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