've seen to lifelight helicopters from the outside, two more
from the inside, inside the back of a police car,
several broken noses, and a funeral. I've also spent three
weeks in intensive care in eighteen hours in neurosurgery. Wow.
So his contention is if you base jump like hundreds
(42:17):
of times, like most of those people do, you will
get hurt at some point, and that you know, just
know that getting into it. Um, and people do die.
Oh yeah, from what I saw, a hundred and eight
people have died since nine but that was as of
February two thousand twelve. And by the way, I think
we should say, like we're making a lot of jokes
(42:38):
about how you can die base jumping. It's obviously super
tragic when someone dies doing anything. Yes, So I don't
want to, you know, make it like we're taking like
making light of that kind of thing. Yeah. I didn't
think we were, were we No, I just wanted to
make sure that well, sure, yeah, someone dies is tragedy,
especially when they die young, which most space jumpers except
(42:59):
for the seventy three year old who lit his parachute
on fire. And again I giggled, not funny, You're just
gonna this is like an Ora Borous. I know, I
think I get uncomfortable about death and I make and
I laugh. Man, have you ever seen that one King
of the Hill where Khan is giving that that eulogy
at Buckley's funeral and he talks about the man who's
(43:22):
being chased by a tiger and the tiger chases him
off the cliff and the man starts to fall, but
he stops and he grabs himself and he holds on
by this route and it turns out it's a strawberry plant,
and he says that he knows at that moment that
he is going to die. And he reaches up and
he plucks the strawberry from the strawberry plant and eats it,
(43:43):
and it's the sweetest strawberry he's ever had. Nice. It's
a great, great scene like they animated in like the
this Chinese illustration. Um, it's really great. I remember when
he first met Con when Con said he was like ocean.
He's like, you're from the ocean, right, good stuff? So
(44:03):
where were we? I think five or six have died
this year, so more than Dean Potter and Graham Hunt.
Dean Potter is like one of the the biggest like
extreme dudes out there, and he passed away a Dya
semite recently. Really Yeah, he was doing the wingsuit flying,
So that's pretty nuts in and of itself. It's amazing,
you know. I was looking at some of that stuff
(44:25):
you sent me. I was looking at some wingsuits stuff,
and I thought, like, why why would they not put
wingsuits in the top of tall buildings, like in office towers,
just like you have life vests on a boat. I
think because it takes a lot of experience to successfully
fly in a wingsuit and deploy your parachute. The thing
(44:47):
is though, like like why not just put parachutes? Yeah,
I mean, why not? It just seems like it seems
like a good idea. I would guess wingsuits are a
lot cheaper. Even if it's a terrible cruddy wingsuit, it's
still worth the shot. Well, have you seen some of
those videos the wingsuit flying? It's crazy, it's amazing, like
(45:08):
humans are flying at this point. There was one, Um,
there was one I saw. I don't remember if you
you sent it to me or I stumbled across it.
But they had a camera set up in like this
grassy meadow and this guy comes and flies right overhead.
It looks like he's like twenty ft off the ground. Yeah,
and the grass like moves like the airplane just flew
over it, like it just ripples. It's unbelievable. That was
(45:32):
going fast. That started in the late nineties. UM, the
modern wingsuit was developed by a guy or squirrel suit
because they look they're like a little flying squirrels basically, uh.
Patrick de Gallardald and France. Um, he died at thirty
eight from bass jumping. Are you guys seeing a pattern here? Yeah,
like a lot of basse jumpers died base jumping. Yeah,
(45:56):
died young. Uh. That was based though in an earlier
design by this guy, this basse pioneer, John Carter, that
they called the Birdman, And he was a Vietnam veteran,
and like the seventies, he was creating these wingsuits that
didn't work nearly as well. But he was told jumping
off of stuff. I probably worked good enough to jump
out of an office tower if it's on fire. He
(46:17):
died too, But I don't think base jumping. I think
he died like in a plane crash, Banana peal, probably
going to skydive. Um, but the I mean you can fly.
I think the record, I don't know if it still stands,
is like five close to five miles of flight in
a wing suit. Wow. I believe it in uh four
or five minutes. It's pretty amazing. That's like a mile
(46:38):
a minute. That's sixty. So the final few things you
should think about, um, make sure that you're always prepared
to not do anything that doesn't feel right, and not
be afraid to back down. That's a big one is
to be able saying no, this isn't good because I
don't want to die. I don't want to base jump
successfully is the goal, right, Um, And this one is
(46:59):
horror trying. Um, tell your family and write a sealed
letter to your friends and family on the event that
you die, explaining exactly why you have decided to take
up base jumping and what you get out of it,
and why you're willing to risk death. Give sealed copies
to your family and your base mentor to open in
the event of death. Right, and then make at least
(47:21):
two hundred skydives as his and then sort of mimic
base jumping as much as you can, like wait as
long as you can to open, do a lot of tracking,
call it max tracking. Uh, find a mentor, get a
good base rig and he suggests spending the money and
taking an actual class from a manufacturer they have called
(47:43):
first jump course classes. And um, he said, even if
you have a mentor, even if you've done it a
hundred times, just spend the money and make sure you
know how to do the rigs and everything correctly. Wise
words yelloids, Danny I, yello, UM, base jumping expert. Do
you got anything else? They got nothing else. If you
(48:05):
want to know more about basse jumping, type those words
into the search bar how stuff works dot Com look
up Paul A Yellow Yes, and Paul Fieg and Mike
Figgus Yeah. And then don't basse jump. Yeah, just stay
at home and watch base jumping videos. You can do
that all day long. Um. And since I said search bar,
I think somewhere in there it's time for a listener mail.
(48:27):
I don't think anyone's ever died watching a bass jumping video.
Have they? You could, Yeah, but it's probably because you
you just eating seven or eight pounds of taco bell,
you know what I mean. That's it for me, all right.
I'm gonna call this New Zealand my New Zealand gang,
the Mongrel Mob. Hey, guys, them from Wellington. I thought
(48:49):
i'd cheer some light on one of the New Zealand's
more prominent gangs, the Mongrel Mob. They began when a
group of mainly European utes from Wellington and Hawk's Bay
in the nineteen sixties. The Mob whereas red regalia, often
fusing the cultural tattoo work of the Maori people. I
feel like we talked about them in the Maori episode.
(49:09):
We may have the Mongrel Mob either that is it
a motorcycle gang? M I don't know. I'm sure some
of them have motorcycles, so I think we did talk
about them in the Maori episode. I think they're a
Vespa gang. They're Vespa to there's one driving and then
one running side saddle and back. Yeah. Um uh, as
(49:30):
well as portraits of bulldogs with their tattoos and occasionally
Nazi symbols that are synonymous with the gang, such as
swastikas and the slanted s S symbolo yeah, that are
said to be included to provide a contradiction with the
British symbol of the bulldog. No. No, it makes sense
like most gangs of Mongrel Mob is involved in organized
crime and thus has been associated with an aggressive and
(49:51):
feared stereotype of how people. These people live their lives.
You just said stereotype like a New Zealander, did I? Yeah,
you went stereotype weird. Maybe it's how we spelled it, Nope,
stereo type. What I think is overlooked though, guys, is
uh the communal family roles that gangs or chapters inherit
(50:11):
because of the need of an individual, and we did
talk about that some. Yeah, I don't know how you
got that as overlooked, buddy, He's a nice fellow. At
least in some parts of New Zealand, the mob has
scene as an ingrained part of the community and a
source of solidarity. Uh. And I've thrown a link to
a Vice article below about a photographer who spent eight
years with the mob documenting and taking portraits. Amazing portraits
(50:34):
UM of some of his members, and Vice is awesome,
so we'll always plug them. So just look up portraits
of New Zealand's Mighty Mongrel Mob from Vice dot com.
It's pretty neat. And he said, thanks guys, love your work.
You've killed a lot of potential silence over the years.
Professional silence killers band name killer with bare hand regards
(50:56):
from the Long White Cloud. I guess that's New Zealand stereotype.
Sam Vander Cult, great name, Yeah, excellent name. Throw a
little dutchiness in there, great name Dutch tilt Fander Cult.
Thanks a lot, Sam. Also, somebody I don't know who
(51:16):
it was, so I apologize to you if you're listening,
tweeted to us. Um an article that I have yet
to read but looks awesome. It's about Disney gangs. What
I will send it to you? No serious. I was
looking over it and I'm like, is this just like
a hoax? Gangs that hang out in Disney World and
rough people up or gangs that wear Mickey Mouse costumes.
(51:39):
I don't think they rough people up. They don't wear
Mickey Mouse costumes, but they wear like they'll have like
Disney Gang stuff tattooed on them. They wear like Disney
biker jackets with like their gang symbols have Mickey Mouse involved,
and they're like Disney Gang. So Disney centered gangs. So
you're talking about Holly from stuff you miss in history class.
If she isn't remember, then she at least knows a member.
(52:02):
There's no way she doesn't, or she just didn't know
about it yet. There's no way she's too into Disney. Agreed.
Uh So, if you want to get in touch with
us to let us know about a gang in your area,
or a base jump that you did, or whatever, you
can tweak to us at s Y s K podcast.
You can join us on Facebook dot com slash stuff
(52:24):
you should know you can send us an email to
stuff Podcasts at how stuff works dot com and has
always joined us at her home on the web. Stuff
you Should Know dot com for more on this and
thousands of other topics. Does it How stuff works dot com.
Welcome to you stuff you should know fromhouse stuff Works
dot com. Hey, welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
There's Charles Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry. We are dancing on
the ceiling. Whoa, what a feeling. That song holds up
(00:21):
by the way, I heard it recently. Oh yeah, why
don't Richie holds up? Man? Yeah, sure, that's the Commodore's
great stuff, great great stuff. I think like two of
the most underrated bands of the seventies were earth Wind
and Fire in the commod Wars, Gareth Wind and Fire
was underrated. They were super well group underrated as far
(00:44):
as like today, Like, I don't know, you don't hear
a lot about that kind of thing. It's all like
about the big rock bands. Yeah, oh you mean like
bad Finger and Foreigner and yeah, is that what you mean? Yeah,
maybe they weren't underrated. How about this, Two of the
best bands from the seventies were the Commodores and earth
(01:04):
Winn and Fire. I agree, Man rated it just perfectly.
I've said well, and I don't mean to be argumentative.
I mean I've said that before, Like I wonder if
earth Win and Fire is possibly the greatest band that's
ever been. They're pretty amazing. They are amazing, and the
different sounds that they took on like it was never
just like you know, we hit it and we're gonna
(01:25):
stick with it. They were not like a C d
C in in other words, and a C d C
is great. Man, they got their thing, but they figured
it out from song one and they're still doing it today.
Simple rock riff played over and over and over. Yeah,
but it works for him. Earth Win and fire Man
they tried it all. Yeah, and please don't write in
about the complexity of a C d C. I love
(01:45):
a C d C. But they will even admit that
they do one thing well, yeah, which is rock. Yeah,
it's a blues riff. I used to think they were
heavy metal when I was a kid, which is very
funny to think about. Yeah, you know, for seving metal
it at all? Who was? I always here Black Sabbath,
but I suspect it goes back before that. Sabbath is
(02:05):
usually kind of counted as the first, but it's all
sort of variations of the blues still, right, you know,
all comes down to the blues. That's right now. Nobody
live here without singing the blues. Can you name that movie?
Is it Crossroads? You would think, no, it's the opposite
movie of Crossroads, Adventures in Babysitting. That's the opposite of
(02:28):
a cross road. That's funny. Yeah, I remember that part.
Uh So, bass jumping has nothing to do with the
Blues unless you die, right, unless you're one of the
base jumping fatality and one of the dudes, which I
will touch on later wrote on a big base jumper
wrote an article like like how to Get Started tom Allo,
(02:50):
and one of his frightening things he says this, if
you are not ready to die base jumping, then you're
not ready to basse jump. Yeah. I ran across that
on a sentiment too, um, like, the dangers are so
vast that you can anticipate being injured almost certainly at
(03:11):
some point if you do a lot of base jumping.
That's right, That's absolutely true. I mean like it's pretty
much the next step in danger is to just jump
off a cliff without any parachute at all. Yeah, And
I think one of the that's if you, like, I
don't think a lot of people base jump once. Then
they're like that was kind of neat, yawn like it
(03:32):
kind of because it's your like it becomes one of
your driving forces in your life. Base jumpers are all in. Yeah,
that's the best way to say it. Um, And I
remember kind of like came up in the nineties, wasn't it.
It was like it became a big deal in the nineties.
That's when I became aware of it. But it's it's
way older than that. Well, it's a couple of decades older.
(03:54):
It's about a decade older than the nineties. It's from
the late seventies. I guess it's another way to put it. Well,
before we get into history, let's at least say what
base jumping is, because some people might live under a
rock and they don't know what base jumping is. It's
actually an acronym. It is was it stand for uh.
It stands for buildings, antenna's spans, a K bridges, and
(04:18):
earth a K cliffs. Buildings are probably quite a rush
to jump off of, but they're tough to get in
and you're most certainly doing something illegal. Yeah, you're there's
pretty much not a building in existence you're legally allowed
to jump off of. No, unless you have a special arrangement.
I'm sure you've lined the mayor's pockets with cash. Yeah,
(04:41):
or if you're doing you know, imagine some of like
the Red Bull team arranges for a famous jump and
Red Bull lines the mayor's pockets there you go. Uh.
Antennas are super popular, um because they're not as heavily guarded,
but they're still really tall and usually out in the
middle of nowhere. Right. That's very feeling less risky, um,
(05:02):
not death, but less for being caught, right and for
um causing injury to other people, which is a big
thing with buildings. Yeah. Yeah, antennas. It's like you're gonna
injure a cow that you run into. You know who
cares uh spans Uh. These are very popular, not only
because it's fun and gorgeous to leap off of a
(05:23):
bridge like the New River Gorge Bridge in West Virginia.
Doing that connects this podcast to bridges, um, but because
sometimes it is legal, like the one day of the
year that they have bridge Day there. Yeah. Um, there's
also one in Idaho where it's legal year round. Oh
really with that without a permit you can just go
(05:45):
and jump. There was actually a fatality there, Like guy said,
his parachute on fire is part of a stunt and
oh I pulled that article. That was just a few
weeks ago. Was it that recent? It was in late May.
I had the impression it was a couple of years
back or whatever. He said his parachute on fire and died. Yeah,
it's seventy three year old, guys, right, yeah, yeah, yeah,
unless it was just a version, then it is old.
(06:09):
But it's new unless it's but yeah, he set his
parachute on fire with the aim of throwing another parachute out,
and it's just not a very smart thing. No, his
his flaming parachute I think continued on without him, and
I guess his other parachute. I think he just came
out of his other parachute. It never deployed. It's on YouTube,
(06:32):
which is sad that they don't have that stuff. There's
a lot of that on there's a lot of base,
base jumping and skydiving deaths on YouTube, tons of well
you know why, because they all film each other. Well yeah,
thanks to the GoPro you know. Um and finally Earth
and that is when you're jumping off like ilk cappy
tan or a cliff or a fiord pretty what, it's
(06:58):
just like the words out like the list could have
just kept going indefinitely. You know, I do like the
word feword though it's a good word. You rarely see
an F and a J next to each other. Yeah,
that's true. You don't get along historically, all right, So
you wanna talk about the history. Yeah, I think before
we get started we should say chuck that, um, no
one should basse jump. Ever, we certainly aren't saying that
(07:20):
you should. We're just talking about bass jumping. Well you
should definitely, um do what we talked about later, which
is how to get started in bass jumping and follow
those rules. Get started in bass jumping, think about bass jumping,
and then don't do it. I think it's super cool,
Like I can watch those videos all day long, but um,
(07:41):
not for me. Yea, as far as execution, I have
to say. Also, I ran across a video that to
me is even scarier than a bass jumping video, and
it was these two dudes. I don't know if they
were Ukrainian. They're part of the former so it states, Um,
(08:02):
I don't remember where their phone. I'm sorry, but they
just climb stuff. I've seen it, dude, and they climb
their iPhones are like, look at where we are. Yeah,
like no ropes, no harnesses, no parachute, no nothing. It
makes me want to vomit. I almost fainted and literally
almost fainted watching this video. They were climbing the world's
second tallest but I can't remember what it was called.
(08:24):
But the um it's in China, and the tops of
other skyscrapers are hundreds of feet below them. There's cloud
the cloud line is below them, and they're just standing
on this antenna connected to nothing. I mean, there's there's
no fear going whatsoever. They're not capable of it, Like
you have to be just completely out of your mind,
(08:47):
like they're they're like they're broken in some way shape
to be able to do that and not just like
I think I'd probably just be like I just let
go because I want the terror to be over one
way or another, you know what I mean. And these
guys are just like, hey, how's it going? Like giving
each other five stuff. The whole thing just makes me nervous.
Have you seen the trailer for the New You know
they're making a movie about the the the guy who
(09:11):
did the highware walk between the I did see that
before Mad Max, which is did you like it? I
left Mad Max and I was like, I want to
go buy all the Mad Max toys now. I wanted
to see all the sequels are going to make right now? Yeah,
I just it was a great movie. Well you came
in wearing the iron face mask. I thought it was interesting.
(09:32):
I made it myself. Could you tell out of aluminum
foil and rubber bands? Long story short, which is not true? Uh?
That that trailer for the Robert Zemeckis movie with Joseph
Gordon Levitt Um that made me want to vomit when
he just he was waiting for it too. Didn't hit
(09:53):
me like that. Man, Well, it's just a teaser. He
just basically like walks up to the top and looks
and says like in his mind I want to do this,
but just stands up on the edge. I just I
can't take that. And it's based on the guy who
actually did that in real life for and they made
a documentary about it, I think back in the seventies
called Man on Wire. It's fantastic Um and a dude
(10:14):
in the mid seventies who is a high wire artist
illegally went up to the top of the World Trade
Center and climbed from one tower to the other on
a high wire. Great documentary, and uh faith in this movie.
And I think it's in three D, isn't it? Or
it's going to be I'm sure I can't imagine that
one though in three D. I saw Tintin in three D.
(10:36):
It was all right, yeah, I'm letting do it. I mean,
I know what you're saying, did you see Mad maxim
three D? I didn't either. I don't see three D anymore,
is what I'm saying. Did you see did you ever see?
Was it? Friday the Thirteenth? Part three came out in
three D? That was a good one. That was back
when three D stunk? Yeah, you know, oh yeah, when
(10:57):
it was like things look still kind of blew in
red at the same time. Yeah, like now it's supposedly good,
I just don't enjoy it. And the cardboard glasses were
cutting into the bridge of your nose and you were
bleeding on. Man, we can get sidetracked. Although that wasn't
much of a sidetrack because we talked about you know
how wire walking it's an extreme sport, that's right, just
(11:19):
like base jumping. So we're talking, we're going to talk
about the history of base jumping. Yes. Uh, if you
talk about the distant history, um, early nineteenth century, there
were some things going on that is essentially like basse jumping.
There was a dude named Frederick Rodman Law and he
(11:40):
jumped um off the Brooklyn Bridge at one point, and
the Statue of Liberty Yeah, and the Bankers Trust building
on Wall Street. And this is in like the nineteen tens. Yeah,
so I mean technically he was bass jumping, but these
were just one off stunts at this point. Yes, the
same as in ninety five when Owen Quinn left from
the World Trade Center and uh, there was another guy
(12:01):
named Ron Boyle's who jumped from the Royal Gorge Bridge
in Colorado. So all this is happening, these little one
off stunts. And then in this girl named this guy
named Carl Banish. There's a documentary about him actually called
Sunshine Superman. Yeah that look did you see the trailer?
It doesn't looks really good and I think that is
(12:23):
like now that that one's coming in. Um, so he
gets this idea. He goes to Yosemite to film some
hang gliders. And these hang gliders there's three dudes on
a single hang uh or a glider, I guess you
call it. And once they get out over the land,
two of them drop off and I think they're flying
(12:43):
off El Capitan, which is like a few thousand feet tall, right,
I don't know how tall it is, it's pretty tall.
I think it's like three thousand feet tall. I mean,
i've seen it, but from the bottom. Very impressive. Um.
So these two dudes, Rich Piccarelli and Brian Johnson, they
dropped off, they parachuted into the valley below, and Carl
(13:06):
Banish was like, very interesting. I think we're onto something here, fellas,
And so he got Rich Piccarelli and night he said,
let's do it, brother, and let's go to El Capitan
and jump off of it. Right, Like, forget the hanglider,
leave that at home. Yeah. Apparently, when they went scouting
(13:29):
the place to see if you could just basically base
jump off of it. Um, they lowered Banish over the
edge on like a rope and they heard him shout eureka,
we can jump from here. Now pull me back up please.
All the from what I gather from this guy who's
probably like, you guys can just go. I'm gonna hang
out here for a while. Yeah, that's true. So in
(13:51):
August he took this new crew back to that location
and uh he I think was just filming at the time,
and one by one they jumped. And if you look
at this documentary footage on the trailer of Sunshine Superman,
these guys like way before the go pro, they were
like these toaster robbins on their head, essentially attached to
(14:14):
helmets because even back then they wanted to film stuff.
Oh yeah, apparently Carl Banish, like for that first jump,
he had a number of different cameras going for different
angles and um, when he was documenting it, he would
make people like do different takes of like walking into
frame and stuff like that would be like, okay, go
back and do that again. He was like walk again. Yeah.
(14:37):
Well that's why they have with that great old footage still,
I guess thanks to him. Um. Sadly he died, uh
basse jumping bass jumping, but he was doing it solo,
I guess. In um he did a solo jump off
a cliff in Norway and um, no one saw him die,
but they figured that he probably was steered into the
(14:59):
cliff um that he jumped from, which is called an
off heading jump. Right, which is one of the bigger
dangers in basse jumping, as we'll see. Well that's where
he originally UM. I don't think we mentioned that. These
two guys, Michael Pelki and Brian Schubert, were the first
two that he heard of that actually did jump from
el cappy tan. But they did it with the old
(15:21):
school around paratrooper parachutes, and they got slammed into the
cliff face again and again and again, breaking bones and
foots and legs and things like that. There's that's another video.
There's a UM a woman who skied or who base jumped,
and she got um, she got she went on to
an offheading opening. Is that what it's called. I believe
(15:45):
it is um And you just see like she's getting
just directed right into the cliff face again and again.
You just I can't imagine. I mean, it killed her,
but I can't imagine how anybody could survive something like
that because you're going so fast and all of that
velocity is just being slammed into a cliff face and
(16:07):
then you'll bounce off and float away and then just
come back in again. Yeah, you're at the mercy of
nature at that point, right, But that's what happened with
those two dudes in the sixties, the first two to
parachute off of El capitan Um, and Karl Banish was like,
I don't think they're The idea of jumping off of
El Capitan with the parachute was wrong. I think their
(16:28):
gear was just wrong. And that's why Carl Bainish is
credited as being the father of um of basse jumping,
because he applied the techniques that are now the hallmarks
of base jumping and the and the equipment. Yeah. Yeah,
and he was also the guy if you complete all
four phases, the B, the A, the S and the E,
(16:51):
then you are assigned a number, and he's the one
that started at but he was based number four though
he wasn't even number one because he was filming people,
I think because his wife was Base three. And uh
so he was a feminist as well. He wasn't like
good good to be in front of you. Uh So
Base one was Phil Smith from Texas and as of
(17:13):
now it's hard to get numbers. Then they point out
pretty reasonably that a lot of these things happened in
our cover of night and they're not reported necessarily, but
as best as we can tell, they're they're up to
like base plus at this point. That's what I thought,
and that's who is. Those are people who have completed
again all four phases buildings, an tennis, spans and uh
(17:37):
earth Earth And originally it wasn't called base, it was
called best. It was going to be uh buildings, earth
span and tower. Yeah, so they just rearranged it a bit. Yeah.
Apparently Carl Vanish's wife Jean said she liked best best,
but Carl like basse um, particularly because the first definition
(18:00):
of the word was a platform on which something stands.
So it makes sense. And before I knew, I've known
for a while I was an acronym, but before I
knew it was an acronym, I just thought that's what
it meant, Like, you go stand on some base and
you jump. You know, Karl Baynis would have been proud.
That's right, all right, So let's take a break and
then um we will talk about some of that gear
(18:21):
right after this stump. Alright, dude, So if you want
(18:42):
a base jump, you just get an old nineteen sixties
Army parachute and you go at it, right, yep. Add
some get a weight vest. Yeah, he's scuba diving. Yeah,
and um, you know, pair of sunglasses maybe, yeah, drink
a gallon of whiskey, yeah, and just fall off of
(19:02):
the cliff. That's right. No, no, no, no, no no.
What you need is the right gear. And what they
found out pretty quickly was that something called a ram
air parachute. And these are the ones that you see nowadays.
You don't even see the round parachutes anymore. I guess
you do if you jump from outer space or if
you're like a kind of a hipster vintage. We need
(19:26):
to do one on skydiving, I guess. But yeah, I
guess we haven't, no, because I was like, this doesn't
sound familiar, like we've spoken about it before. So I
was like, we're doing basse jumping before skydiving. Yeah. I
like that. That's the opposite of what you're supposed to do,
especially if you're actually base jumping. Well, that's true. Um,
So the ram air parachute is the one that you
(19:47):
see a lot now mostly now, which is the one
that is rectangular, and they give you a lot more
control on where you're going because you want to be
able to steer this thing quickly, right, So you don't
slam into the rock, because that's one of the two dangers,
is slamming into the rocks or slamming into whatever the building. Right.
(20:10):
The two dangers are slamming into the thing you jump
you jumped off of, which is apparently the more frequent danger,
or other things around I guess, right, or slamming into
the ground. Sure, and like you're shooting, not opening or
something like that. Yeah, I think mostly though, most injuries
occur from slamming into structures and not improper deployment. Right.
(20:34):
And the thing about the ram air parachute is it's
this rectangular parachute that allows you to maneuver yourself, guide yourself,
increase or decrease your speed. You're much more in control
than you are with around parachute, which basically just slows
your acceleration towards earth. Right, that's right, um, And with
with a ram air parachute, Uh, it works so well
(20:59):
that when you are base jumping, your face with a
problem because when you're skydiving, you have a lot of time.
You're jumping at like a well over ten thousand feet usually, right,
you get the free fall for a while and then
say about two thousand feet, you open your shot, and
your shoe can just take all the time in the
world to open. It's pretty yeah, but it's it's not
(21:23):
like packed and then open. There's a there's a process
that does take place over the course of maybe a
second a second and a half that makes a lot
of difference in going from free fall to floating right
as far as your body is concerned, and as far
as changing your velocity and direction. Well, with base jumping,
(21:45):
you don't have that amount of time. You need your
shoot to open pretty quick and so when you when
you open a ramar shoot, all of a sudden, it
can basically snap your neck. It open so so quickly
and jerks you up right end. Since you have a
lot of velocity because you're in free fall when your
(22:05):
shoot opens and all of a sudden, you're not free
falling any longer, you're transferring some of that velocity to
the shoot, which can slam you into that cliff side.
So there's some some things that you have to to
deal with if you're a base jumper that a skydiver
wouldn't have to deal with, and there's been some clever
solutions to those things. Yeah, there's one device called a
(22:27):
slider that basically reduces the rate at which those parachute
lines spread out, so it's not gonna deploy as quickly
and snap your neck in half or not your neck,
but well I'm not sure what would happen buying or
something could tear you clean in half. Okay, but a
sliders just like this piece of fabric that that slides
(22:48):
down the lines, and by doing that, it gives you
a measure of um control over how fast your shoot opens.
You know, the little pilot shoots. If you've ever seen
a sky diver, there there's that little shoot that comes
out and then that helps deploy the big shoot. Same
with funny cars, did they have a pilot? Really? The
(23:11):
good ones to? Uh, So you have a larger pilot shoot.
If you're a base jumper, because you talked about velocity,
there is some velocity, but not like your skydiving, so
you're actually going a lot slower in most cases unless
you're really, like you know, jumping off something super super tall,
So you're not gonna be a like terminal velocity, which
(23:33):
is what you count on for that shoot to open
real fast. So because you're not going as fast, you
want a larger pilot shoot, so it can gather more
air to deploy the real shoot faster. Right, And since
you don't have that velocity, you also don't have the
same amount of air pressure you would if you were
at terminal velocity, so that larger pilot pilot shoot gathers
(23:53):
more air. Even in this it balances out the fact
that you have less air pressure. Right, So yeah, it's
gonna open your shoe faster. And um, you talked about
if you were skydiving normally, if your shoot malfunctions or
something not good, but you've got your backup shoot and
you have time, which is key. Just think, well, things
(24:14):
aren't going well with my regular shoot, let me deploy
the backup shoots. Don't even have to make some toast.
I'll eat my toast and then I'll deploy my backup
shoot and the toast of it on my head. But um,
a lot of times space jumpers don't even have backup
shoots because there's just not enough time. Anyway. It's not
like they're like screw it, man, although they probably are,
(24:37):
you know, they're extreme dudes and ladies. But even if
they were, like, I don't want to screw it. I
really want to backup shoot. They're they're they're totally useless. Basically,
Josh wants to backup para shoot. All right, so let's
talk about that shoot. Uh, and the accessibility. Um, if
you've ever seen a base jumper jump off with the
(24:58):
parachute wadded up in their hand end, that is a
thing you can do if it's a shorter jump, because
you just want to be able to throw that thing
out almost right away. Um, not a lot of freefall
going on in that case. No, if it's a little
higher than that, they might just pack that pilot shoot
like in their pocket or something like that. But that
leaves their hands free and then they'll just reach into
(25:20):
the pocket and pull out the pilot shoot rather than
using a rip chord to deploy it. Yeah, most of
the base jumping, I think most of the rigs today
have like a velcro flap type of scene that they use.
It's not even a rip chord necessarily just sort of
packed in a pouch of velcrow pouch and you just
pull the velcrow off I think so, and just rip
(25:40):
that away again. I will never do this, so I'm
just going on research alone here. No interest. Um, if
you're below three hundred feet. You might even have to
use a static line. And that is when the there's
a line actually attached I think to the thing you're
jumping off of, right, and it just immediately opens up. Yeah,
(26:04):
it like pulls your pilot shoot out. Um, and then
it disconnects from it hopefully. Yeah. And um, that guy
Frederick Rodman Law who jumped off of the Statue of Liberty,
that was a static line jump. Yeah. Like when you
see paratroopers like one after the other in a in
a plane, A lot of times those are static line jumps. Yeah,
(26:26):
they're leaving. Yeah, when they're leaving, there was there's a
cord that's left behind after they jumped out that things
just pulled their pilot shoot out. That's right. That's a
low altitude jump technique. That's right. Um, I think offheading opening.
Is that what you're talking about earlier? Yes, that's when
you deploy the shoot again and um, you just start
going crazy. Yeah. Because again, you especially if you're in
(26:48):
free fall, if you have a couple of seconds to
to go into free fall with no shoot deployed, no
resistance other than your body, Um, you can build up
pretty decent amount of velocity and when your shoot opens,
all of a sudden, you transfer that velocity to your shoot,
and your shoot can spin you around in another direction,
and all of a sudden, you're going back towards the
(27:09):
cliff or back towards the building, or and you you
can be in big, big trouble. Yeah. And while you
have some control, it's not the kind of control that
you're used to, Like, let's in a car or something.
You know, you can't just be like, oh, let me
stop immediately and go in the other direction. Yeah. And
even if you are an experienced bass jumper or skydiver,
(27:30):
it's not like you're you You are using the chords
on your parachute as often as you are like on
your car, So it's not necessarily as uh natural reaction
as it is to like steer your steering wheel out
of the way of an oncoming truck. So it can
be very easy to pull the wrong way or do
the wrong thing, or not react quite in time. Even
(27:52):
though that ram or parachute is giving you more control
you you you you have to think so fast and
under such sudden stress that you might not make the
right decision. Yeah. Well, that's one of the things that
um Tom Aello says, Uh, think about if it's right
for you. He said that, Um, it's a good fit,
or it could be a good fit. If you are
(28:13):
intellectually curious, you have good reactions, you respond quickly and
correctly without having to think during an emergency, and you're
very organized in detail oriented like if you're sloppy, if
you're lazy, if you take too much time to suss
out an emergency, you're not going to be a good
based jumper. Do you don't even try it? Don't even
(28:35):
try it? So, UM, body positioning is important. Um. When
you deploy that shoot, and I think the super safe
way to base jump, if you call it that would
just be to jump off head first in that traditional
facedown form. Of course, now you see him doing like
flips and tumbles and joining hands and spinning each other,
(28:55):
and those are like the serious, seriously experienced people. But
even when you do jump off and your your face
towards the earth right and you're horizontal parallel to the
earth with the shoot deploying behind you, UM, you you
don't want to take necessarily the um normal skydiving pose
(29:18):
with your arms out and your legs splayed. You want
to keep your arms on the side and your legs
together and basically turn yourself into a bullet going away
from the structure that you just jumped off of. It's
called tracking, and it can um reduce your chances of
an off heading opening. Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. You
want to get as far as far away from the
(29:39):
thing that you just jumped off of as possible, exactly,
and the best way to do that is to turn
your body into a bullet that's being directed in the
opposite direction. Yeah. And I just let me correct something
when I said that these um people now tumble and
flip and do all those things they do, but they
still when they go to deploy, the shoot will end
up in that traditional position right right. It's not like
(30:00):
they're upside down. They're like, this is a great time
to throw out my parish. You know. Um, there was
a pretty cool video that surfaced in the last year
or two. I think of some guys who jumped off
the New World Trade Center tower at night. It's just crazy.
A lot of base jumping happens at night for obvious reasons,
which seems super scary. So we'll we'll talk about um
(30:24):
the legalities and the ins and outs of base jumping
right after this stop? All right, so why my friend, uh,
(30:51):
is base jumping a fringe sport besides the fact that
you could kill yourself? Well, it's a it's kind of
a sport of outlaws, that's right. The grabster wrote this article,
and as he puts it, even if the jump itself
aren't is an illegal. Gaining access to prime jumping spots
often involves trespassing, picking locks, climbing fences, and deceiving security guards.
(31:16):
I'm sure that is all part of the rush. Deceiving
security guards as a felony offense. What's that, rummer? Do
you just make it up? It's kind of a daze
and confused reference. Yeah, campering with mailboxes federal offense? Who's
this felony offense? And some of the small parts in
that movie, I'm pretty convinced we're just regular folks. They
(31:40):
weren't actors. Oh yeah, I'm sure they're just friends of
link Letter who lived in Austin for a lot of
the adults like the comedian store guy, and he showed
up and I think he's in boyhood. Yeah, he played
the convenient store kind of boyhood. He's a convenient store dude. Um,
so the National Parks Service. Obviously, national parks are pretty
(32:02):
popular because they have tall things and they don't have
many people, and they don't have many cops or park rangers.
I mean, if you talk about the land mass, you're
not gonna see a park ranger for days sometimes. So
the National Parks are like, sure, base jump all you want, right, No,
for a little while. Um, certain parks would allow it
with a permit. Um, you have somebody in El Capyitan.
(32:24):
They let that happen for like a few months before
they realize it's probably not a good idea to be
on the hook. Yeah. Well, I mean the Park Service
experience with base jumping from the start was a bad one.
These two guys who jumped in the sixties had to
be rescued and like metivact out of there at great costs. Yeah,
the the National Park Service had to flip that bill.
(32:47):
So just from the get go they were like, yeah,
base jumping sucks, please don't do it here. But there's
and there was a law already on the books against
having a parachute in the National parks and apparently, um
it was to prevent hunters from resupplying using parachutes. Oh really, Yeah,
they had nothing to do with base jumping. Interesting, So
(33:08):
like a supplied drop, So like, no, if you want supplies,
you have to go out and then come back. Yeah,
I guess. So they're like, oh, needs more AMMO to
blow some deuce's head off. I want a parachute. So nowadays,
you're gonna get fined a couple of grand or more. Um,
you're gonna uh get arrested. You're going to have to
(33:32):
pay for any cost of META backing you out. They're
gonna take your gear. It's an expensive proposition if you
get busted in a national park base jumping. Yeah, it
sounds like such a school principal move. Yeah, I'm taking
your parachute. Your your parachute has been confiscated and they
put it in the drawer At the end of the
(33:53):
chattering Teeth in the right, um, buildings is always is illegal,
Almost alwheels always illegal. I didn't see one single building
where it wasn't illegal. I didn't either, but the fact
that the article says almost makes me think there might
be one, or maybe it meant if there's an arrangement,
(34:14):
Like there's a great video of two guys I think
they were red bull jumping off of the building in Dubai. Yeah,
did you see that thing? That was nuts? Dude, Vince
Retha and Fred Fugan And again thanks to the go
pro and you can get all of this stuff. Like
(34:34):
the footage is amazing because you always have someone jumping
with you, at least one other person with a camera,
um just filming you, and then they have camera setup
for the wide shots. And I mean these dudes, did
they flew in a spiral around the building. Yeah, they
did some pretty amazing stuff. Yeah. I could watch this
stuff all day. It's amazing. Again, not interested in doing it.
(34:58):
I would skydive, though, I'm gonna do that at some point.
That seems less risky. It is much less risky. And
I mean when you go, you they like sit you
through a class and like it's just much more structured
and formalized. One of the things about base jumping is
that you um, like normally, if you're a base jumper,
(35:22):
you're doing it after you've already become an experienced skydiver,
and you're probably being taken under the wing of an
experienced base jumper, Whereas with skydiving, it's like this is
a business comes sit down in this airplane hangar and
watch this video, and UM, I'm gonna teach you exactly
what you need to know. We're gonna go up. And
(35:43):
it's been We've already done it fifty times today. Yeah,
it's like for a tandem jump, it's like, if you've
got seventy and sign a waiver, then you can jump
out of a plane this afternoon exactly, which is and
they're still very scary. Have you ever done that? H
did a tandem jump, and yeah, it's very scary, but
I can't I just can't imagine a base jump. Did
(36:04):
the person The one thing I worry about with the
tandem jump is I would just want the person to
shut up behind me that's attached to me. Yeah, like
I would want to experience it just myself and not
have someone in my ear going like, bro, check it
out and it's awesome. I think if that happens, the
skydiving company gives you a free another free one if
(36:25):
you're like the guy was saying, bro in my ear,
I wanted I demand another jump that's uninterrupted. See I
figured all of them did that, like you having fun? Man?
This great? I don't know, I mean not not that
I know of, because I would have felt bad saying
I'm very excited, please keep it down. Can you shut up?
I'm experiencing the majesty of this experience. Well, I just
(36:46):
don't want to be reminded that someone's attached to my
my butt. Dude. There's a video of a woman who
is um doing a tandem jump. First to start off with,
she's holding onto the side to the plane and is
pushing back on the guy who's trying to push her
out the tandom jumping. He has to grab her wrists
(37:07):
and pull them in and and then push her out.
Is that legal? I wouldn't think so. And then secondly,
she's obviously not. She's not wearing a suit, she's just
wearing her street clothes. So she's got like her arms
in the harness, not hooked into the harness, just her
arms are, and almost immediately she starts to slide out,
(37:29):
so she's doubled up with like her legs in her arms,
like at her face, her feet sticking into the air.
In Turkey, just hanging out. I don't know where it was,
but just it. It didn't appear to be in Dollywood. Um,
but Dolly would never allow something like that in her part,
and she survived. They lived. But like the shoot, it's
(37:51):
just like the pilot. She was just hanging out at first,
and you're like, what is going to happen? It is
so scary, and to start, the woman obviously didn't want
to do this. She gets forced out of the plane
and then like almost slides out of the harness. Well
it sounds like she was like doing her taxes and
someone abducted her. Kind of look that way. Actually send
(38:12):
me that video, will you will? Very interesting and it's
not a movie. You sure it didn't look like a movie.
I'm like, wait, that's Kathleen O'Hara. That's Romancing the Stone. Uh,
that's Kathleen Turner. And I think it's Catherine. It made
me think of Romancing the Stone. Yeah, I hear you, Um,
Katherine O'Hara, Yeah, I think it is. I don't know
(38:34):
why I thought of her. She just seems like someone
who'd be down with that. Yeah. She was the mom
and home alone, among many many many other things. Right,
that's right, that's Catherine Oha. Right, Okay, she's an setv vet.
I think so. Jerry just nodded. So at least she
knows what SETV is. Um. It says guarding your spots.
(38:59):
What based jumpers don't want to do is is mess
it up for other base jumpers. So they say, like,
the worst thing you can do is either get hurt
or killed, because that's going to be a dead giveaway
um literally um or just you know, being a jerk
getting arrested drawing attention to this otherwise cool spot to
(39:20):
base jump. It's very secretive thing. Yeah, it's among the code.
The code. I couldn't find the where what it referenced,
but apparently there was a base jumper in Atlanta who
got caught trying to jump off of a building and
some other base jumpers like went to his house and
beat them up, like bringing heat onto their sport locals
only Um yeah point break, Yeah, well the new point
(39:44):
break is our base jumpers. Why why can't Hollywood come
up with a brand new concept, Like even if all
of the good ideas have been used before, right and
and everything is still a category like us buy a movie,
a bank robber movie, a um, a romantic comedy, like
all of these things are still just categories and there's
(40:07):
still room for creativity. Still that you don't have to go.
What movie was big in the eighties, Let's remake it
except worse. It's it drives me crazy, man, I've not
seen one remake, with the exception of Bad Max that
was worthwhile. Well, that wouldn't a remake at all. Was
it supposed to be like a prequel or something like that.
It's just it's I guess you think you would call
(40:29):
it a reboot. It's just like a reboot. Here's a
new version of a character that's already been established. But
it's not like Cannon as they say, Oh, yeah, you
know what I'm saying. Yeah, But but do you do
you agree? Oh? Of course? Can you think of okay,
can you think of one thing that was already done
from the eighties, like a good movie from the eighties
(40:51):
that was redone recently or even added to that was better,
that was even good. Um, I'd have to look. I
mean there's probably a couple, but not many. You know,
it's always seems like a bad idea for sure. Let's
remake Ghostbusters or just let Ghostbusters exist as great. I'm
reserving judgment on that one. Well, it may be good.
(41:12):
They've got a great director, and who is it? I
think it's Paul Feig from he directed Bridesmaids, but he
was uh he did a lot of the freaks and
geeks back in the day. Okay, he's a very smart
and funny guy. For some reason, I thought you were
talking about Mike Figgis and I'm like, yeah, that seems
directing Ghostbusters. Um. Can I read a little more about
(41:35):
how to Get started from this guy? Tom? I yell o,
I think this was in? Was this an apex from
the apex website? Um? So, after checking yourself to see
if you're a good fit, like I said, if you're
have good reaction time and handle emergency as well and
all that good stuff, then make the decision to do so.
(41:55):
And he said, in my short time in the sport,
I've seen to lifelight helicopters from the outside, two more
from the inside, inside the back of a police car,
several broken noses, and a funeral. I've also spent three
weeks in intensive care in eighteen hours in neurosurgery. Wow.
So his contention is if you base jump like hundreds
(42:17):
of times, like most of those people do, you will
get hurt at some point, and that you know, just
know that getting into it. Um, and people do die.
Oh yeah, from what I saw, a hundred and eight
people have died since nine but that was as of
February two thousand twelve. And by the way, I think
we should say, like we're making a lot of jokes
(42:38):
about how you can die base jumping. It's obviously super
tragic when someone dies doing anything. Yes, So I don't
want to, you know, make it like we're taking like
making light of that kind of thing. Yeah. I didn't
think we were, were we No, I just wanted to
make sure that well, sure, yeah, someone dies is tragedy,
especially when they die young, which most space jumpers except
(42:59):
for the seventy three year old who lit his parachute
on fire. And again I giggled, not funny, You're just
gonna this is like an Ora Borous. I know, I
think I get uncomfortable about death and I make and
I laugh. Man, have you ever seen that one King
of the Hill where Khan is giving that that eulogy
at Buckley's funeral and he talks about the man who's
(43:22):
being chased by a tiger and the tiger chases him
off the cliff and the man starts to fall, but
he stops and he grabs himself and he holds on
by this route and it turns out it's a strawberry plant,
and he says that he knows at that moment that
he is going to die. And he reaches up and
he plucks the strawberry from the strawberry plant and eats it,
(43:43):
and it's the sweetest strawberry he's ever had. Nice. It's
a great, great scene like they animated in like the
this Chinese illustration. Um, it's really great. I remember when
he first met Con when Con said he was like ocean.
He's like, you're from the ocean, right, good stuff? So
(44:03):
where were we? I think five or six have died
this year, so more than Dean Potter and Graham Hunt.
Dean Potter is like one of the the biggest like
extreme dudes out there, and he passed away a Dya
semite recently. Really Yeah, he was doing the wingsuit flying,
So that's pretty nuts in and of itself. It's amazing,
you know. I was looking at some of that stuff
(44:25):
you sent me. I was looking at some wingsuits stuff,
and I thought, like, why why would they not put
wingsuits in the top of tall buildings, like in office towers,
just like you have life vests on a boat. I
think because it takes a lot of experience to successfully
fly in a wingsuit and deploy your parachute. The thing
(44:47):
is though, like like why not just put parachutes? Yeah,
I mean, why not? It just seems like it seems
like a good idea. I would guess wingsuits are a
lot cheaper. Even if it's a terrible cruddy wingsuit, it's
still worth the shot. Well, have you seen some of
those videos the wingsuit flying? It's crazy, it's amazing, like
(45:08):
humans are flying at this point. There was one, Um,
there was one I saw. I don't remember if you
you sent it to me or I stumbled across it.
But they had a camera set up in like this
grassy meadow and this guy comes and flies right overhead.
It looks like he's like twenty ft off the ground. Yeah,
and the grass like moves like the airplane just flew
over it, like it just ripples. It's unbelievable. That was
(45:32):
going fast. That started in the late nineties. UM, the
modern wingsuit was developed by a guy or squirrel suit
because they look they're like a little flying squirrels basically, uh.
Patrick de Gallardald and France. Um, he died at thirty
eight from bass jumping. Are you guys seeing a pattern here? Yeah,
like a lot of basse jumpers died base jumping. Yeah,
(45:56):
died young. Uh. That was based though in an earlier
design by this guy, this basse pioneer, John Carter, that
they called the Birdman, And he was a Vietnam veteran,
and like the seventies, he was creating these wingsuits that
didn't work nearly as well. But he was told jumping
off of stuff. I probably worked good enough to jump
out of an office tower if it's on fire. He
(46:17):
died too, But I don't think base jumping. I think
he died like in a plane crash, Banana peal, probably
going to skydive. Um, but the I mean you can fly.
I think the record, I don't know if it still stands,
is like five close to five miles of flight in
a wing suit. Wow. I believe it in uh four
or five minutes. It's pretty amazing. That's like a mile
(46:38):
a minute. That's sixty. So the final few things you
should think about, um, make sure that you're always prepared
to not do anything that doesn't feel right, and not
be afraid to back down. That's a big one is
to be able saying no, this isn't good because I
don't want to die. I don't want to base jump
successfully is the goal, right, Um, And this one is
(46:59):
horror trying. Um, tell your family and write a sealed
letter to your friends and family on the event that
you die, explaining exactly why you have decided to take
up base jumping and what you get out of it,
and why you're willing to risk death. Give sealed copies
to your family and your base mentor to open in
the event of death. Right, and then make at least
(47:21):
two hundred skydives as his and then sort of mimic
base jumping as much as you can, like wait as
long as you can to open, do a lot of tracking,
call it max tracking. Uh, find a mentor, get a
good base rig and he suggests spending the money and
taking an actual class from a manufacturer they have called
(47:43):
first jump course classes. And um, he said, even if
you have a mentor, even if you've done it a
hundred times, just spend the money and make sure you
know how to do the rigs and everything correctly. Wise
words yelloids, Danny I, yello, UM, base jumping expert. Do
you got anything else? They got nothing else. If you
(48:05):
want to know more about basse jumping, type those words
into the search bar how stuff works dot Com look
up Paul A Yellow Yes, and Paul Fieg and Mike
Figgus Yeah. And then don't basse jump. Yeah, just stay
at home and watch base jumping videos. You can do
that all day long. Um. And since I said search bar,
I think somewhere in there it's time for a listener mail.
(48:27):
I don't think anyone's ever died watching a bass jumping video.
Have they? You could, Yeah, but it's probably because you
you just eating seven or eight pounds of taco bell,
you know what I mean. That's it for me, all right.
I'm gonna call this New Zealand my New Zealand gang,
the Mongrel Mob. Hey, guys, them from Wellington. I thought
(48:49):
i'd cheer some light on one of the New Zealand's
more prominent gangs, the Mongrel Mob. They began when a
group of mainly European utes from Wellington and Hawk's Bay
in the nineteen sixties. The Mob whereas red regalia, often
fusing the cultural tattoo work of the Maori people. I
feel like we talked about them in the Maori episode.
(49:09):
We may have the Mongrel Mob either that is it
a motorcycle gang? M I don't know. I'm sure some
of them have motorcycles, so I think we did talk
about them in the Maori episode. I think they're a
Vespa gang. They're Vespa to there's one driving and then
one running side saddle and back. Yeah. Um uh, as
(49:30):
well as portraits of bulldogs with their tattoos and occasionally
Nazi symbols that are synonymous with the gang, such as
swastikas and the slanted s S symbolo yeah, that are
said to be included to provide a contradiction with the
British symbol of the bulldog. No. No, it makes sense
like most gangs of Mongrel Mob is involved in organized
crime and thus has been associated with an aggressive and
(49:51):
feared stereotype of how people. These people live their lives.
You just said stereotype like a New Zealander, did I? Yeah,
you went stereotype weird. Maybe it's how we spelled it, Nope,
stereo type. What I think is overlooked though, guys, is
uh the communal family roles that gangs or chapters inherit
(50:11):
because of the need of an individual, and we did
talk about that some. Yeah, I don't know how you
got that as overlooked, buddy, He's a nice fellow. At
least in some parts of New Zealand, the mob has
scene as an ingrained part of the community and a
source of solidarity. Uh. And I've thrown a link to
a Vice article below about a photographer who spent eight
years with the mob documenting and taking portraits. Amazing portraits
(50:34):
UM of some of his members, and Vice is awesome,
so we'll always plug them. So just look up portraits
of New Zealand's Mighty Mongrel Mob from Vice dot com.
It's pretty neat. And he said, thanks guys, love your work.
You've killed a lot of potential silence over the years.
Professional silence killers band name killer with bare hand regards
(50:56):
from the Long White Cloud. I guess that's New Zealand stereotype.
Sam Vander Cult, great name, Yeah, excellent name. Throw a
little dutchiness in there, great name Dutch tilt Fander Cult.
Thanks a lot, Sam. Also, somebody I don't know who
(51:16):
it was, so I apologize to you if you're listening,
tweeted to us. Um an article that I have yet
to read but looks awesome. It's about Disney gangs. What
I will send it to you? No serious. I was
looking over it and I'm like, is this just like
a hoax? Gangs that hang out in Disney World and
rough people up or gangs that wear Mickey Mouse costumes.
(51:39):
I don't think they rough people up. They don't wear
Mickey Mouse costumes, but they wear like they'll have like
Disney Gang stuff tattooed on them. They wear like Disney
biker jackets with like their gang symbols have Mickey Mouse involved,
and they're like Disney Gang. So Disney centered gangs. So
you're talking about Holly from stuff you miss in history class.
If she isn't remember, then she at least knows a member.
(52:02):
There's no way she doesn't, or she just didn't know
about it yet. There's no way she's too into Disney. Agreed.
Uh So, if you want to get in touch with
us to let us know about a gang in your area,
or a base jump that you did, or whatever, you
can tweak to us at s Y s K podcast.
You can join us on Facebook dot com slash stuff
(52:24):
you should know you can send us an email to
stuff Podcasts at how stuff works dot com and has
always joined us at her home on the web. Stuff
you Should Know dot com for more on this and
thousands of other topics. Does it How stuff works dot com.
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