November 29, 2012 • 49 mins
Entrances to the underworld have been places of wonder for eons, and humans have ventured into caves to sleep, hunt, create art and explore. Thanks to the hobby of caving, that tradition continues today. Bonus: Chuck discusses his caving experience.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to you stuff you should know from house stuff
works dot com. Hey, buddy, if you don't mind if
I plug my November page real quick, please do. I
am growing a mustache this month for November for uh
for cancer research, specifically male prostate cancer research. That's right.
(00:26):
And you can donate to my team, which would be
pretty cool because you know, you get a free podcast
and it'd be nice to grow a little money towards
cancer research in the name of nice here, give him
some money. He's growing on facial here to help a
charitable organization engage in really important scientific research. That's right.
(00:46):
And you can go to mobro dot c O slash
Charles Bryant and that's my page, or just go to
the November site. Type in Charles Bryan in the search
bar and look for the picture of me. There's only
a couple of ups out there. Check's wearing a red shirt.
That's right. Yeah, um, so what is that again? That's
mo bro dot CEO slash Charles Bryant. Yes, thank you
(01:07):
in advance. Yeah, that's nice, Chuck. All right, let's get
to it. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. Um,
I'm an MC of sorts. Not the cool kind, the
boring kind with me is always is em C Charles W.
Chuck Bryant, he's the same kind of MC that I am.
Suck EM No, no, not even We're not even suck mcs.
(01:28):
We're too square for that even maybe sucker mcs, but
certainly not with an A. I'm a sucker, right MC, Yeah,
too square to be a sucker? That is a T shirt.
Well i'll bet it is now number two the square shape.
Huh number two the letter B or two squared two
with two to the second path. Too square to be
(01:51):
a sucker. Yeah, that's it. Yep, you've pretty we've reached
the point where you say stuff and people make T
shirts of it. One of these though, we're gonna hit
and we can quit this whole podcast in game retire,
never will be rich old men podcasting still if only uh, hey, Chuck, Hey,
(02:12):
are you doing well? Yeah? You know, I think, um,
I remember that you actually have done this before what
we're about to talk about, um, and uh you had
a good time into Yeah. I'll be offering my personal
insights along the way. But I was hoping so that's
what I was getting at. Um. Hey, so I read
this article in Slate. It's called America's Ancient Cave Art.
(02:33):
And back in the late seventies, there were a couple
of friends who worked for the U. S. Forestry Service
and I think Tennessee, and Um, they were running around,
um the forest, and they found a cave and they
started to explore it. And they went into it and
they noticed, like there were all these weird like scratches
on the wall. And when they looked a little closer, like, wait,
(02:54):
that's not a scratch, that's a snake with horns, and
that's a bird that like is tearing the head off
of something else. And one of them luckily realized that
these are all images associated with what's called the Southeastern
Ceremonial Complex, or more coolly named the Southern Death Cult,
which sprung up around the southeastern United States inexplicably about
(03:18):
years ago. There's like this um what what the author
of the article called a religious outbreak that they have
no idea where it came from. But um, the weird
thing about this is that they these these um drawings
were completely preserved, like you could still smear the charcoal. Um.
They and even though they were anywhere from five and
then they found some others that are up to like
(03:40):
six thousand years old, and they're all in this enormous,
elaborate cave system in the southeastern United States, specifically the
Cumberland Plateau in Tennessee, UM. But what's most remarkable, aside
from their preservation, is that some of these are like
a mile into the cave. So some of the mississipp
In people were running around walking a mile into a
(04:03):
cave to like leave this art and it was perfectly preserved.
That's pretty cool, even though almost every other trace of
this religious outbreak, the Southern Death Cult is just gone.
And that cool. That's awesome. So I bring that up
because that is one of the big reasons that people
go caving, which ultimately is entering a cave. Once you
(04:23):
walk into a cave, you're caving, right, Yeah, I think so.
Uh one in Southern Death Cult. The original name of
the cult the band, Yes, it was, and they changed
it so much better. Well, I mean, that's one of
the coolest names anyone's ever come up with. And it's
an archaeological term. Yeah, so it's got just you know,
(04:44):
academic meaning as well. All right, Well, aside from the
poor name, change. I like the band. Yeah, it's a
good band I used to do. You don't anymore, Well,
I mean it's just that sort of represented like high
school to me in early college. They still hold up.
Yeah it's not I don't like it, you know. Yeah,
Billy Duffy plays a main guitar. All right, so spe lunking.
(05:07):
Should we go ahead and get this out of the way.
That's that's another word for caving. But um been't there
an Atari game named Blanker? I think so. But cavers
don't really use that term a lot. They use it derogatorially. Yeah,
I think that is the case. I'm trying to remember
because I went caving, Like you said, go ahead and
set that up for the rest of the show. With
(05:29):
my former neighbor, Um, who was a fan of the show.
For you guys have a spat. We don't talk anymore.
I refused to acknowledge as president. No, he moved, Um,
But the other way that happened, yeah, yeah, he Um
he lived across the street and Um left a letter
my mailbox one day and it was like, hey, dude,
I heard you mentioned. It might have been after the
biospil speleology, which we'll touch on it again said I'm
(05:53):
experienced caver. Me and my buddy would love to take
you and you guys too, you and yeah, yeah we
were invited. Originally it was all more of us and
it ended up being just me. Right the day came,
I was like, let's see crawl around in the cold
in the cave, get wet and muddy. I'm gonna stay home. Boy.
After I did it, I was like, I'm so glad
Emily and you, me and Josh didn't come. Just you
(06:14):
guys wouldn't like that. Yeah, there's a good picture of
you on Facebook where you're covered in mud. Yeah, I'll
post more pictures when this comes out, but yeah, I'll
touch it on as we go. But the first thing
I want to point out is that a cave can
be a thing that you picture when you picture a cave,
which is like you're walking along and there's a big,
huge entrance that you're looking at and you walk in,
or in this case, it can be a little hole
(06:37):
in the ground, which is when I walked by, I
was like, that that's where we're going, and he was
like yeah. I was like, really, it's like a two
foot little hole in the ground. Yeah, it looked like, um,
maybe a place where foxes livers. Yeah, and he's like,
now that's how you get in there. I was like, okay,
you're like, that's how you get in their pal But
it ended up being, aside from the most physically challenging
(06:59):
thing I've ever done, one of the coolest things I've done.
It was very difficult, but you, I mean, you nail
it on the head. The cave is basically any opening
from the surface below ground, Yeah, into the earth right
and um. For the most part, when we think of
a cave, it's part of something called the karst landscape,
which is characterized by like sink holes, underground aquifers, um,
(07:21):
subtranean drainage, caves, a cave system. That's part that's it's
technically called a karst landscape. Yeah. And well, once you
read that, you kind of take it for granted, but
if you never really thought about it. I hadn't never
thought about it. I was like, well, why are these
caves even here? You know, someone didn't come in here
and carve these out. No, but some natural processes, dude,
(07:42):
that's right. There's actually um four main ways that caves
are created, right, Yeah, most caves um are limestone caves,
and you get those when rainwater uh seeps down through
the soil, picks up some C O two along the
way and that forms carbonic acid, which is kind of weak.
It is, but if you if you have carbon carbonic
(08:02):
acid present in the same area for eons, Yeah, it's
going to eventually eat away at even stone, Yeah, like limestone,
And that's basically what happens. It either collects there for
a long time or is um rushed in there by
rain and uh corrosion. Yeah, that's what happens. It's erosion
through abrasion. Through abrasion just basically rain will running over
(08:26):
something long enough, it's gonna erode it. And that's how
you get a cave one way. Yeah, that's the that's
the main way. I think. Um, you've got extreme of files,
which is kind of cool. We're still we're starting to realize,
you know. I think we talked about them in the
Are we All Marson's episode? Yeah, we have an article
on extreme of files that I have earmarked for us.
(08:46):
That's pretty good. Um. They are basically bacteria that live
and thrive in um toxic environments like places where nothing
else lives. High sulfuric content are really high, temperatures are
really really low, temperatures are just Yeah, they're the only
things that live there. UM, and they are starting to
realize that they have a pretty big impact on cave formation.
(09:08):
For example, there's some that um like to eat oil underground.
I never knew this, and they eat and eat, and
then they shoot ducks of sulfi gas, right, And the
sulfi gas goes up and up and up as gases
wants to do, and it travels through UM. The through
groundwater picks up oxygen and becomes sulfuric acid, and that
(09:33):
really starts to eat away at caves. Yeah, that's probably
more so I think than yeah, which is you probably
want to look out for the sulfuric acid lake in
a cave system if you're ever caving, I would say so.
So that's number two. Um, see sea caves, you'll see
a lot UM. If you ever do sea kayaking and
stuff around the island, you might venture into a sea cave.
It's pretty cool. Um. They are basically just water pounding
(09:58):
away at these seaside cliffs to the point where they
formed caves pretty easy. Yeah, did you ever see the Orphanage,
the Gearmo del Toro movie. No, dude, you've not seen that.
I almost watched it last week. That is one of
the best ghost movies ever made. Yeah. I was by
myself and I wanted to watch something scary because it
(10:20):
was and I searched around on the internet for like,
what's a really good scary movie, not some crappy scary movie,
and that was on the list. And I ended up
searching and researching for so long. They didn't watch anything,
went to sleep. You should have asked me or go
on to the social media's like. Yeah. Once, I was
like a Christmas scary movies and got in a conversation
(10:42):
with Joe Randazzo and like a couple of other people
and ended up with this list of like great horror
movies and all of them panned out awesomely. That, dude,
that was another one recommended. But dude, it is it's
just like the Spanish Civil War era orphan No, no, no,
that's um what is that one called? I know the
(11:04):
one you're talking about. I saw that one. That's okay.
Compared to the Orphanage, it might as well have been
like Pee Wee's Playhouse. Hey, I like peewee, know, I
mean as far as light fair goes. Ah, yeah, okay,
it's just so much better watching it. Yeah, and watch
Us of the Devil too, It's pretty good. I think
you like that a lot. Yeah, I don't. I like
(11:24):
good scary. I don't like all that crappy saw like stuff,
you know, like shocking, torture, porn crap. I like the
first couple sauce. Alright, So that's the third wave. That well,
that was a good one. The fourth um is lava tubes.
You know, when lava comes up through a volcano and
(11:45):
it shoots up, if the conditions are right, the outer
part will cool more quickly than the creamy, gooey middle. Uh.
And when that happens that our shell will come together
and form this coherent crust, and the stuff in the
middle might fall back down. Right, You got yourself a tube.
You have a tube of lava. Now, if at the
(12:06):
top of this that that top caves in or crumbles
all of a sudden, you have an entrance, and the
lava tube is now a cave. Because again, cave is
any entry from the above ground to hell. I imagine
the lava tube caves are pretty interesting to explore. But
I'm a limestone guy. Well, I mean, you don't spend
(12:27):
much time in Hawaii. If you did, I'll bet you'd
be a lava tube guy too. Yeah, you're probably right,
all right. So once you're in the cave, you're gonna
notice a couple of things straight away. Um, stillactites and
stillac mites. Okay, which is which? Man? I feel like
we have a golden opportunity to explain this to thousands
and thousands and hundreds of thousands of people. It's very easy.
There's a lot of little ways you can remember. Maybe
(12:49):
millions of people still lack tights, and that is where
the sea are the ones that hang down. And you
can remember that by maybe hold on tight, still lack tight.
They gotta hold on tight. Yeah, because it's not stillag
tight and stillag tight or stalac mite and stalagmite. It's
stillack tight with the sea and then stalagmite with the
(13:11):
G and M. So that helps too, because you have
C for ceiling or G for ground. Great, there you
just did it, or T for top. If that helps you,
we give you three ways to remember this. I don't
think that we're I don't I think I messed it up.
This is so simple for a second and then I
I'm sorry everyone. So stalactites hang down, Stalagmites come up
(13:35):
from the bottom. Uh. They are speliotherms, which is a
K formation. And this happens when um carbonic acid eats
away at this limestone, it starts dripping the calcite mineral
from rain water. Yeah, it's just kind of trickling in
and it's just two centuries. Yeah, And as it is,
it's depositing that calcite, right. Yeah, So it drips down
(13:56):
from the top, so it forms and then it will
you know, not drip up, but collect and form up
from the bottom. Sometimes they'll meet and form a column,
which is really cool. But these things grow at a
rate of a quarter inch to an inch per century. Wow,
So you can't sit around and watch a stalactite form.
That is basically so, the rain water comes down and
(14:18):
drips down, and whatever deposits are at the top going
down is a stalac tight, that's right. And it drifts
down under the ground and builds a formation that grows
up towards the top. Yes, that's a stalag might and
that's why you usually find them together. And stillast scene
is actually the Greek derivative and means to drip. Really,
(14:43):
so there you have it. And uh, they did mention
I look these up because I've never seen them other uh,
speleotherms like fried eggs and bacon. Did you look these up?
It's pretty neat. It looks like a fried egg. It's
the big formation. Yeah, it looks like a you know,
it's it's large and round and has a center that's
very round as well. And then the bacon stuff, it
(15:05):
looks like bacon strips. It's like, you know, these little
strip like formations that have different colored patterns that look like,
you know, the fatty part of the bacon and the
meaty part, and it looks like Fridays and bacons. I
feel like I saw the Friday eggs warm before you
probably have. When I saw it, I was like, oh,
that's what that is, Friday's and bacon. I had to
see it because the the the name wasn't descriptive enough. Yeah,
(15:29):
and that's just this just proves that speleologists are fun
loving people. Right, So while you're in the cave, you're
probably going to run into certain kinds of animals, and
as speleologists love to do, they've classified these things in
the categories, right. Yeah, we talked about these in Biospeleology.
Creepy cave dwelling things. Yeah. If you haven't heard that
(15:50):
UM episode, go check it out. It's all about caves
and the stuff living in caves. It's really cool. UM.
But the troglzines, those are temporary visitors, like a bear
maybe hibernating in a cave. It's they live most of
their life outside of the cave and coming for shelter
food or like that. Then there's a trougle of files.
That means they love the trog they do. They spend
(16:13):
most of their life there, but they will come out
some for food. Yeah, but they spend most of their
lives in the cave, right Yeah. Salamander's crickets, uh Daddy
long Legs and other spiders love them. And then there's
the trougle of bites. Yeah. Those are ones who live
their entire lives within the dark zone of the cave
(16:34):
and usually they don't have eyes, and apparently without exception,
they're all blind, like the Prometheus salamander. Yeah, I remember
that thing, the ozark blind salamander, the Tooth Cave spider,
which isn't as creepy looking as it sounds. I expected
to see, like, you know, some something out of a
like B movie, but it was just a little skinny spider.
(16:56):
But if you name something the tooth cave spider, you
expect some like really scary looking thing, yeah, or something
with glasses and huge buck teeth. Yeah. Uh, same with
the tooth cave beetle. And then and they're also blind
fish and shrimp and all manner of little white, creepy creatures.
They lack pigment because they don't need it, Like, screw pigment.
(17:17):
What do we need that for? Um? And then I
this kind of stuck out to me, the idea that
it's always the average annual temperature of the surface above
a cave within the cave. So if it's the average
temperature over the course of an entire year in the
spot above a cave is sixty degrees, it's always sixty
degrees in the cave. Not true, that's not true. No,
(17:39):
So this this the the temperatures in a cave are
very very stable. Um. But you know, depending on how
how deep it is. Closer you get to the center
of the earth, the warmer it gets so that has
an effect. And just like above ground with the sun warming, um,
the surface differently causes weather, different amounts of heat in
(18:02):
inside a cave. Cause what we wouldn't recognize is weather,
but actual weather itself. So is this wrong? Yes, the
way it stated, it's always the average annual temperature. Yeah,
but generally it is. Yeah, it's usually very stable and
it's very close to that. But we're finding now that
there is actual weather that happens in a cave, just
(18:22):
like there we found out there's seasons on the bottom
of the sea floor like that. It seems like the
same thing to us, but there's actually like seasons and
changes that we don't We didn't recognize because we don't
think of it that way. Uh, caves um sometimes can
be dry and dusty. I guess it all depends on
where you are in the country. Um. The one I
(18:43):
went to, and like many caves are wet and muddy,
and I was not expecting that. I was not expecting
a lot of what I encountered. Actually, really, you weren't.
Were you prepared for a wet money? Oh yeah, I
mean they told me what to wear and we'll get
into all that stuff. But um, I just I don't know.
I thought it was gonna be walking into a thing
and then walking around, sort of like the kid caves
(19:05):
that you can take the whole family too. But um, yeah,
it wasn't like that at all. It was being dropped
into a muddy, wet, cold hell. Yeah. And you looked
like it too, man afterwards, like you were really glad
to be top side again. It was weird coming out,
I'll say that. So why did you go? Why would
anybody go? What's the allure of caving? Uh? The unknown
(19:27):
and the thrill of discovery. Well, it's true though, that's
what the article says. But I don't mean to be glib.
It is very cool and way different down there, Like
you get a sense that it is. It is not
the same top side as it is in the bowels
of the earth. Very different place and very cool to experience. Yeah, firsthand.
(19:47):
And as we mentioned, there's a lot of good opportunity
for cave archaeology because the climate and temperature in a
cave is so stable. Things are Things left in caves
are really really well preserved. Yeah, and you know they're
the caves were a good place for ancient rituals and
things and um, they mentioned that the cave art in France.
(20:09):
Have you seen this stuff? Yeah, holy cow, it's like
it looks like artwork painted on canvas, some of it does.
It's not like, you know, just scratchy cave drawings. Like
this stuff is really beautiful. And uh they found this
um in nineteen forty. They discovered this in France from
(20:30):
the Paleolithic era, seventeen and twenty years old and over
two thousand figures drawn. And it's like, from what I understand,
like the granddaddy of all cave drawing scores was here
in France. Um, here in France. There in France. Well
there's also another one called Chauvet Cave in France, and
that's what Herzog's Cave have Forgotten Dreams? Is that, Oh
(20:54):
you didn't. I'll watch anything that he's in the ordinarrates
he's a bad guy and is it the new Bond? Now?
Is that right? Now? He's a bad guy in some
movie coming up? And I was like, oh, that's brilliant. Yeah, like,
no one sounds more diabolical than for an earths all. Yeah,
it's perfect. Um, but yeah, no, that's that's a good
one too. And I think they shot it in three
(21:15):
D as well. It's supposed to be like really good. Um,
but yeah, check that one out. It's it's very interesting
because they figure out that, Um, they're like, why why
would these idiots draw bison with eight legs? Was there
an eight legged bison back then? And then somebody figured
out that if you look at it by by torchlight,
not electric torch but real fire torches, it move. It moves.
(21:37):
Oh my god, that is so cool. Yeah, wow, that's awesome.
Uh yeah, I highly recommend you guys go and google
image these um L A S c A U X
France and it's all over the place. And what was
the other one? Chauve h u v e T. Yeah,
very cool stuff and c have forgotten dreams if you're
into that. I mean, it's a lot of cattle drawings, granted,
(21:59):
but um, you know it's better than you would think,
You're right, considering they're doing this on a cave twenty
years ago. Right. Uh. There's also bio speleology, which we
talked about at length and we don't need to really
get into here again, go listen to the biospeleology episode.
But that's another reason people go through caves. But ultimately
(22:20):
I think like the first sentence was the right one.
It's like the thrill of discovery and unknown. Yeah, there's
so few people doing any actual caving and enough caves
out there that like, you've got a pretty good shot
of finding something that no one else has seen for
ten thousand years or maybe ever. Yeah, you know that's
pretty cool. Uh, And cavers to um, part of being
(22:41):
a a caver or a speleologist is being into conservation
and preservation. And that's one thing I learned from my
buddy Eric and his friend there. They were like casual
speed lunkers that were in there, clearly didn't know what
they were doing, weren't dressed for it, didn't have the
proper equipment. And of course these guys are just like
(23:03):
these are the people that get us in trouble or
that get in trouble that we need to come help
get out of trouble. Uh. But I think serious cavers
are uniformly way into the preserving the cave. Like they
don't just go and cave and like, yeah, that was cool,
Like they're all into the meetings and the preservation. A
lot of them do the volunteer for church and rescue
(23:25):
and stuff like that, Like they really get into it. Yeah,
it's not a casual affair, no, And I that that
that idea actually extends to um urban spelunking or urban exploration.
Um yeah, where you um you enter something like a
sewer system or an abandoned building or something like that.
But you're One of the big rules is like you
(23:47):
can't break an inner. You can enter somebody else has
already like cut a hole in the chain link fence.
You go through that hole. You can't cut that hole yourself,
and you don't take anything. You you preserve the places
exactly the way it was. And we actually have I think,
what's a new article on the site that's awesome ten
top ten cities for urban exploration. It's like got all
(24:08):
these attractions of like where to go in this city
and like cool, well Francis the catacombs, I know, we're
really popular. Um and I did a little bit of
that in Florida in um Fort Pickens in Pensacola, Oh,
the Fort Pickens Catacombs. Well, the Fort Pickens battery. It
was like you know civil war battery. Yeah, and um,
I think it's all blocked off now. But at the time,
(24:30):
like the metal bars were bent enough where you could
get through, and me and my brother and my brother
in law like may torches and like went all through
the stuff, you know, stuff written on the walls, like
from the Civil War, and then stuff written on the
walls clearly more modern, uh in nature, but just graffitian
stuff and beer cans. But it was just neat walking around.
(24:50):
It's cool. Um, what else, Chuck, how do you get started? Yeah?
I guess if this podcast tickles your fancy, then you
may want to know how to get into this. Yeah.
A lot of people might be into the very easy
guided you walk in and you walk around type of experience. Right,
(25:11):
take the kids. There's nothing wrong with it. You can
still learn a lot, you know, it's not a cop
out like Carl's Bad caverns and like the real touristy ones.
They're great. Yeah. Have you ever been there? I haven't
been there. I've been to Ruby Falls. You mean I
went Ruby Falls? Is nice? It was, yeah, and there
were plenty of people running around. Was very well lit yeah,
um safe yeah, and then but it was so awesome
(25:33):
getting to the falls. Yeah, yeah, I mean like it
was great. It was total. I think part of the
reason I appreciated it so much because I took it
for what it was. It was like this, this is tourism,
you know, but it's also very cool. Yeah. I mean
you're walking underneath a fault line in the earth. Yeah,
it's really kind of You can sell t shirts afterward,
but it's still very cool to be in there. Um,
(25:55):
So you can do that. You can go to these
like really big touristy ones and still get a nice variance,
or you can get a guided tour for you know,
a little more um intense experience. Have you been in
Carlsbake camera? Yeah, okay, Yeah, it's nice's lovely. It's like
red carpet everywhere. Yes, couches everything. Um. But they do
(26:19):
mention in this article that kids are great to take
into caves. They love that kind of stuff. Obviously you
want to keep an eye on them because it's pretty
easy to get lost in there. Yeah. But at these
at these big major attractions, they they take care of you.
You know, they're not gonna let your kids go off
and live with the salamanders. Yeah, and you've got a
guide for the guided tour, but even self guided tours
(26:39):
are it's usually like paved or clearly marked trail, like
you're you're gonna have a lot of trouble getting lost
if you get off of this trail, um or if
you stay on the trail. I should say, Yeah, I
went to a concert in a cave one time. Yeah,
and Tennessee, they man, what's the name of It's something
caverns and I can't remember now, but it was the
(26:59):
Litill Rejuice played their last show ever in this cave
and they have regular shows. They're like usually it's like
bluegrass and stuff, but it's awesome, Like you you know,
you park in this big field and then it's one
of these where you walk into a huge opening and
there's big paths, but you know, you walk like probably
half a mile down in there, and then it opens
up to this huge open room and there's a stage
(27:22):
and there's lights and everything. That's cool, really cool. Experienced
the green rooms like there, I don't know, it's probably brown. Right,
just sit on that rock. We'll bring you some shrimp. Yeah,
it was really very cool show. Though I might post
pictures of that too. Wow, this is gonna be a
picture of bananda. Um. Then there's cave diving. Yes, probably
(27:44):
the most dangerous thing my person can do. We can't
overstate that enough. Like even these caver dudes that I
was with, their hardcore they were like, those people are crazy. Yeah,
And if you're a hardcore scuba diver, even a wreck diver,
that doesn't mean you're a cave diver. No, cave diver
is its own thing. Yeah, and like it's it's very
(28:05):
easy to die. In two twelve seven people already died
in cave diving twelve now, wow, three of them in
three different days, three consecutive days in Florida, in three
different incidents. Yeah, in March. Yeah, it's scary. And asked Eric.
I was like, well why you know, what's the big deal?
And he was like, dude, you're just you gotta be
crazy to do it. And he's like, you are underground, underwater,
(28:29):
and it's very easy to get lost and turned around,
and you've only got so much air. They say that
to never like to try and exit with half a
tank of air still or whatever. It was not air,
what is it? It's compressed, compressed, just like an air mix,
but it's generally air. Yeah, But they're like, you don't
want to go below half a tank ever, that's just scary.
(28:51):
And he took me after we went caving, he took
me to the entry point for the cave diving nearby,
and it's this little probably you know, tin foot by
tin foot whole, you know, a little pool, but it's
like infinitely deep and it's like wow, so you can
jump in and just sort of waddle around, or there's
below that there's the tube where you enter, and it
(29:14):
just seems like the scariest thing ever, right with a
tank of air on your back that could be punctured
by anything, because it's not like there's not stalactites hanging down.
Utterly frightening to me. Um that said, if you're in
a cave diving, you go through the certification and you
like are into that kind of thing. There's some awesome
cave diving like sinote Is any sinote Um. And there's
(29:39):
a place in that I missed when we were talking
about the Abandoned Minds podcast. There's a place called Bond
Terror Mine, Missouri, and it's an old lead mine that
was in production for like a hundred years and then
they closed it down in nineteen sixty and they didn't
remove anything there's like magazines, all this stuff still sitting around,
(29:59):
and they lotted it with like a billion gallons of
crystal clear water. Really, and you can go scuba dive.
You can cave dive this abandoned mine now and see
there's like an old movie theater down there. There's mind
cars elevator. Yeah, it's pretty cool. That's awesome. Yeah, but
it's like the visibility is just limitless. I wonder if
(30:20):
that's slightly safer. I think it's pretty heavily guided as
well as tours go, So if you're gonna start somewhere,
that would probably be a good place. Yeah. I saw
a couple of dudes come out of the whole um.
Then all the cavers know each other, it seems like
because they knew these guys and they were like, oh, yeah,
it's good. You know, these guys are real nice. And
then they turned around they're like they're nuts, these guys
(30:43):
are crazy. Um. Oh, so all the cavers know each
other because they're all members of Grottos, right, Yeah, it
definitely seems like a close knit community, right, Like they're
all on each other that have each other's contact info
because you know, when someone gets lost, they send out,
you know, like who can and help? Basically, who's free
tomorrow to come and find these idiots tomorrow they're in
(31:05):
trouble if it's tomorrow, that's true. But well, a grotto
is a caving club, right, and there are any legitimate
caving club is sanctioned by the National Speleological Society, and
there's about two d caving clubs or grottos in the US.
Nice good people. So if if you're a member of
a grotto, if you're a caver, what are some of
(31:27):
the things that you're gonna need. You're already into this,
You're like, come on, let's go. What are we gonna do? What?
What do I need to take with me? Well, you
want to take three forms of light um, and plenty
of backup batteries and take closed sticks, take the headlamps,
take lighters, even though those will get wet. Um. You know,
you can bag him in the dry bag. But take
(31:47):
as many forms of light as you feel comfortable with.
That's not less than three, and not only I took
like four or five flocks. That's smart. Yeah, I just
and I knew I was gonna be fine, but I
was just like, you know what, I'm going into the
depths of the earth. I want to have lots of
light at my disposal, right, and you want to also
have lots of batteries and extra bulbs for those lights,
just because the light, your light is the number one
(32:10):
most important thing when you're caving. That's the number one
most important piece of equipment. Yeah, and my buddy Eric
had a carbide lamp, which, um, you know, back in
the day with like even car headlights and lights on
the fronts of houses. Um, it wasn't always a gas lamp.
Sometimes it was carbide and old school cavers used these things.
(32:31):
And it's basically a chemical reaction. Um. It burns a
seedylene gas and it's created from a reaction of calcium
carbide with water. So he had this, uh, this pod
that he carried on his belt that had carbide pellets
in it and it would drip water down and create
the gas and it fed it up through a tube
(32:53):
connected to the you know, the the gas lamp that
he's wearing on his head. And it was really cool.
The other guy didn't have one, but Eric was used it,
and um, the light that it gives is just really
very illuminating. It's not like a you know how incandescent
light is just so specific, even if it's like a
broad range, it's not like having a flame. So this
(33:16):
thing really warn't like warms up the cave. And it
does actually warm it um slightly, but just generally with
light warmth. It's just like the cave was illuminated, not
like a flashlight shining on something very cool and um,
very durable. Like if you take care of these things,
they're a little finicky, but if you take care of them,
(33:36):
you can have them like your whole life. Sounds kind
of uh no, it's very old school. Yeah, it's old
angled and you just look cool. Eric looked like a
cool guy with this tube running out of his head
and flicking the little lighter switch. And do you look
cooler than I did with my Yeah, with my glow stick. Um.
So you need light, you need light. You need a helmet,
(33:58):
and you want your helmet to be so if I
by the Union International Day Associations del peace. Yes, Jerry
just laughed. There. You want to helmet, you want like
and this is if you if you want to do
it right like and safely. We we saw morons and
tank tops and shorts walking around and crawling around and
(34:22):
you know these guys are just rolling their eyes, are
like those are the people that get hurt and get lost. Um.
We had kneepads and elbow pads, helmets, Um. As far
as safety gear, that was pretty much it, and that
they have like rope and stuff just in case. Um,
and you want to dress appropriately avoid cotton. Well, if
(34:43):
you are wearing cotton, you want to wear under layers
of synthetics. Yes, snag less easily, they dry more quickly. Yeah. Yeah,
I would imagine you just want to avoid cotton altogether
as possible. Yeah. I were one of those like synthetic
wicking shirts, you know, the workout shirts. Um, but you
do you want to dress in layers because it's cold
(35:03):
in there. Yeah, but you know you you may raise
your heart right here there and you may get a
little warm. That definitely makes my heart right. Um, you're
gonna get wet most likely. Um. You can be in
the dry, dusty cave, but chances are you gonna get wet. Uh.
There were times where we were up to our chest
in a crevice about two ft wide, up to our
(35:24):
chest and water and it's intimidating. It's like I'm far
away from anybody, and like, what if this water rises?
I mean it didn't, but you know what if it
started raining. These things can happen pretty fast down there,
and uh so, I mean we were literally soaked through
the bone. It's like getting a swimming pool and then
you get out and you're covered in mud and you're
(35:45):
supposed to climb things. That's like climbing a creased wall
of stone. I'm like, am I supposed to really do this?
And they were like pushing me by by but it
was sort of embarrassing, like pulling me. It felt like
a stuck pig at times. The only thing that made
it better was the warm glow of the carbine lamp.
And then they had the pancakes, you know where it's like,
(36:07):
you know, as I'm surprised my body fit in this
thing and you had to go like thirty feet across
this pancake. Well it's a it's where there's a top
rock and a bottom rock, so basically you just there's
like a foot of space to crawl through and you
can't even crawl. You're like inching, you know, using your
(36:27):
shoulder blades. I would have lost my You would not
have liked this pancake. And that's when I remember thinking, boy,
Josh would not have liked this part. It was uncomfortable
for me. And I don't even have issues with like,
you know, closed in spaces, but you feel like, what
if the earth shift did it and this thing just
smashed me. Yeah, of course you're a that and ship
(36:50):
like that, but I don't know it could. I'm down there,
I'm freaking out. Yeah, and you made it, though, I
don't want to spoil it here. You survived. Uh what else?
You need? Food? Sure? You want enough to last your
whole trip, and then some just in case, you know,
like you want gloves, you want a first aid kit. Yeah,
(37:10):
and here's my favorite part. So we were talking about
how um like you do you just preserve the environment
exactly as it was found. This also means that you're
not allowed to poop there. You can poop there, but
you're gonna poop into like a plastic container that you
can carry out with you because you take your urine
and your feces out of the cave with you. So
(37:32):
you want a plastic bottle to p intwo and a
like a good crushed proof container to poop into. I
did not poop. I wouldn't have pooped. I'd just be like, well,
I guess I'm not pooping today. Yeah, and you know
I was only down there a few hours. So if
you can. If you can't hold your poop a few hours,
you probablyouldn't be caving that day. Man, just put it off,
you know. Imagine getting sick down there, like vomity, No,
(37:56):
I'm not sure what you mean, the other kind o
like poopies. Yeah, yeah, that would be awful. Um. If
you have a cave map, which you should have, UM,
bring a few copies, put them in zip blocks, hand
them out to your friends that you're with, make sure
everyone knows what's going on. And you also want to
(38:17):
probably leave one at home with an X marks the
spot of your route. And um, well, at least it's
the cave safety, doesn't it. Yeah. Um, there's a lot
of precautions you should be taking before you set out. Yeah,
you know what you're doing. Do not take it lightly.
It's not like a hike, um that you can go on,
so it's it's definitely different. You should go with someone
(38:37):
that knows what they're doing. Um. At the very least, uh,
A couple of people would be even better. They say
not to go in really large groups because you don't
want to, like you could leave someone behind easier, Like
four to six people is a good number, and you
want to put the slowest person at the front of
the group. That would have been me. So everybody's kind
of pushing them from behind sometimes literally. Uh. And the
(39:01):
reason why is because you know that person doesn't get
left behind. That makes the whole groups together. And if
you're into um, passive aggressive peer pressure, that's great. That's
a great situation for everybody. Yeah, you know, no, you're fine.
That's what they kept saying to I know you're doing great, buddy,
(39:22):
And I was like, no, I'm not. I know, I'm
that guy. Um. You also, never ever want to go
caving alone. I don't think there's a better sentence that's
ever been spoken by anybody. Never go caving alone. That's
a good idea. Um. If you do get lost, they
say to stay put, and that it's better to stay
(39:42):
put instead of moving around because at least you're where
you last were. You are where you last were, well,
you're where you said you were going to be at
least roughly. If your light goes out in your alone,
start screaming at the top of your lungs until someone
comes and gets you. That's probably not a idea, but
they say not to freak out. But yeah, I would
(40:02):
definitely try and make a little noise, although you also
don't want to attract the descent hail billies. Yeah, they were,
they were mountain folk. You know. That was a lot
like a Lovecraft um story. I wasn't I can't remember
the name of it, but it's, uh, there's a whole
thing that takes place in the Alleghanies, maybe at Airondacks
(40:25):
one somewhere up there. Um, whereas this family that was
like kind of mountain folk came to inbreed and eventually
moved underground. Was one of his best ones. Man, he was.
We should do a podcast on him. Okay, what a
twisted mind. Well we did the Necronomic and remember, yeah,
but let's just do one in his life what made
him tick? Let's do it. Um. Oh, well, we're at
(40:49):
it real quick, dude. I found a real legitimate physics
paper or written by a legitimate physicist that explains how
certain of the in uh lovecrafts the Call of Cthulhu
can be explained away by quantum physics. Really yeah, it's
specifically a gravitational lensing. Yeah, to explain what cthulhu is
(41:12):
or know, like what happened to this guy who went
mad and described this crazy place that he went and
stumbled upon in the South Pacific um and then came
back and wrote about it. They were like, well, actually,
wait a minute, what he's talking about is a quantum bubble. Yeah,
it's pretty awesome. That's like it's it gets like he
(41:33):
works out math and formulas for explaining all of this
and that's but the rest of it is really interesting. Wow. Yeah,
I can't remember what it's called, but probably look up
the physics of the called cathula and I'm sure it'll
bring it up. That's a good one. That's awesome. So
what are some of the big problems you're going to
run into, Chuck, aside from getting lost or running out
of light. Hypothermia, right, always a concern when you're cold
(41:56):
and wet. Um, Like I said earlier, letting of passages,
which I was worried about the whole time, um slipping, falling.
I was slipping all over the place. It's gonna happen
in these muddy caves and you know, you just I
just sort of slid and try not to pick my
face up off the rock. But I definitely got bumps
and bruises and I was really sore the next day.
(42:20):
It was like mountain climbing, except under ground in the
mountain was slick and muddy. That's basically kind of what
it felt like rock climbing. It was not what I
thought it was gonna be. Once again, I can't stress
that enough. It's not It's not a stroll. Hey my
bologna se am. Yeah. It was pretty bad, um, but
(42:41):
super fun. And like I said, when you come out, man,
it's so weird once you've been underground for that long,
when you come out into the real world, everything is
just like hypercolorful and bright and just weird, and it's like, man,
there's a whole different world down there that most people
don't know about. Highly encourage it. Just be careful. Yeah,
I think that's good advice. Is there anything else in here? Um?
(43:03):
Always make sure that several people above ground know where
you went, know where you're going now when you expect
to be back. Um, and if somebody does get hurt,
never leave that person alone. A couple of people have
to stay with them. A couple of people have to
go top side. The people who go top side need
to leave some of their supplies and lightening stuff and
water back with the people who are hanging out with
(43:25):
the injured person. They need to know exactly where the
injured person is so they can tell other people who
can come get them out. Um. And Uh. They also
need to remember to take the car keys with them.
Really kind of important. You don't want to get all
the way out there and be like, can you imagine
let the keys in there? Uh. And then, like you said,
(43:47):
if you ever get lost, you don't want to panic.
You want to stay put. You want to rely on
your plan, your backup plan, which was letting a bunch
of people know that you were supposed to have been
home two hours ago and you weren't that right. And
there are thousands of caves in the US, um many
of which are very explorable. Just do your research beforehand,
(44:08):
go with someone that knows what they're doing. There are
more extreme caves around the world that are very cool
to look at. Ones that you actually can skydive into,
or not scott dive, but base jump into. Boy that
I can't imagine Scott having into one. I think I've seen, um,
I've seen video of people bass jumping into this Sutano
de LESCo and yeah it was. I think Planet Earth
(44:29):
the Discovery Show had that. Okay, yeah, that's it was.
It's way cool. And then like you talked about the nots,
those are very cool too. Um, just be careful. Have
we said that enough? I don't know. I don't think
you can, because, like I said, once you get there,
you realize they're just a bunch of dummies no matter
(44:50):
what that are ill prepared locals that are like, yeah,
I've been done here before. Good luck people. That's all
I've got. Okay, Well, if you want to learn more
about caping, you can type in spelunking in the search
bar at how stuff works dot com. Sp E l
U n K I n G. It will bring up
(45:12):
this article. Um and uh, I said spelunky, which means,
of course it's time for a listener. Now, I'm gonna
call this Pakistani pizza. We did a pizza podcast and
we got lots and lots and lots of feedback on that.
I knew that was going to be one of those
very ubiquitous food that people love to talk about UM
(45:34):
and this is from UM and I'm probably gonna put
your name, sorry, buddy uh nabi haa okay. And he
said that he listened to the Pizza Cast and but
he would drop some four one one on pizza in Pakistan.
He's originally from Orlando but currently lives in Karachi for university.
(45:55):
And he said, here, when you order a pizza, you
don't really order toppings, but you order us specific flavor um.
Although if you're at a pizza place you can order
specific toppings and build your on pizza. His Pizza Hut
calls it, so they are a little less cooperative when
you order for delivery, apparently in Pakistan. So he said,
your pizza will most likely have some form of chicken
on it, and then of course there's no ham because
(46:17):
it's a Muslim country. Pizza Hut alone serves chicken Tica,
Chicken Cary, Chicken Fajita Harry Chicken f caan Tica, and
the spicier fajita Sicilian as vell as vell as well
as the veggie schwarma Pepperoni and a couple of other
different beef flavors. That's so good chizza in Pakistan here's
(46:41):
the kicker for me, guys. Not only do they offer
their usual stuff crust with the rope of cheese, they
also serve beefy uh seekh kebab stuff crust. Yes, wow,
Papa John, Wait wait, I want this man? Sure you
understands what you just said? He said that they offer
a a pizza with a crust stuffed with kebab with
(47:04):
beef kebab. That sounds delightabul it does. Um. Papa John's
Uh offers a more traditional American pizza mini with their
various pseudo Italian names including Chicken Florentine, um Dominoes. Flavors
in Pakistan are a little more mainstream American, while they
do serve chicken tika as well as something called Golden
(47:25):
Feast or something to that effect, which as far as
I know involves corn, pineapple, and probably chicken. Along with
the corporate giants, there are plenty of local chains oddly
generic sounding names including Pizza Place, Pizza Point, Pizza, California Pizza,
and the list goes on and on. So just pizza.
It's it's a type of Unfortunately, my university and dorm
(47:47):
are located on the outskirts of town, not in the
ideal neighborhoods at these places usually don't deliver, but I
suppose that's fine. I don't hold her pizza very much
here as Pakistani pizza is kind of small and a
bit too cakey and very super bready, but it fills
you up, um and you never leave hungry. I just
had a fairly tasty contraption from pizza point around five
hours ago for dinner. I can still feel it in
(48:10):
my throat less and learn you did not go to
bed in the morning, sleep until the evening, didn't order
excess food anyways. Love the show uh and lots of
love that is uh, nabiha see it? Thanks a lot,
that's yeah, that's why to eat. Yeah see it? Well
maybe just said say, I bet it's a you'd we'll
(48:33):
find out right yep, thanks a lot for writing you.
Good luck with your studies, um and the pizza. Yeah.
If you're in a foreign land and you're listening to
us and you have some four one one uh, as
Nabia pointed out, NA be here right good. Uh. We
want to hear from it you uh, or we want
(48:54):
to hear about it from you. You can tweak to
us at uh That's Why sk Podcast. You can join
us on Facebook dot com slash Stuff you Should Know,
and you can send us an email to Stuff Podcast
at Discovery dot com. For more on this and thousands
of other topics, Is it how Stuff Works dot com
(49:20):
m
Welcome to you stuff you should know from house stuff
works dot com. Hey, buddy, if you don't mind if
I plug my November page real quick, please do. I
am growing a mustache this month for November for uh
for cancer research, specifically male prostate cancer research. That's right.
(00:26):
And you can donate to my team, which would be
pretty cool because you know, you get a free podcast
and it'd be nice to grow a little money towards
cancer research in the name of nice here, give him
some money. He's growing on facial here to help a
charitable organization engage in really important scientific research. That's right.
(00:46):
And you can go to mobro dot c O slash
Charles Bryant and that's my page, or just go to
the November site. Type in Charles Bryan in the search
bar and look for the picture of me. There's only
a couple of ups out there. Check's wearing a red shirt.
That's right. Yeah, um, so what is that again? That's
mo bro dot CEO slash Charles Bryant. Yes, thank you
(01:07):
in advance. Yeah, that's nice, Chuck. All right, let's get
to it. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. Um,
I'm an MC of sorts. Not the cool kind, the
boring kind with me is always is em C Charles W.
Chuck Bryant, he's the same kind of MC that I am.
Suck EM No, no, not even We're not even suck mcs.
(01:28):
We're too square for that even maybe sucker mcs, but
certainly not with an A. I'm a sucker, right MC, Yeah,
too square to be a sucker? That is a T shirt.
Well i'll bet it is now number two the square shape.
Huh number two the letter B or two squared two
with two to the second path. Too square to be
(01:51):
a sucker. Yeah, that's it. Yep, you've pretty we've reached
the point where you say stuff and people make T
shirts of it. One of these though, we're gonna hit
and we can quit this whole podcast in game retire,
never will be rich old men podcasting still if only uh, hey, Chuck, Hey,
(02:12):
are you doing well? Yeah? You know, I think, um,
I remember that you actually have done this before what
we're about to talk about, um, and uh you had
a good time into Yeah. I'll be offering my personal
insights along the way. But I was hoping so that's
what I was getting at. Um. Hey, so I read
this article in Slate. It's called America's Ancient Cave Art.
(02:33):
And back in the late seventies, there were a couple
of friends who worked for the U. S. Forestry Service
and I think Tennessee, and Um, they were running around,
um the forest, and they found a cave and they
started to explore it. And they went into it and
they noticed, like there were all these weird like scratches
on the wall. And when they looked a little closer, like, wait,
(02:54):
that's not a scratch, that's a snake with horns, and
that's a bird that like is tearing the head off
of something else. And one of them luckily realized that
these are all images associated with what's called the Southeastern
Ceremonial Complex, or more coolly named the Southern Death Cult,
which sprung up around the southeastern United States inexplicably about
(03:18):
years ago. There's like this um what what the author
of the article called a religious outbreak that they have
no idea where it came from. But um, the weird
thing about this is that they these these um drawings
were completely preserved, like you could still smear the charcoal. Um.
They and even though they were anywhere from five and
then they found some others that are up to like
(03:40):
six thousand years old, and they're all in this enormous,
elaborate cave system in the southeastern United States, specifically the
Cumberland Plateau in Tennessee, UM. But what's most remarkable, aside
from their preservation, is that some of these are like
a mile into the cave. So some of the mississipp
In people were running around walking a mile into a
(04:03):
cave to like leave this art and it was perfectly preserved.
That's pretty cool, even though almost every other trace of
this religious outbreak, the Southern Death Cult is just gone.
And that cool. That's awesome. So I bring that up
because that is one of the big reasons that people
go caving, which ultimately is entering a cave. Once you
(04:23):
walk into a cave, you're caving, right, Yeah, I think so.
Uh one in Southern Death Cult. The original name of
the cult the band, Yes, it was, and they changed
it so much better. Well, I mean, that's one of
the coolest names anyone's ever come up with. And it's
an archaeological term. Yeah, so it's got just you know,
(04:44):
academic meaning as well. All right, Well, aside from the
poor name, change. I like the band. Yeah, it's a
good band I used to do. You don't anymore, Well,
I mean it's just that sort of represented like high
school to me in early college. They still hold up.
Yeah it's not I don't like it, you know. Yeah,
Billy Duffy plays a main guitar. All right, so spe lunking.
(05:07):
Should we go ahead and get this out of the way.
That's that's another word for caving. But um been't there
an Atari game named Blanker? I think so. But cavers
don't really use that term a lot. They use it derogatorially. Yeah,
I think that is the case. I'm trying to remember
because I went caving, Like you said, go ahead and
set that up for the rest of the show. With
(05:29):
my former neighbor, Um, who was a fan of the show.
For you guys have a spat. We don't talk anymore.
I refused to acknowledge as president. No, he moved, Um,
But the other way that happened, yeah, yeah, he Um
he lived across the street and Um left a letter
my mailbox one day and it was like, hey, dude,
I heard you mentioned. It might have been after the
biospil speleology, which we'll touch on it again said I'm
(05:53):
experienced caver. Me and my buddy would love to take
you and you guys too, you and yeah, yeah we
were invited. Originally it was all more of us and
it ended up being just me. Right the day came,
I was like, let's see crawl around in the cold
in the cave, get wet and muddy. I'm gonna stay home. Boy.
After I did it, I was like, I'm so glad
Emily and you, me and Josh didn't come. Just you
(06:14):
guys wouldn't like that. Yeah, there's a good picture of
you on Facebook where you're covered in mud. Yeah, I'll
post more pictures when this comes out, but yeah, I'll
touch it on as we go. But the first thing
I want to point out is that a cave can
be a thing that you picture when you picture a cave,
which is like you're walking along and there's a big,
huge entrance that you're looking at and you walk in,
or in this case, it can be a little hole
(06:37):
in the ground, which is when I walked by, I
was like, that that's where we're going, and he was
like yeah. I was like, really, it's like a two
foot little hole in the ground. Yeah, it looked like, um,
maybe a place where foxes livers. Yeah, and he's like,
now that's how you get in there. I was like, okay,
you're like, that's how you get in their pal But
it ended up being, aside from the most physically challenging
(06:59):
thing I've ever done, one of the coolest things I've done.
It was very difficult, but you, I mean, you nail
it on the head. The cave is basically any opening
from the surface below ground, Yeah, into the earth right
and um. For the most part, when we think of
a cave, it's part of something called the karst landscape,
which is characterized by like sink holes, underground aquifers, um,
(07:21):
subtranean drainage, caves, a cave system. That's part that's it's
technically called a karst landscape. Yeah. And well, once you
read that, you kind of take it for granted, but
if you never really thought about it. I hadn't never
thought about it. I was like, well, why are these
caves even here? You know, someone didn't come in here
and carve these out. No, but some natural processes, dude,
(07:42):
that's right. There's actually um four main ways that caves
are created, right, Yeah, most caves um are limestone caves,
and you get those when rainwater uh seeps down through
the soil, picks up some C O two along the
way and that forms carbonic acid, which is kind of weak.
It is, but if you if you have carbon carbonic
(08:02):
acid present in the same area for eons, Yeah, it's
going to eventually eat away at even stone, Yeah, like limestone,
And that's basically what happens. It either collects there for
a long time or is um rushed in there by
rain and uh corrosion. Yeah, that's what happens. It's erosion
through abrasion. Through abrasion just basically rain will running over
(08:26):
something long enough, it's gonna erode it. And that's how
you get a cave one way. Yeah, that's the that's
the main way. I think. Um, you've got extreme of files,
which is kind of cool. We're still we're starting to realize,
you know. I think we talked about them in the
Are we All Marson's episode? Yeah, we have an article
on extreme of files that I have earmarked for us.
(08:46):
That's pretty good. Um. They are basically bacteria that live
and thrive in um toxic environments like places where nothing
else lives. High sulfuric content are really high, temperatures are
really really low, temperatures are just Yeah, they're the only
things that live there. UM, and they are starting to
realize that they have a pretty big impact on cave formation.
(09:08):
For example, there's some that um like to eat oil underground.
I never knew this, and they eat and eat, and
then they shoot ducks of sulfi gas, right, And the
sulfi gas goes up and up and up as gases
wants to do, and it travels through UM. The through
groundwater picks up oxygen and becomes sulfuric acid, and that
(09:33):
really starts to eat away at caves. Yeah, that's probably
more so I think than yeah, which is you probably
want to look out for the sulfuric acid lake in
a cave system if you're ever caving, I would say so.
So that's number two. Um, see sea caves, you'll see
a lot UM. If you ever do sea kayaking and
stuff around the island, you might venture into a sea cave.
It's pretty cool. Um. They are basically just water pounding
(09:58):
away at these seaside cliffs to the point where they
formed caves pretty easy. Yeah, did you ever see the Orphanage,
the Gearmo del Toro movie. No, dude, you've not seen that.
I almost watched it last week. That is one of
the best ghost movies ever made. Yeah. I was by
myself and I wanted to watch something scary because it
(10:20):
was and I searched around on the internet for like,
what's a really good scary movie, not some crappy scary movie,
and that was on the list. And I ended up
searching and researching for so long. They didn't watch anything,
went to sleep. You should have asked me or go
on to the social media's like. Yeah. Once, I was
like a Christmas scary movies and got in a conversation
(10:42):
with Joe Randazzo and like a couple of other people
and ended up with this list of like great horror
movies and all of them panned out awesomely. That, dude,
that was another one recommended. But dude, it is it's
just like the Spanish Civil War era orphan No, no, no,
that's um what is that one called? I know the
(11:04):
one you're talking about. I saw that one. That's okay.
Compared to the Orphanage, it might as well have been
like Pee Wee's Playhouse. Hey, I like peewee, know, I
mean as far as light fair goes. Ah, yeah, okay,
it's just so much better watching it. Yeah, and watch
Us of the Devil too, It's pretty good. I think
you like that a lot. Yeah, I don't. I like
(11:24):
good scary. I don't like all that crappy saw like stuff,
you know, like shocking, torture, porn crap. I like the
first couple sauce. Alright, So that's the third wave. That well,
that was a good one. The fourth um is lava tubes.
You know, when lava comes up through a volcano and
(11:45):
it shoots up, if the conditions are right, the outer
part will cool more quickly than the creamy, gooey middle. Uh.
And when that happens that our shell will come together
and form this coherent crust, and the stuff in the
middle might fall back down. Right, You got yourself a tube.
You have a tube of lava. Now, if at the
(12:06):
top of this that that top caves in or crumbles
all of a sudden, you have an entrance, and the
lava tube is now a cave. Because again, cave is
any entry from the above ground to hell. I imagine
the lava tube caves are pretty interesting to explore. But
I'm a limestone guy. Well, I mean, you don't spend
(12:27):
much time in Hawaii. If you did, I'll bet you'd
be a lava tube guy too. Yeah, you're probably right,
all right. So once you're in the cave, you're gonna
notice a couple of things straight away. Um, stillactites and
stillac mites. Okay, which is which? Man? I feel like
we have a golden opportunity to explain this to thousands
and thousands and hundreds of thousands of people. It's very easy.
There's a lot of little ways you can remember. Maybe
(12:49):
millions of people still lack tights, and that is where
the sea are the ones that hang down. And you
can remember that by maybe hold on tight, still lack tight.
They gotta hold on tight. Yeah, because it's not stillag
tight and stillag tight or stalac mite and stalagmite. It's
stillack tight with the sea and then stalagmite with the
(13:11):
G and M. So that helps too, because you have
C for ceiling or G for ground. Great, there you
just did it, or T for top. If that helps you,
we give you three ways to remember this. I don't
think that we're I don't I think I messed it up.
This is so simple for a second and then I
I'm sorry everyone. So stalactites hang down, Stalagmites come up
(13:35):
from the bottom. Uh. They are speliotherms, which is a
K formation. And this happens when um carbonic acid eats
away at this limestone, it starts dripping the calcite mineral
from rain water. Yeah, it's just kind of trickling in
and it's just two centuries. Yeah, And as it is,
it's depositing that calcite, right. Yeah, So it drips down
(13:56):
from the top, so it forms and then it will
you know, not drip up, but collect and form up
from the bottom. Sometimes they'll meet and form a column,
which is really cool. But these things grow at a
rate of a quarter inch to an inch per century. Wow,
So you can't sit around and watch a stalactite form.
That is basically so, the rain water comes down and
(14:18):
drips down, and whatever deposits are at the top going
down is a stalac tight, that's right. And it drifts
down under the ground and builds a formation that grows
up towards the top. Yes, that's a stalag might and
that's why you usually find them together. And stillast scene
is actually the Greek derivative and means to drip. Really,
(14:43):
so there you have it. And uh, they did mention
I look these up because I've never seen them other uh,
speleotherms like fried eggs and bacon. Did you look these up?
It's pretty neat. It looks like a fried egg. It's
the big formation. Yeah, it looks like a you know,
it's it's large and round and has a center that's
very round as well. And then the bacon stuff, it
(15:05):
looks like bacon strips. It's like, you know, these little
strip like formations that have different colored patterns that look like,
you know, the fatty part of the bacon and the
meaty part, and it looks like Fridays and bacons. I
feel like I saw the Friday eggs warm before you
probably have. When I saw it, I was like, oh,
that's what that is, Friday's and bacon. I had to
see it because the the the name wasn't descriptive enough. Yeah,
(15:29):
and that's just this just proves that speleologists are fun
loving people. Right, So while you're in the cave, you're
probably going to run into certain kinds of animals, and
as speleologists love to do, they've classified these things in
the categories, right. Yeah, we talked about these in Biospeleology.
Creepy cave dwelling things. Yeah. If you haven't heard that
(15:50):
UM episode, go check it out. It's all about caves
and the stuff living in caves. It's really cool. UM.
But the troglzines, those are temporary visitors, like a bear
maybe hibernating in a cave. It's they live most of
their life outside of the cave and coming for shelter
food or like that. Then there's a trougle of files.
That means they love the trog they do. They spend
(16:13):
most of their life there, but they will come out
some for food. Yeah, but they spend most of their
lives in the cave, right Yeah. Salamander's crickets, uh Daddy
long Legs and other spiders love them. And then there's
the trougle of bites. Yeah. Those are ones who live
their entire lives within the dark zone of the cave
(16:34):
and usually they don't have eyes, and apparently without exception,
they're all blind, like the Prometheus salamander. Yeah, I remember
that thing, the ozark blind salamander, the Tooth Cave spider,
which isn't as creepy looking as it sounds. I expected
to see, like, you know, some something out of a
like B movie, but it was just a little skinny spider.
(16:56):
But if you name something the tooth cave spider, you
expect some like really scary looking thing, yeah, or something
with glasses and huge buck teeth. Yeah. Uh, same with
the tooth cave beetle. And then and they're also blind
fish and shrimp and all manner of little white, creepy creatures.
They lack pigment because they don't need it, Like, screw pigment.
(17:17):
What do we need that for? Um? And then I
this kind of stuck out to me, the idea that
it's always the average annual temperature of the surface above
a cave within the cave. So if it's the average
temperature over the course of an entire year in the
spot above a cave is sixty degrees, it's always sixty
degrees in the cave. Not true, that's not true. No,
(17:39):
So this this the the temperatures in a cave are
very very stable. Um. But you know, depending on how
how deep it is. Closer you get to the center
of the earth, the warmer it gets so that has
an effect. And just like above ground with the sun warming, um,
the surface differently causes weather, different amounts of heat in
(18:02):
inside a cave. Cause what we wouldn't recognize is weather,
but actual weather itself. So is this wrong? Yes, the
way it stated, it's always the average annual temperature. Yeah,
but generally it is. Yeah, it's usually very stable and
it's very close to that. But we're finding now that
there is actual weather that happens in a cave, just
(18:22):
like there we found out there's seasons on the bottom
of the sea floor like that. It seems like the
same thing to us, but there's actually like seasons and
changes that we don't We didn't recognize because we don't
think of it that way. Uh, caves um sometimes can
be dry and dusty. I guess it all depends on
where you are in the country. Um. The one I
(18:43):
went to, and like many caves are wet and muddy,
and I was not expecting that. I was not expecting
a lot of what I encountered. Actually, really, you weren't.
Were you prepared for a wet money? Oh yeah, I
mean they told me what to wear and we'll get
into all that stuff. But um, I just I don't know.
I thought it was gonna be walking into a thing
and then walking around, sort of like the kid caves
(19:05):
that you can take the whole family too. But um, yeah,
it wasn't like that at all. It was being dropped
into a muddy, wet, cold hell. Yeah. And you looked
like it too, man afterwards, like you were really glad
to be top side again. It was weird coming out,
I'll say that. So why did you go? Why would
anybody go? What's the allure of caving? Uh? The unknown
(19:27):
and the thrill of discovery. Well, it's true though, that's
what the article says. But I don't mean to be glib.
It is very cool and way different down there, Like
you get a sense that it is. It is not
the same top side as it is in the bowels
of the earth. Very different place and very cool to experience. Yeah, firsthand.
(19:47):
And as we mentioned, there's a lot of good opportunity
for cave archaeology because the climate and temperature in a
cave is so stable. Things are Things left in caves
are really really well preserved. Yeah, and you know they're
the caves were a good place for ancient rituals and
things and um, they mentioned that the cave art in France.
(20:09):
Have you seen this stuff? Yeah, holy cow, it's like
it looks like artwork painted on canvas, some of it does.
It's not like, you know, just scratchy cave drawings. Like
this stuff is really beautiful. And uh they found this
um in nineteen forty. They discovered this in France from
(20:30):
the Paleolithic era, seventeen and twenty years old and over
two thousand figures drawn. And it's like, from what I understand,
like the granddaddy of all cave drawing scores was here
in France. Um, here in France. There in France. Well
there's also another one called Chauvet Cave in France, and
that's what Herzog's Cave have Forgotten Dreams? Is that, Oh
(20:54):
you didn't. I'll watch anything that he's in the ordinarrates
he's a bad guy and is it the new Bond? Now?
Is that right? Now? He's a bad guy in some
movie coming up? And I was like, oh, that's brilliant. Yeah, like,
no one sounds more diabolical than for an earths all. Yeah,
it's perfect. Um, but yeah, no, that's that's a good
one too. And I think they shot it in three
(21:15):
D as well. It's supposed to be like really good. Um,
but yeah, check that one out. It's it's very interesting
because they figure out that, Um, they're like, why why
would these idiots draw bison with eight legs? Was there
an eight legged bison back then? And then somebody figured
out that if you look at it by by torchlight,
not electric torch but real fire torches, it move. It moves.
(21:37):
Oh my god, that is so cool. Yeah, wow, that's awesome.
Uh yeah, I highly recommend you guys go and google
image these um L A S c A U X
France and it's all over the place. And what was
the other one? Chauve h u v e T. Yeah,
very cool stuff and c have forgotten dreams if you're
into that. I mean, it's a lot of cattle drawings, granted,
(21:59):
but um, you know it's better than you would think,
You're right, considering they're doing this on a cave twenty
years ago. Right. Uh. There's also bio speleology, which we
talked about at length and we don't need to really
get into here again, go listen to the biospeleology episode.
But that's another reason people go through caves. But ultimately
(22:20):
I think like the first sentence was the right one.
It's like the thrill of discovery and unknown. Yeah, there's
so few people doing any actual caving and enough caves
out there that like, you've got a pretty good shot
of finding something that no one else has seen for
ten thousand years or maybe ever. Yeah, you know that's
pretty cool. Uh, And cavers to um, part of being
(22:41):
a a caver or a speleologist is being into conservation
and preservation. And that's one thing I learned from my
buddy Eric and his friend there. They were like casual
speed lunkers that were in there, clearly didn't know what
they were doing, weren't dressed for it, didn't have the
proper equipment. And of course these guys are just like
(23:03):
these are the people that get us in trouble or
that get in trouble that we need to come help
get out of trouble. Uh. But I think serious cavers
are uniformly way into the preserving the cave. Like they
don't just go and cave and like, yeah, that was cool,
Like they're all into the meetings and the preservation. A
lot of them do the volunteer for church and rescue
(23:25):
and stuff like that, Like they really get into it. Yeah,
it's not a casual affair, no, And I that that
that idea actually extends to um urban spelunking or urban exploration.
Um yeah, where you um you enter something like a
sewer system or an abandoned building or something like that.
But you're One of the big rules is like you
(23:47):
can't break an inner. You can enter somebody else has
already like cut a hole in the chain link fence.
You go through that hole. You can't cut that hole yourself,
and you don't take anything. You you preserve the places
exactly the way it was. And we actually have I think,
what's a new article on the site that's awesome ten
top ten cities for urban exploration. It's like got all
(24:08):
these attractions of like where to go in this city
and like cool, well Francis the catacombs, I know, we're
really popular. Um and I did a little bit of
that in Florida in um Fort Pickens in Pensacola, Oh,
the Fort Pickens Catacombs. Well, the Fort Pickens battery. It
was like you know civil war battery. Yeah, and um,
I think it's all blocked off now. But at the time,
(24:30):
like the metal bars were bent enough where you could
get through, and me and my brother and my brother
in law like may torches and like went all through
the stuff, you know, stuff written on the walls, like
from the Civil War, and then stuff written on the
walls clearly more modern, uh in nature, but just graffitian
stuff and beer cans. But it was just neat walking around.
(24:50):
It's cool. Um, what else, Chuck, how do you get started? Yeah?
I guess if this podcast tickles your fancy, then you
may want to know how to get into this. Yeah.
A lot of people might be into the very easy
guided you walk in and you walk around type of experience. Right,
(25:11):
take the kids. There's nothing wrong with it. You can
still learn a lot, you know, it's not a cop
out like Carl's Bad caverns and like the real touristy ones.
They're great. Yeah. Have you ever been there? I haven't
been there. I've been to Ruby Falls. You mean I
went Ruby Falls? Is nice? It was, yeah, and there
were plenty of people running around. Was very well lit yeah,
um safe yeah, and then but it was so awesome
(25:33):
getting to the falls. Yeah, yeah, I mean like it
was great. It was total. I think part of the
reason I appreciated it so much because I took it
for what it was. It was like this, this is tourism,
you know, but it's also very cool. Yeah. I mean
you're walking underneath a fault line in the earth. Yeah,
it's really kind of You can sell t shirts afterward,
but it's still very cool to be in there. Um,
(25:55):
So you can do that. You can go to these
like really big touristy ones and still get a nice variance,
or you can get a guided tour for you know,
a little more um intense experience. Have you been in
Carlsbake camera? Yeah, okay, Yeah, it's nice's lovely. It's like
red carpet everywhere. Yes, couches everything. Um. But they do
(26:19):
mention in this article that kids are great to take
into caves. They love that kind of stuff. Obviously you
want to keep an eye on them because it's pretty
easy to get lost in there. Yeah. But at these
at these big major attractions, they they take care of you.
You know, they're not gonna let your kids go off
and live with the salamanders. Yeah, and you've got a
guide for the guided tour, but even self guided tours
(26:39):
are it's usually like paved or clearly marked trail, like
you're you're gonna have a lot of trouble getting lost
if you get off of this trail, um or if
you stay on the trail. I should say, Yeah, I
went to a concert in a cave one time. Yeah,
and Tennessee, they man, what's the name of It's something
caverns and I can't remember now, but it was the
(26:59):
Litill Rejuice played their last show ever in this cave
and they have regular shows. They're like usually it's like
bluegrass and stuff, but it's awesome, Like you you know,
you park in this big field and then it's one
of these where you walk into a huge opening and
there's big paths, but you know, you walk like probably
half a mile down in there, and then it opens
up to this huge open room and there's a stage
(27:22):
and there's lights and everything. That's cool, really cool. Experienced
the green rooms like there, I don't know, it's probably brown. Right,
just sit on that rock. We'll bring you some shrimp. Yeah,
it was really very cool show. Though I might post
pictures of that too. Wow, this is gonna be a
picture of bananda. Um. Then there's cave diving. Yes, probably
(27:44):
the most dangerous thing my person can do. We can't
overstate that enough. Like even these caver dudes that I
was with, their hardcore they were like, those people are crazy. Yeah,
And if you're a hardcore scuba diver, even a wreck diver,
that doesn't mean you're a cave diver. No, cave diver
is its own thing. Yeah, and like it's it's very
(28:05):
easy to die. In two twelve seven people already died
in cave diving twelve now, wow, three of them in
three different days, three consecutive days in Florida, in three
different incidents. Yeah, in March. Yeah, it's scary. And asked Eric.
I was like, well why you know, what's the big deal?
And he was like, dude, you're just you gotta be
crazy to do it. And he's like, you are underground, underwater,
(28:29):
and it's very easy to get lost and turned around,
and you've only got so much air. They say that
to never like to try and exit with half a
tank of air still or whatever. It was not air,
what is it? It's compressed, compressed, just like an air mix,
but it's generally air. Yeah, But they're like, you don't
want to go below half a tank ever, that's just scary.
(28:51):
And he took me after we went caving, he took
me to the entry point for the cave diving nearby,
and it's this little probably you know, tin foot by
tin foot whole, you know, a little pool, but it's
like infinitely deep and it's like wow, so you can
jump in and just sort of waddle around, or there's
below that there's the tube where you enter, and it
(29:14):
just seems like the scariest thing ever, right with a
tank of air on your back that could be punctured
by anything, because it's not like there's not stalactites hanging down.
Utterly frightening to me. Um that said, if you're in
a cave diving, you go through the certification and you
like are into that kind of thing. There's some awesome
cave diving like sinote Is any sinote Um. And there's
(29:39):
a place in that I missed when we were talking
about the Abandoned Minds podcast. There's a place called Bond
Terror Mine, Missouri, and it's an old lead mine that
was in production for like a hundred years and then
they closed it down in nineteen sixty and they didn't
remove anything there's like magazines, all this stuff still sitting around,
(29:59):
and they lotted it with like a billion gallons of
crystal clear water. Really, and you can go scuba dive.
You can cave dive this abandoned mine now and see
there's like an old movie theater down there. There's mind
cars elevator. Yeah, it's pretty cool. That's awesome. Yeah, but
it's like the visibility is just limitless. I wonder if
(30:20):
that's slightly safer. I think it's pretty heavily guided as
well as tours go, So if you're gonna start somewhere,
that would probably be a good place. Yeah. I saw
a couple of dudes come out of the whole um.
Then all the cavers know each other, it seems like
because they knew these guys and they were like, oh, yeah,
it's good. You know, these guys are real nice. And
then they turned around they're like they're nuts, these guys
(30:43):
are crazy. Um. Oh, so all the cavers know each
other because they're all members of Grottos, right, Yeah, it
definitely seems like a close knit community, right, Like they're
all on each other that have each other's contact info
because you know, when someone gets lost, they send out,
you know, like who can and help? Basically, who's free
tomorrow to come and find these idiots tomorrow they're in
(31:05):
trouble if it's tomorrow, that's true. But well, a grotto
is a caving club, right, and there are any legitimate
caving club is sanctioned by the National Speleological Society, and
there's about two d caving clubs or grottos in the US.
Nice good people. So if if you're a member of
a grotto, if you're a caver, what are some of
(31:27):
the things that you're gonna need. You're already into this,
You're like, come on, let's go. What are we gonna do? What?
What do I need to take with me? Well, you
want to take three forms of light um, and plenty
of backup batteries and take closed sticks, take the headlamps,
take lighters, even though those will get wet. Um. You know,
you can bag him in the dry bag. But take
(31:47):
as many forms of light as you feel comfortable with.
That's not less than three, and not only I took
like four or five flocks. That's smart. Yeah, I just
and I knew I was gonna be fine, but I
was just like, you know what, I'm going into the
depths of the earth. I want to have lots of
light at my disposal, right, and you want to also
have lots of batteries and extra bulbs for those lights,
just because the light, your light is the number one
(32:10):
most important thing when you're caving. That's the number one
most important piece of equipment. Yeah, and my buddy Eric
had a carbide lamp, which, um, you know, back in
the day with like even car headlights and lights on
the fronts of houses. Um, it wasn't always a gas lamp.
Sometimes it was carbide and old school cavers used these things.
(32:31):
And it's basically a chemical reaction. Um. It burns a
seedylene gas and it's created from a reaction of calcium
carbide with water. So he had this, uh, this pod
that he carried on his belt that had carbide pellets
in it and it would drip water down and create
the gas and it fed it up through a tube
(32:53):
connected to the you know, the the gas lamp that
he's wearing on his head. And it was really cool.
The other guy didn't have one, but Eric was used it,
and um, the light that it gives is just really
very illuminating. It's not like a you know how incandescent
light is just so specific, even if it's like a
broad range, it's not like having a flame. So this
(33:16):
thing really warn't like warms up the cave. And it
does actually warm it um slightly, but just generally with
light warmth. It's just like the cave was illuminated, not
like a flashlight shining on something very cool and um,
very durable. Like if you take care of these things,
they're a little finicky, but if you take care of them,
(33:36):
you can have them like your whole life. Sounds kind
of uh no, it's very old school. Yeah, it's old
angled and you just look cool. Eric looked like a
cool guy with this tube running out of his head
and flicking the little lighter switch. And do you look
cooler than I did with my Yeah, with my glow stick. Um.
So you need light, you need light. You need a helmet,
(33:58):
and you want your helmet to be so if I
by the Union International Day Associations del peace. Yes, Jerry
just laughed. There. You want to helmet, you want like
and this is if you if you want to do
it right like and safely. We we saw morons and
tank tops and shorts walking around and crawling around and
(34:22):
you know these guys are just rolling their eyes, are
like those are the people that get hurt and get lost. Um.
We had kneepads and elbow pads, helmets, Um. As far
as safety gear, that was pretty much it, and that
they have like rope and stuff just in case. Um,
and you want to dress appropriately avoid cotton. Well, if
(34:43):
you are wearing cotton, you want to wear under layers
of synthetics. Yes, snag less easily, they dry more quickly. Yeah. Yeah,
I would imagine you just want to avoid cotton altogether
as possible. Yeah. I were one of those like synthetic
wicking shirts, you know, the workout shirts. Um, but you
do you want to dress in layers because it's cold
(35:03):
in there. Yeah, but you know you you may raise
your heart right here there and you may get a
little warm. That definitely makes my heart right. Um, you're
gonna get wet most likely. Um. You can be in
the dry, dusty cave, but chances are you gonna get wet. Uh.
There were times where we were up to our chest
in a crevice about two ft wide, up to our
(35:24):
chest and water and it's intimidating. It's like I'm far
away from anybody, and like, what if this water rises?
I mean it didn't, but you know what if it
started raining. These things can happen pretty fast down there,
and uh so, I mean we were literally soaked through
the bone. It's like getting a swimming pool and then
you get out and you're covered in mud and you're
(35:45):
supposed to climb things. That's like climbing a creased wall
of stone. I'm like, am I supposed to really do this?
And they were like pushing me by by but it
was sort of embarrassing, like pulling me. It felt like
a stuck pig at times. The only thing that made
it better was the warm glow of the carbine lamp.
And then they had the pancakes, you know where it's like,
(36:07):
you know, as I'm surprised my body fit in this
thing and you had to go like thirty feet across
this pancake. Well it's a it's where there's a top
rock and a bottom rock, so basically you just there's
like a foot of space to crawl through and you
can't even crawl. You're like inching, you know, using your
(36:27):
shoulder blades. I would have lost my You would not
have liked this pancake. And that's when I remember thinking, boy,
Josh would not have liked this part. It was uncomfortable
for me. And I don't even have issues with like,
you know, closed in spaces, but you feel like, what
if the earth shift did it and this thing just
smashed me. Yeah, of course you're a that and ship
(36:50):
like that, but I don't know it could. I'm down there,
I'm freaking out. Yeah, and you made it, though, I
don't want to spoil it here. You survived. Uh what else?
You need? Food? Sure? You want enough to last your
whole trip, and then some just in case, you know,
like you want gloves, you want a first aid kit. Yeah,
(37:10):
and here's my favorite part. So we were talking about
how um like you do you just preserve the environment
exactly as it was found. This also means that you're
not allowed to poop there. You can poop there, but
you're gonna poop into like a plastic container that you
can carry out with you because you take your urine
and your feces out of the cave with you. So
(37:32):
you want a plastic bottle to p intwo and a
like a good crushed proof container to poop into. I
did not poop. I wouldn't have pooped. I'd just be like, well,
I guess I'm not pooping today. Yeah, and you know
I was only down there a few hours. So if
you can. If you can't hold your poop a few hours,
you probablyouldn't be caving that day. Man, just put it off,
you know. Imagine getting sick down there, like vomity, No,
(37:56):
I'm not sure what you mean, the other kind o
like poopies. Yeah, yeah, that would be awful. Um. If
you have a cave map, which you should have, UM,
bring a few copies, put them in zip blocks, hand
them out to your friends that you're with, make sure
everyone knows what's going on. And you also want to
(38:17):
probably leave one at home with an X marks the
spot of your route. And um, well, at least it's
the cave safety, doesn't it. Yeah. Um, there's a lot
of precautions you should be taking before you set out. Yeah,
you know what you're doing. Do not take it lightly.
It's not like a hike, um that you can go on,
so it's it's definitely different. You should go with someone
(38:37):
that knows what they're doing. Um. At the very least, uh,
A couple of people would be even better. They say
not to go in really large groups because you don't
want to, like you could leave someone behind easier, Like
four to six people is a good number, and you
want to put the slowest person at the front of
the group. That would have been me. So everybody's kind
of pushing them from behind sometimes literally. Uh. And the
(39:01):
reason why is because you know that person doesn't get
left behind. That makes the whole groups together. And if
you're into um, passive aggressive peer pressure, that's great. That's
a great situation for everybody. Yeah, you know, no, you're fine.
That's what they kept saying to I know you're doing great, buddy,
(39:22):
And I was like, no, I'm not. I know, I'm
that guy. Um. You also, never ever want to go
caving alone. I don't think there's a better sentence that's
ever been spoken by anybody. Never go caving alone. That's
a good idea. Um. If you do get lost, they
say to stay put, and that it's better to stay
(39:42):
put instead of moving around because at least you're where
you last were. You are where you last were, well,
you're where you said you were going to be at
least roughly. If your light goes out in your alone,
start screaming at the top of your lungs until someone
comes and gets you. That's probably not a idea, but
they say not to freak out. But yeah, I would
(40:02):
definitely try and make a little noise, although you also
don't want to attract the descent hail billies. Yeah, they were,
they were mountain folk. You know. That was a lot
like a Lovecraft um story. I wasn't I can't remember
the name of it, but it's, uh, there's a whole
thing that takes place in the Alleghanies, maybe at Airondacks
(40:25):
one somewhere up there. Um, whereas this family that was
like kind of mountain folk came to inbreed and eventually
moved underground. Was one of his best ones. Man, he was.
We should do a podcast on him. Okay, what a
twisted mind. Well we did the Necronomic and remember, yeah,
but let's just do one in his life what made
him tick? Let's do it. Um. Oh, well, we're at
(40:49):
it real quick, dude. I found a real legitimate physics
paper or written by a legitimate physicist that explains how
certain of the in uh lovecrafts the Call of Cthulhu
can be explained away by quantum physics. Really yeah, it's
specifically a gravitational lensing. Yeah, to explain what cthulhu is
(41:12):
or know, like what happened to this guy who went
mad and described this crazy place that he went and
stumbled upon in the South Pacific um and then came
back and wrote about it. They were like, well, actually,
wait a minute, what he's talking about is a quantum bubble. Yeah,
it's pretty awesome. That's like it's it gets like he
(41:33):
works out math and formulas for explaining all of this
and that's but the rest of it is really interesting. Wow. Yeah,
I can't remember what it's called, but probably look up
the physics of the called cathula and I'm sure it'll
bring it up. That's a good one. That's awesome. So
what are some of the big problems you're going to
run into, Chuck, aside from getting lost or running out
of light. Hypothermia, right, always a concern when you're cold
(41:56):
and wet. Um, Like I said earlier, letting of passages,
which I was worried about the whole time, um slipping, falling.
I was slipping all over the place. It's gonna happen
in these muddy caves and you know, you just I
just sort of slid and try not to pick my
face up off the rock. But I definitely got bumps
and bruises and I was really sore the next day.
(42:20):
It was like mountain climbing, except under ground in the
mountain was slick and muddy. That's basically kind of what
it felt like rock climbing. It was not what I
thought it was gonna be. Once again, I can't stress
that enough. It's not It's not a stroll. Hey my
bologna se am. Yeah. It was pretty bad, um, but
(42:41):
super fun. And like I said, when you come out, man,
it's so weird once you've been underground for that long,
when you come out into the real world, everything is
just like hypercolorful and bright and just weird, and it's like, man,
there's a whole different world down there that most people
don't know about. Highly encourage it. Just be careful. Yeah,
I think that's good advice. Is there anything else in here? Um?
(43:03):
Always make sure that several people above ground know where
you went, know where you're going now when you expect
to be back. Um, and if somebody does get hurt,
never leave that person alone. A couple of people have
to stay with them. A couple of people have to
go top side. The people who go top side need
to leave some of their supplies and lightening stuff and
water back with the people who are hanging out with
(43:25):
the injured person. They need to know exactly where the
injured person is so they can tell other people who
can come get them out. Um. And Uh. They also
need to remember to take the car keys with them.
Really kind of important. You don't want to get all
the way out there and be like, can you imagine
let the keys in there? Uh. And then, like you said,
(43:47):
if you ever get lost, you don't want to panic.
You want to stay put. You want to rely on
your plan, your backup plan, which was letting a bunch
of people know that you were supposed to have been
home two hours ago and you weren't that right. And
there are thousands of caves in the US, um many
of which are very explorable. Just do your research beforehand,
(44:08):
go with someone that knows what they're doing. There are
more extreme caves around the world that are very cool
to look at. Ones that you actually can skydive into,
or not scott dive, but base jump into. Boy that
I can't imagine Scott having into one. I think I've seen, um,
I've seen video of people bass jumping into this Sutano
de LESCo and yeah it was. I think Planet Earth
(44:29):
the Discovery Show had that. Okay, yeah, that's it was.
It's way cool. And then like you talked about the nots,
those are very cool too. Um, just be careful. Have
we said that enough? I don't know. I don't think
you can, because, like I said, once you get there,
you realize they're just a bunch of dummies no matter
(44:50):
what that are ill prepared locals that are like, yeah,
I've been done here before. Good luck people. That's all
I've got. Okay, Well, if you want to learn more
about caping, you can type in spelunking in the search
bar at how stuff works dot com. Sp E l
U n K I n G. It will bring up
(45:12):
this article. Um and uh, I said spelunky, which means,
of course it's time for a listener. Now, I'm gonna
call this Pakistani pizza. We did a pizza podcast and
we got lots and lots and lots of feedback on that.
I knew that was going to be one of those
very ubiquitous food that people love to talk about UM
(45:34):
and this is from UM and I'm probably gonna put
your name, sorry, buddy uh nabi haa okay. And he
said that he listened to the Pizza Cast and but
he would drop some four one one on pizza in Pakistan.
He's originally from Orlando but currently lives in Karachi for university.
(45:55):
And he said, here, when you order a pizza, you
don't really order toppings, but you order us specific flavor um.
Although if you're at a pizza place you can order
specific toppings and build your on pizza. His Pizza Hut
calls it, so they are a little less cooperative when
you order for delivery, apparently in Pakistan. So he said,
your pizza will most likely have some form of chicken
on it, and then of course there's no ham because
(46:17):
it's a Muslim country. Pizza Hut alone serves chicken Tica,
Chicken Cary, Chicken Fajita Harry Chicken f caan Tica, and
the spicier fajita Sicilian as vell as vell as well
as the veggie schwarma Pepperoni and a couple of other
different beef flavors. That's so good chizza in Pakistan here's
(46:41):
the kicker for me, guys. Not only do they offer
their usual stuff crust with the rope of cheese, they
also serve beefy uh seekh kebab stuff crust. Yes, wow,
Papa John, Wait wait, I want this man? Sure you
understands what you just said? He said that they offer
a a pizza with a crust stuffed with kebab with
(47:04):
beef kebab. That sounds delightabul it does. Um. Papa John's
Uh offers a more traditional American pizza mini with their
various pseudo Italian names including Chicken Florentine, um Dominoes. Flavors
in Pakistan are a little more mainstream American, while they
do serve chicken tika as well as something called Golden
(47:25):
Feast or something to that effect, which as far as
I know involves corn, pineapple, and probably chicken. Along with
the corporate giants, there are plenty of local chains oddly
generic sounding names including Pizza Place, Pizza Point, Pizza, California Pizza,
and the list goes on and on. So just pizza.
It's it's a type of Unfortunately, my university and dorm
(47:47):
are located on the outskirts of town, not in the
ideal neighborhoods at these places usually don't deliver, but I
suppose that's fine. I don't hold her pizza very much
here as Pakistani pizza is kind of small and a
bit too cakey and very super bready, but it fills
you up, um and you never leave hungry. I just
had a fairly tasty contraption from pizza point around five
hours ago for dinner. I can still feel it in
(48:10):
my throat less and learn you did not go to
bed in the morning, sleep until the evening, didn't order
excess food anyways. Love the show uh and lots of
love that is uh, nabiha see it? Thanks a lot,
that's yeah, that's why to eat. Yeah see it? Well
maybe just said say, I bet it's a you'd we'll
(48:33):
find out right yep, thanks a lot for writing you.
Good luck with your studies, um and the pizza. Yeah.
If you're in a foreign land and you're listening to
us and you have some four one one uh, as
Nabia pointed out, NA be here right good. Uh. We
want to hear from it you uh, or we want
(48:54):
to hear about it from you. You can tweak to
us at uh That's Why sk Podcast. You can join
us on Facebook dot com slash Stuff you Should Know,
and you can send us an email to Stuff Podcast
at Discovery dot com. For more on this and thousands
of other topics, Is it how Stuff Works dot com
(49:20):
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