Welcome to you stuff you should know from house Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark and there's Charles W. H. Bryant. That means that this stuff we should know. We know. That's right. Really, yeah, we are imploding this show today. I'm imploding. Josh is imploding today. That should be interesting. That's better than exploding, though I've been doing a little bit of that too. Yeah, that's no good because that affects those around you. When you implode, at least you contain the turmoil within. It's like, really, the you know, don't be selfish, don't explode, we should probably say, because I guarantee there's people out there who are like, buildings don't actually implode. Um, you, we should call this the how buildings how detonating buildings so that they collapse in on themselves due to gravity. It's not an actual implosion where everything is sucked in towards the center. Right, that's a scientific thing that this is not. It's not happening when the building implodes you. But if you're not a jerk, then you just call them building implosions. Yeah, that's the nomenclature. Yeah, that's what people say. I should say, You're not a jerk if you are up in arms about that kind of thing. But I challenge you to email us and tell us what we should really call it, what what words should stand in them for implosions, and we will read it out on the later episode. So considering that we're still around, then that's right. Um, Chuck, Yes, are you familiar with the city of Detroit. Yes, we love Detroit. We do love Detroit. Probably my favorite name of all time. Yeah Detroit. Yeah, human being was named yeah Detroit. Yeah. Um, I grew up in Toledo, been to Detroit plenty of times. Love the Tigers, yeah, Um. Sparky Anderson was a great man. I'm a Matt Stafford. Place for the Lions. Oh yeah, that's another big Detroit link. Christ loved the Red Wings when I was a kid, the Pistons. When you hear me talk smack about Detroit, I'm joking lighting up, like, I find it extraordinarily satisfying when people write it was like you need off Detroit, and it's like, well, you need to listen to all the episodes of the podcast. I think it'd be funny. I always thought if we ever went to Detroit, which I think we should at some point for an event that like people would be like awesome, we know you guys love this, and then five percent when just they would come and sit there with their arms crossed, like you got a lot of make it up to do. Yeah, what's ironic is that if you switch those ratios, you'd have the number of people who live in houses with roofs in Detroit and the number of people who don't. So Also, one of my favorite things about Detroit is a website called Forgotten Detroit dot com. Yeah, that's a good one. I've mentioned it a few times. It bears repeating. There is a website called Forgotten Detroit dot com. And I get the impression that the guy was maybe German, Austrian or Dutch, and he's obviously knows what he's talking about with architecture, because it comes through when he's documenting the building and talking about it. But he wandered around Detroit. Whoever made this website wandered around Detroit and did a lot of urban exploration of abandoned buildings, photo documented building after building after building, went back and found original schematics, wrote about the history, and just made this exhaustive web website called forgotten Detroit dot com. And the reason why it's so awesome, in addition to the fact that it's just abandoned building photos, which are like the greatest thing on the planet, uh, is that he documented buildings that are not there any longer. A lot of them have been torn down and some of them have been imploded for lack of a better word, Yeah, just to make room for something better and bigger. Yeah, to take care of the blight to ye, just like, yeah, this is been here for too long with broken windows, right, and no one's been in it occupied it since, you know, So let's get rid of this. Instead of a slow demolition over the course of fifty years by vandals, let's just take care of it now exactly. So that's how that site ties to this episode. Very nice. Okay, that's good. That's a good old fashioned intro. Thanks man. So, like we said, it is, gravity is really what's going on here. It's a pretty simple concept. What they're doing when you implode a building or let's this is general demolition basically up front, is they're removing the support structures at very specific points to cause them to fall down one upon the other from the top down. And actually, you know you start at the bottom, but it will still fall from the top down, you know what I'm saying. Yeah, And um, this is usually for specific height buildings, like if you've got a five story building, you're probably gonna bring in a wrecking ball, some X excavators and a guy with a little black lunch pail exactly who's gonna sit on an ibam and eat it? Exactly? Uh? And anything over maybe eight, you're gonna start to get into the concept of of using demolition from the heights generally. This article said, I don't know if there's a rule of thumb height. Yeah, I guess what the key here? Safety? You want to do it safely. So the key is the buildings, Like where is it situated? Is it right in the middle of an apartment complex? Then you may want to implode because you don't want this thing falling left or right. If you've got nothing around there but empty parking lot. You're right, maybe a twenty story building could be fine because it's just gonna fall in that abandoned parking lot with graphs going through Italy and who cares about that? Exactly? Uh? All right, So let's get into this. The first thing that you have to do is see if you can dig up the original blueprints for this thing. They may exist, in which case you're all set and you can you know, if you know what you're looking at, you can see where their support structures are and where you need to kind of start your your journey here to implode this thing. Even better, if you can find the architect, the principal architect on that job, he or she may remember some things about that job that are like didn't show up in the bloodprints or little little foibles that the building HAPs. And be gentle with them. They may have a tear in their eye about this whole prospect. You know, don't just bang on the door and say, hey, we're gonna tell your building down, like where is it strong? You know, your crowning achievement exactly the only building you ever made. Uh, So that's just some personal advice. Be gentle with these people. Uh, they're gonna um draw up their plan of attack based on experience. And we should point out there's not a lot of companies that do this. It's not there's not five hundred demolition companies that implode tall buildings. There's like a twenty or so no. And here's the reason why it's very difficult for a young up and comer to get into the demolition business with their own company because it's so dangerous, yes, and risky not just to human life, but to other surrounding buildings. Areas Like insurance companies are all nervous watching this. That you build a track record of carrying out building implosions, and you have, you're on easy Street. That's what people hire you based on. Is your your successful track record? Yeah, and trust me, we know Josh and Chuck Implosions, LLC. Did not. We didn't get any calls. It was a bad We wasted a lot of a lot of money with that Kickstarter campaign. Well, your mom called, but she was just trying to pump us up exactly, Honey, you're good enough. You can empload this this thing. So they draw on their experience. Um. Sometimes, if they don't have the blueprints, or if it's a little more complicated, they may even do three D computer model and try it out ahead of time. Yeah. I would guess that that's pretty standard these days. Yeah you think so. Yeah. Um, I I read this awesome article about people who I think it was maybe be wired people who salvage huge huge like um ships that haven't sunk yet, that are but are about to these people like figure out how to keep them from sinking, and um even in that case, like they'll have some some guy fly with them and build a computer three D model on the on the fly. I think everyone's just get playing with three D models, right exactly, you know. But so I'm sure if they're doing that to like salvage tankers, they're doing it for like demolition too, you know, if for no other reason than as children we all love to build destroy models. I get to press in her next. Um. So, like we said, we're cover implosions in a second. If you don't have to implode, and you can just knock this thing over in an empty parking lot, you're gonna do it kind of like you would a tree. You're gonna if it's you want it to fall north, you're gonna weaken it and blasted on the north side. And sometimes you might even have cables pulling it that way, just like you would that oak tree in your front yard. Pretty basic stuff. If there is a bunch of junk around there that you have to protect you need it to follow in its own footprint, then you're gonna have to go the implosion route, right, which is kind of cool. I think everyone likes watching these videos. Oh yeah, that's a really fun way to spend the day. Yeah, And there are enthusiast even as we learned in this article, that get a little too close sometimes to see these things in person. Like building implosions are like the mic rib of the demolition world. Like it's got groupies and like people go around the country. Doesn't happen that often. You gotta take it while it's there. Um, and it could kill you. Yeah, so um, if you're imploding. They set these blasters and they look at the building basically as a series of towers instead of a one building. And what I gathered from this is that each tower quote unquote is like a support structure. Is that is that right? Yeah? Like, if you're looking at just like a um rectangular building, yeah, I would guess you probably break it up into four quadrants and then go after the support structures in each quadrant, and then the aim is to bring them all down towards the center. So, like you said, if you wanted to bring a building down to the north. You put some blasts, some charges on the north side to weaken it. Well, if you had four quadrants that you were trying to bring down towards the center, you would weaken the side closest to the quadrant and then have them all fall in towards the center and then collapse the building downward, right. Or another option is to actually weaken the center of the building, and uh, that would cause everything to fall in word as well. Yeah, but if you if you broke it into quadrants and then collapse everything towards the center, you would want to time it because you don't want everything just collapsing towards the middle and just holding one another up. You know that that's theays the blasters worst nightmare. Then you have the Transamerica building, Oh yeah, exactly in that triangular Yeah, at the in San Francisco. Yeah. Um, So let's say, for example, you have a twenty story building. You're not just gonna up set charges all on the first floor and I hope that gravity does its work. You're gonna set charges on the first floor and then maybe like some on the twelfth floor, and then maybe some on the six floor. Yeah, and typically like just a couple or just blowing up the first and second floor and then adding just a little bit of gravity. Uh, well, that will demolish the whole building. But you're doing the twelfth and say the fifteenth floor to to kind of break up the material that's coming down the rubble, to make clean up a little easier, right, because you know, you watch the video on YouTube and it takes five seconds and then you click on you know, guy gets kicked in the groin or sports bloopers next, and then you don't think about the fact that, yeah, guy's gotta clean the stuff up, right exactly? You want small pieces, is my long winded way of saying that. But in the blasters like, hey, I put some charges on floor twelve and fifteen, you can thank me later. In the cleanup guts thanks and the I told you to thank me later, he says kind of I'll trade you an apple for that tuna sandwich. He's like, you're kidding me. My wife's tuna. Give me the apple and bane and that cookie. And then the third one comes up and he's like, hey, you got the mots. Remember those ads? Remember like a little little kid motsa apple sauce like the little single served ones. There's a kid who looked like his name should be Spike or something and be like, hey, you got the mots. It was a really dumbad campaign. A bully. Yeah, he looked like a bully, but I don't think he was actually supposed to be a bully. Weird casting decision. Yeah, man, I didn't realize. I was walking around with that one, and I thought you were about to say, and that kid grew up to be shy la buff Okay, where were we? Okay? Was that a Paul Harvey reference? No? No, So they've got their plan in place, that the detonators, this blasting company has the plan in place, and now they have to actually prep the building. Yes, first step in prep is um they wash it. Well, they don't watch it. They survey the site, they walk through the building several times because you don't want to just make a cursory glance. You want to do your due diligence. Well, you need to clean everything out of there. Even before that, like some crew has come through and gotten all the drywall and all that stuff out, Like everything you want to as empty as possible, take out any non low bearing walls. You want to make it easier to tumble this thing. Sometimes I'll even uh cut into uh some of these support structures to give it a bit of a head start, hit it with sledgehammers. Yeah, release a little uh pin up frustration, you know, exactly. So then the blasting crew comes through, is making note of all this stuff. That's right, because they've already looked at the blueprints. But blueprints are those are just pictures for college boys. You want to get in there and really see what's going on firsthand. Yeah, yeah, exactly, because the blueprint, I mean, you know, there could be derivations. You never know. Um So, then once you have everything cleaned out, maybe weekend, some of the support columns with sledgehammers. It's sort of it's not teetering, but mentally it's teetering. It's beginning to think about teetering. The building knows like a boy, time to come down. My my time is limited here. I was accounting achievement once. Um So, then the blasters come in. They start loading these columns with explosives, um dynamite. If you're using concrete, it's a good way to go. Um They drill these holes, they bore holes. It's really kind of rudimentary and stuff explosives into them. Yeah, and we should say also, um, it's not just a guessing game. In most demolitions, from what we understand, they will say I picked the support column, maybe probably up on like the twentieth floor something like that, rather than down low, and they will blast it. They'll attach some explosive to and do like a test blast. Yeah. I don't think they're trying to blow it up. They're just trying to They're trying to do a small charge to see how much damage that small charge does and then they can predict how much a larger how much amount of a larger charge they will need to use to like blow the columns up right, or they might blow a column, but they'll wrap it in like chain link fence and a shield to kind of keep it in place and so it doesn't go everywhere and you know hurt people obviously. And um, what they want to do is and this is covering to know. They want to use the minimum amount of explosives that it takes to bring this thing down. They don't just go in there willy nilly and just say loaded up boys. You know, they want to use the smallest amount to still get the job done exactly, because if they use too much, then you've got a bunch of chunks flying everywhere and there's damage the surrounding buildings and people get hit in the heads, bad news, lawsuits. Used too little, you've got that building still kind of standing, and that's extremely dangerous as well, because you have to bring in a crew to knock it down like you would a lower, smaller building. Um, but it's a tall building that's just kind of half standing, and it's it's like a Jenga tower. Now, yeah, that's no good. No, that's very dangerous. So you want to use the minimum amount, put the right amount. Yeah, Well that's one reason the World Trade Center was so dangerous afterward, because it obviously it wasn't some controlled implosion, unless you're Charlie Sheen and you you know, get on the internet and say that it's a government conspiracy. Well he was an uncontrolled implosion himself. Wasn't exactly. Uh, but you know, nine level is so dangerous to clean up because it wasn't done on purpose, so they didn't know what was weak and what wasn't and it was pretty precarious getting in there and trying to clean anything out, super dangerous work. So uh stating obvious, Well we've got the test plast done. Yeah, we've got them. Now they're going around and they're they're drilling bore holes. Let's say we're doing a concrete building. So you got your dynamite. Yeah, And what is dynamite is just basically like a kind of a paper material soaked in combustible, highly explosive liquid chemicals. Yep. That it takes actually am an explosion to explode dynamite. So you you might have a fuse. I think if you're demolishing and building in N two, you've got a fuse going to the stick of dynamite. But in between the fuse and and the dynamite is a blasting cap. It's a small charge of explosive material that's lit by a fuse. That's right, it's a primary charge. And the point of using dynamite and why you want to use it in um concrete structure column um is that it expands, creates a bunch of hot gas all of a sudden, really quickly, and when it's doing that inside a concrete column, it explodes the concrete column into rubble. Now that will work for concrete. But you got yourself a steel structure, you're gonna have to use something else called r d X. That's right. And I'm not even gonna say the long name. I'll try. I don't want to try it, all right, you're ready cyclo, try methylene, trying naitramin. Damn, dude. I stumbled a little bit in the middle, but I still got it done. No, that was that was perfect. I mean you look at it and it looks like the alphabet. It's such a long word, you know. UM. But yeah, r d X will call it r d X, and that's what you want to use if you have steel supports and UM. If dynamite explodes at a rate of about six dred tons per square inch, r d x um explodes at about twenty seven thousand ft per second. That is like some serious stuff. And you're not exploding steel because you can't explode steel. What they're actually doing there is they are cutting through the steel, splitting it in half thereby weakening it. Yeah, it's like um using a lub or a scalpel. Yeah, exactly. Uh. To easy to one of these, though, like you said, you need a blasting cap. That primary charge the fuse, and the fuse is just explosive junk inside of a chord, like when you see like the old timey fuses, you know, like a sparkler. That's explosive material just packed inside like you know, a tight chord. Right, And the whole point of the fuse is it's a delays the blast. So depending on how you want to sequence your blast, UM, you're gonna use varying links of fuses. Again, if it's nineteen o two, that's right, Um, And that fuse eventually will reach the point where it sets off the primary charge and that's where the action happens. UM. These days, they use electrical detonators mainly, UM, probably exclusively, don't you think I would think so? And that is, you know, sort of like a fuse, except it's just it's a lead line made of electrical wire, or it is electrical wire. Um, You've got your debtonator end where the wire surrounded by this explosive material and then that's attached directly to the primary charge and then the main explosives and they you know, they have some sort of battery device heats up the wire and eventually it'll get hot enough to set off that junk on the detonator end sets off the primary charge triggers the main show, right, Like you know the old plunger that they use like in in Bugs Bunny cartoons to blow up stuff. You mean when the when the mocking bird lands on Italy behind coyotes back and it slowly depresses. Um. Apparently that is an electrical um detonator where you would have a charge going and then you press the plunger and it would release that charge. Um. That's the same thing, except we we don't use that old timing box and plunger any longer. Um, But it's still the same change. It's very gratifying. But yeah, I would imagine. I think I wonder if they have fake ones, just sort of like a ribbon cutting like that you like connect your I phone. Well that actually works though, well I'm sure this works to know, but if you just have a fake when you like the owner of the company is very old school. We have to set this up for him so you can push it down. Yeah, he loves giant scissors. Yeah, but no, I mean, like maybe there's like the little uh, the little remote control is in the box and when you press the plunge on it pokes the button and the owner of the company is like, yeah, exactly, do it again. Wow, that's funny. I guess we're both three year olds a part um. Okay, So they have to control this sequence sometimes, like maybe they don't want the first floor in the twelfth floor going off at the same time. Maybe there's a delay so they can actually have a delay in the fuse areas where the fuse burned slower than others, right, or you just like I said, you use longer lengths of fuse, you know, um, but yeah, you can put a a little you can put say, uh, you could charge a fuse and then add a little extra fuse between the original fuse that you just delivered the charge too, and like a delay fuse and the blasting cap and then yeah, you can time it, and you want to time it again. You don't want everything falling down on top of itself and ending up supporting itself. You want like columns coming down and then columns coming down all on top of each other and they're pushing one another down. Remember in the World Trade Center episode that we did it, it's called pancaking. It's where the rubble on one floor hits the rubble on another floor with enough force that that floor comes down and it again and again and again. Yes, and it picks up speed as well. That's right. And you know once that happens, like there's there's no going back. Yeah, and sadly, as we all saw a nine eleven. And if you've ever watched the internet videos, it only takes a few seconds and it's done. Yeah, it's very quick process. Apparently people are surprised by how fast happens, Like who people who have never watched these videos. It says in the article that the people people, it's the one thing they're surprised by most is how quickly a building collapse. Show me these people. I love it when I think when people write these articles like that, they just sort of say I was surprised. So people are full Yeah to do in journalism? Um, all right, So let's say you're gonna take down a building in a neighborhood. You might want to hire a consulting firm to come in. And the idea I get is that they sort of document the process, maybe work with the neighbors, um in a little pr sense to assure them that everything's gonna be okay, Yeah, they're gonna film it, of course, because you can learn a lot from watching it. Yeah, not only put it on YouTube, Yeah, you can put it on YouTube, but also like that's also how one of the ways you're going to figure out how to take down the building you're working on now is going back and looking at how you've taken down similar buildings. So the owner would come in and say, hey, pull the the bank in Houston from eight. That one was perfect and it looks just like this one. Yeah. Um, so you've called in your consulting firm, they've done all their due diligence, they're working before things hit go time. You're gonna, of course do a really thorough check to make sure no one's in there. Um, you don't want to. Like in Heathers, remember that movie, Hea, there's uh there's a riveting Magnum p I episode where Magnum and Higgins are in not only in a building it's about to be demolished, trapped in an elevator in a building. That's about it. It was almost unwatchable, it was so tense. I don't remember that one. Yeah, and Heathers, I think the dad was an implosion expert and like killed the mother that way, right. I don't remember that because you said something about Christians later since about yeah mom, I saw a mom in the window or something, and oh yeah that's right. Yeah yeah, I think the mom kill herself was the implication. Oh by being in there. Yeah, I love my dead gay son. Yeah that was man, that's a good movie. That's a great line. Um, so they've calculated the perimeter obviously as well. Not only going to check inside the building, you're also gonna to make sure that you have a safety zone around the thing allowed implosion enthusiasts like to sneak a little closer, shaking his head in dismay. Right now, why just do you have a computer? Do you have access to the internet. I guess there's nothing like seeing it in person, maybe you know, Oh yeah I can. I can understand people who go around and like check that out, but to get closer, to get within the blast zone, which has been carefully calculated by the blasting company. And then they have said this is a dangerous area. Yeah, this is a safe area. You can see it from the safe area, so just stay in the safe area. Uh So what you want is a very controlled situation. Um, you don't want, like we said, over over blasting. You don't want underblasting. You want to do it just right. Um. The impression I get is times out of a hundred, it goes according to oil and it's just you know, it works out great, No one gets hurt. You might blast out a few windows of businesses around there to be expected. Yeah, of course with this kind of stuff if if you're close enough to it. So wait a minute. Now, there's been a ten minutes siren, a five minutes siren. Yeah, the air is totally still. It to crisp day. This guy is blue, Maybe a bird flies by. You have the higher up, Michael Buffer to do your ten eight countdown? Who's that? He's the looks get ready to room d D D D d D. Do you know which money he gets paid for doing that? I imagine a lot. So you get the one minute siren and then the countdown. That's right. If you're using an electrical detonator, you your guy has had his finger or her finger on the charge button, and it's very much like charging a camera to the camera flash. Yeah, you can't stop one after the other. Just gotta build up that charge it's like anybody's seen Um Silence to the Lambs at the end when Jodie Foster is being approached by Buffalo Bill, one of the greatest. Yeah, but remember that high pitched sound. That's the camera flash charging again. That's what you're doing with the electrical Debtonary's got the finger on the charge and then they get to one and you press fire and the electrical charge is released and the building goes kaboom. That's right. Have you ever played the camera flash game? No, I need to say this because it's really one of the more fun things you can do, and I don't think it can hurt you. I'm gonna look this up after. I think it's very safe. Go. Uh. If you have an old fashioned camera flash that you can charge and pop off like that, get into a pitch black room with your buddy, you know, find where your faces are, so you're a couple of feet apart like we are, and UM point the flash towards your own face, have them looking at you, and you pop it off and immediately you get this perfect black and white in you know, it registers with your brain and you can see it. It's like right in front of you and it's really really cool and creepy. My brother and I used to do it all the time. It's a lot of fun. So you get a perfect image of the other person's face. Yeah, Like they're pointing it like I would point it at my face. You're looking at me when the complete dark. Uh, And I popped the thing off and then you see like this, weird It's almost like a lithograph of my face. It's very very cool. Did you know that if you if you write that, that ultimately damages your eyes permanently. I don't think so. If you if you take a flashlight and you look like you hold the flashlight up to your face with the beam pointing away from you, and you look right over the top of it, like right over your knuckles, and just basically down the beam and just shine it around on the ground, you can see spider's eyes. I'm not sure what that means. You can see the eyes of little spiders that you could never see in the dark, but you can see their eyes reflecting back at you. It's really neat and unnerving, but there you you get you all of a sudden start to grasp just how many spiders there are around you at all times, so just like on your kitchen floor, yeah, or outside better wow? Yeah, I mean you just just take a take a flashlight and hold it up to your face and just look down the barrel of the flashlight under the ground between that and just shining a flashlight on the angle of reflection. It doesn't work. You have to look right, and I'm not This isn't like an old listen snipe hunting or anything I've done to myself. Like you, you just look down the barrel of the flash lighting and check out the little spider's eyes looking back. It's terrifying. It is. It's surprising it for it's not like that, but it's it goes from like not seeing anything all of a sudden you're like you realize, okay, there's a spider and look there's another spider. And I didn't even realize that I could do this. And they're green and tiny to all the ones I've ever seen with little green eyes. Totally trying that tonight. And if I'm telling you it doesn't work, don't be like Josh got me, Like, just keep trying and just the angle or something. You'll you'll see it. Okay, boy, that was along us sorry about that. Um, so we've we've detonated, you've detonated. The building has imploded. It's gonna send a huge dust cloud up, as you've seen on uh YouTube, as we've said two thousand times, and uh it may be a bit of a pain for the neighbors. But um, they will argue, the blaster guys will argue that it beats like a month of slow demolition, like this cloud will dissipate pretty soon and then it's gone forever. Apparently, if you have allergies in the area, they say, just go away for the day and when you come back it'll probably be fine. So, Josh, I want to be a blaster? Can I go to Blast University? Yes, it's uh Blasters, right, it's an adjunct of Brown University. Um, and uh, you just go and roll there. They'll let anybody in. It's free and you'll be a blaster the day you get out after two weeks of training. Bamn. Not there is no such program at all, no organized school. Um. The best way to get involved in this business is to get a job. Um, probably sweeping up I would imagine, at first for one of these companies, and work your way to the top. And um, like we said, there's only about twenty well established ones in the world or in the United States, probably in the world. And uh, you know, work your way up if you're into it, and maybe one day you can start Josh and Chuck Demolition LLC. Maybe, but yeah, you probably do better to try and warm your way through the company. Plus you will also owe it's royalties if you name your company Josh and Chuck Demolition, LLC. That's right. Okay, well, I guess it's implotions, right, I got nothing else. We nailed that one, didn't we, I think so. I hope you guys didn't skip this. Obviously you didn't if you're hearing me say this right now, and if not, then they never knew. But good for you for for getting into it, because it's pretty neat stuff. Uh. If you want to learn more about building implosions, you can type building implosions in the search part how stuff works dot com. Uh. And that means, of course it's time for message break listener mail please listen to mail time. Okay, I'm gonna call this, um. Leeching still happens real. Yeah, So this is from Annie. His husband leeches. He works for the Mayo Clinic. So this is legit. Well, what does he do for the movie? He sneaks leeches into people's beds. Hey, guys, just listen to the E c T podcast. At the end, you guess what would be the next archaic medical procedure to make a comeback, and you specifically mentioned leeching. News for you, leeching is still totally happening. Don't call her comeback. My husband isn't. Uh, boy? What is he in? Otor oh Oto laryng Jola jollagist Oto laryngologist. Never heard of that. He does a surgery on patients that need facial tumors removed. I would call myself a facial tumor remover LLC. That's right, uh. And they take tissue from other places on the body to repair the site. And if the flap doesn't have good circulation after the repair, they will stick leeches on it to get the blood flowing and um. The medical grade leeches are huge and greenish and they fall off when they're full, so the nurses have to keep an eye on them in the hospital. Isn't that crazy? I had no idea that that went on, honestly, So that's still going on, and she ends by saying, so gross leeches and more love Annie, that was a great listener mail. Yeah, short and sweet and who knew good one? Annie. Uh, if we have mentioned something that's sweet, thought was done but is still going on, we want to hear about that. We want to know what's going on basically, So tweet to us at s Y s K podcast or go on to Facebook dot com slash stuff you Should Know and tell us what's going on, or send us an email with the subject line what's going on you now with the question mark because I'd be asking us what's going on and we want to know what's going on. You would direct that email to Stuff podcast at Discovery dot com. Or you can find out what's going on at Stuff you Should Know dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com? Hey. Netflix streams TV shows and movies directly to your TV, computer, wireless device, or game console. You can get a thirty day free trial membership. Go to www dot Netflix dot com slash stuff and sign up now.

Welcome to you stuff you should know from house Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark and there's Charles W. H. Bryant. That means that this stuff we should know. We know. That's right. Really, yeah, we are imploding this show today. I'm imploding. Josh is imploding today. That should be interesting. That's better than exploding, though I've been doing a little bit of that too. Yeah, that's no good because that affects those around you. When you implode, at least you contain the turmoil within. It's like, really, the you know, don't be selfish, don't explode, we should probably say, because I guarantee there's people out there who are like, buildings don't actually implode. Um, you, we should call this the how buildings how detonating buildings so that they collapse in on themselves due to gravity. It's not an actual implosion where everything is sucked in towards the center. Right, that's a scientific thing that this is not. It's not happening when the building implodes you. But if you're not a jerk, then you just call them building implosions. Yeah, that's the nomenclature. Yeah, that's what people say. I should say, You're not a jerk if you are up in arms about that kind of thing. But I challenge you to email us and tell us what we should really call it, what what words should stand in them for implosions, and we will read it out on the later episode. So considering that we're still around, then that's right. Um, Chuck, Yes, are you familiar with the city of Detroit. Yes, we love Detroit. We do love Detroit. Probably my favorite name of all time. Yeah Detroit. Yeah, human being was named yeah Detroit. Yeah. Um, I grew up in Toledo, been to Detroit plenty of times. Love the Tigers, yeah, Um. Sparky Anderson was a great man. I'm a Matt Stafford. Place for the Lions. Oh yeah, that's another big Detroit link. Christ loved the Red Wings when I was a kid, the Pistons. When you hear me talk smack about Detroit, I'm joking lighting up, like, I find it extraordinarily satisfying when people write it was like you need off Detroit, and it's like, well, you need to listen to all the episodes of the podcast. I think it'd be funny. I always thought if we ever went to Detroit, which I think we should at some point for an event that like people would be like awesome, we know you guys love this, and then five percent when just they would come and sit there with their arms crossed, like you got a lot of make it up to do. Yeah, what's ironic is that if you switch those ratios, you'd have the number of people who live in houses with roofs in Detroit and the number of people who don't. So Also, one of my favorite things about Detroit is a website called Forgotten Detroit dot com. Yeah, that's a good one. I've mentioned it a few times. It bears repeating. There is a website called Forgotten Detroit dot com. And I get the impression that the guy was maybe German, Austrian or Dutch, and he's obviously knows what he's talking about with architecture, because it comes through when he's documenting the building and talking about it. But he wandered around Detroit. Whoever made this website wandered around Detroit and did a lot of urban exploration of abandoned buildings, photo documented building after building after building, went back and found original schematics, wrote about the history, and just made this exhaustive web website called forgotten Detroit dot com. And the reason why it's so awesome, in addition to the fact that it's just abandoned building photos, which are like the greatest thing on the planet, uh, is that he documented buildings that are not there any longer. A lot of them have been torn down and some of them have been imploded for lack of a better word, Yeah, just to make room for something better and bigger. Yeah, to take care of the blight to ye, just like, yeah, this is been here for too long with broken windows, right, and no one's been in it occupied it since, you know, So let's get rid of this. Instead of a slow demolition over the course of fifty years by vandals, let's just take care of it now exactly. So that's how that site ties to this episode. Very nice. Okay, that's good. That's a good old fashioned intro. Thanks man. So, like we said, it is, gravity is really what's going on here. It's a pretty simple concept. What they're doing when you implode a building or let's this is general demolition basically up front, is they're removing the support structures at very specific points to cause them to fall down one upon the other from the top down. And actually, you know you start at the bottom, but it will still fall from the top down, you know what I'm saying. Yeah, And um, this is usually for specific height buildings, like if you've got a five story building, you're probably gonna bring in a wrecking ball, some X excavators and a guy with a little black lunch pail exactly who's gonna sit on an ibam and eat it? Exactly? Uh? And anything over maybe eight, you're gonna start to get into the concept of of using demolition from the heights generally. This article said, I don't know if there's a rule of thumb height. Yeah, I guess what the key here? Safety? You want to do it safely. So the key is the buildings, Like where is it situated? Is it right in the middle of an apartment complex? Then you may want to implode because you don't want this thing falling left or right. If you've got nothing around there but empty parking lot. You're right, maybe a twenty story building could be fine because it's just gonna fall in that abandoned parking lot with graphs going through Italy and who cares about that? Exactly? Uh? All right, So let's get into this. The first thing that you have to do is see if you can dig up the original blueprints for this thing. They may exist, in which case you're all set and you can you know, if you know what you're looking at, you can see where their support structures are and where you need to kind of start your your journey here to implode this thing. Even better, if you can find the architect, the principal architect on that job, he or she may remember some things about that job that are like didn't show up in the bloodprints or little little foibles that the building HAPs. And be gentle with them. They may have a tear in their eye about this whole prospect. You know, don't just bang on the door and say, hey, we're gonna tell your building down, like where is it strong? You know, your crowning achievement exactly the only building you ever made. Uh, So that's just some personal advice. Be gentle with these people. Uh, they're gonna um draw up their plan of attack based on experience. And we should point out there's not a lot of companies that do this. It's not there's not five hundred demolition companies that implode tall buildings. There's like a twenty or so no. And here's the reason why it's very difficult for a young up and comer to get into the demolition business with their own company because it's so dangerous, yes, and risky not just to human life, but to other surrounding buildings. Areas Like insurance companies are all nervous watching this. That you build a track record of carrying out building implosions, and you have, you're on easy Street. That's what people hire you based on. Is your your successful track record? Yeah, and trust me, we know Josh and Chuck Implosions, LLC. Did not. We didn't get any calls. It was a bad We wasted a lot of a lot of money with that Kickstarter campaign. Well, your mom called, but she was just trying to pump us up exactly, Honey, you're good enough. You can empload this this thing. So they draw on their experience. Um. Sometimes, if they don't have the blueprints, or if it's a little more complicated, they may even do three D computer model and try it out ahead of time. Yeah. I would guess that that's pretty standard these days. Yeah you think so. Yeah. Um, I I read this awesome article about people who I think it was maybe be wired people who salvage huge huge like um ships that haven't sunk yet, that are but are about to these people like figure out how to keep them from sinking, and um even in that case, like they'll have some some guy fly with them and build a computer three D model on the on the fly. I think everyone's just get playing with three D models, right exactly, you know. But so I'm sure if they're doing that to like salvage tankers, they're doing it for like demolition too, you know, if for no other reason than as children we all love to build destroy models. I get to press in her next. Um. So, like we said, we're cover implosions in a second. If you don't have to implode, and you can just knock this thing over in an empty parking lot, you're gonna do it kind of like you would a tree. You're gonna if it's you want it to fall north, you're gonna weaken it and blasted on the north side. And sometimes you might even have cables pulling it that way, just like you would that oak tree in your front yard. Pretty basic stuff. If there is a bunch of junk around there that you have to protect you need it to follow in its own footprint, then you're gonna have to go the implosion route, right, which is kind of cool. I think everyone likes watching these videos. Oh yeah, that's a really fun way to spend the day. Yeah, And there are enthusiast even as we learned in this article, that get a little too close sometimes to see these things in person. Like building implosions are like the mic rib of the demolition world. Like it's got groupies and like people go around the country. Doesn't happen that often. You gotta take it while it's there. Um, and it could kill you. Yeah, so um, if you're imploding. They set these blasters and they look at the building basically as a series of towers instead of a one building. And what I gathered from this is that each tower quote unquote is like a support structure. Is that is that right? Yeah? Like, if you're looking at just like a um rectangular building, yeah, I would guess you probably break it up into four quadrants and then go after the support structures in each quadrant, and then the aim is to bring them all down towards the center. So, like you said, if you wanted to bring a building down to the north. You put some blasts, some charges on the north side to weaken it. Well, if you had four quadrants that you were trying to bring down towards the center, you would weaken the side closest to the quadrant and then have them all fall in towards the center and then collapse the building downward, right. Or another option is to actually weaken the center of the building, and uh, that would cause everything to fall in word as well. Yeah, but if you if you broke it into quadrants and then collapse everything towards the center, you would want to time it because you don't want everything just collapsing towards the middle and just holding one another up. You know that that's theays the blasters worst nightmare. Then you have the Transamerica building, Oh yeah, exactly in that triangular Yeah, at the in San Francisco. Yeah. Um, So let's say, for example, you have a twenty story building. You're not just gonna up set charges all on the first floor and I hope that gravity does its work. You're gonna set charges on the first floor and then maybe like some on the twelfth floor, and then maybe some on the six floor. Yeah, and typically like just a couple or just blowing up the first and second floor and then adding just a little bit of gravity. Uh, well, that will demolish the whole building. But you're doing the twelfth and say the fifteenth floor to to kind of break up the material that's coming down the rubble, to make clean up a little easier, right, because you know, you watch the video on YouTube and it takes five seconds and then you click on you know, guy gets kicked in the groin or sports bloopers next, and then you don't think about the fact that, yeah, guy's gotta clean the stuff up, right exactly? You want small pieces, is my long winded way of saying that. But in the blasters like, hey, I put some charges on floor twelve and fifteen, you can thank me later. In the cleanup guts thanks and the I told you to thank me later, he says kind of I'll trade you an apple for that tuna sandwich. He's like, you're kidding me. My wife's tuna. Give me the apple and bane and that cookie. And then the third one comes up and he's like, hey, you got the mots. Remember those ads? Remember like a little little kid motsa apple sauce like the little single served ones. There's a kid who looked like his name should be Spike or something and be like, hey, you got the mots. It was a really dumbad campaign. A bully. Yeah, he looked like a bully, but I don't think he was actually supposed to be a bully. Weird casting decision. Yeah, man, I didn't realize. I was walking around with that one, and I thought you were about to say, and that kid grew up to be shy la buff Okay, where were we? Okay? Was that a Paul Harvey reference? No? No, So they've got their plan in place, that the detonators, this blasting company has the plan in place, and now they have to actually prep the building. Yes, first step in prep is um they wash it. Well, they don't watch it. They survey the site, they walk through the building several times because you don't want to just make a cursory glance. You want to do your due diligence. Well, you need to clean everything out of there. Even before that, like some crew has come through and gotten all the drywall and all that stuff out, Like everything you want to as empty as possible, take out any non low bearing walls. You want to make it easier to tumble this thing. Sometimes I'll even uh cut into uh some of these support structures to give it a bit of a head start, hit it with sledgehammers. Yeah, release a little uh pin up frustration, you know, exactly. So then the blasting crew comes through, is making note of all this stuff. That's right, because they've already looked at the blueprints. But blueprints are those are just pictures for college boys. You want to get in there and really see what's going on firsthand. Yeah, yeah, exactly, because the blueprint, I mean, you know, there could be derivations. You never know. Um So, then once you have everything cleaned out, maybe weekend, some of the support columns with sledgehammers. It's sort of it's not teetering, but mentally it's teetering. It's beginning to think about teetering. The building knows like a boy, time to come down. My my time is limited here. I was accounting achievement once. Um So, then the blasters come in. They start loading these columns with explosives, um dynamite. If you're using concrete, it's a good way to go. Um They drill these holes, they bore holes. It's really kind of rudimentary and stuff explosives into them. Yeah, and we should say also, um, it's not just a guessing game. In most demolitions, from what we understand, they will say I picked the support column, maybe probably up on like the twentieth floor something like that, rather than down low, and they will blast it. They'll attach some explosive to and do like a test blast. Yeah. I don't think they're trying to blow it up. They're just trying to They're trying to do a small charge to see how much damage that small charge does and then they can predict how much a larger how much amount of a larger charge they will need to use to like blow the columns up right, or they might blow a column, but they'll wrap it in like chain link fence and a shield to kind of keep it in place and so it doesn't go everywhere and you know hurt people obviously. And um, what they want to do is and this is covering to know. They want to use the minimum amount of explosives that it takes to bring this thing down. They don't just go in there willy nilly and just say loaded up boys. You know, they want to use the smallest amount to still get the job done exactly, because if they use too much, then you've got a bunch of chunks flying everywhere and there's damage the surrounding buildings and people get hit in the heads, bad news, lawsuits. Used too little, you've got that building still kind of standing, and that's extremely dangerous as well, because you have to bring in a crew to knock it down like you would a lower, smaller building. Um, but it's a tall building that's just kind of half standing, and it's it's like a Jenga tower. Now, yeah, that's no good. No, that's very dangerous. So you want to use the minimum amount, put the right amount. Yeah, Well that's one reason the World Trade Center was so dangerous afterward, because it obviously it wasn't some controlled implosion, unless you're Charlie Sheen and you you know, get on the internet and say that it's a government conspiracy. Well he was an uncontrolled implosion himself. Wasn't exactly. Uh, but you know, nine level is so dangerous to clean up because it wasn't done on purpose, so they didn't know what was weak and what wasn't and it was pretty precarious getting in there and trying to clean anything out, super dangerous work. So uh stating obvious, Well we've got the test plast done. Yeah, we've got them. Now they're going around and they're they're drilling bore holes. Let's say we're doing a concrete building. So you got your dynamite. Yeah, And what is dynamite is just basically like a kind of a paper material soaked in combustible, highly explosive liquid chemicals. Yep. That it takes actually am an explosion to explode dynamite. So you you might have a fuse. I think if you're demolishing and building in N two, you've got a fuse going to the stick of dynamite. But in between the fuse and and the dynamite is a blasting cap. It's a small charge of explosive material that's lit by a fuse. That's right, it's a primary charge. And the point of using dynamite and why you want to use it in um concrete structure column um is that it expands, creates a bunch of hot gas all of a sudden, really quickly, and when it's doing that inside a concrete column, it explodes the concrete column into rubble. Now that will work for concrete. But you got yourself a steel structure, you're gonna have to use something else called r d X. That's right. And I'm not even gonna say the long name. I'll try. I don't want to try it, all right, you're ready cyclo, try methylene, trying naitramin. Damn, dude. I stumbled a little bit in the middle, but I still got it done. No, that was that was perfect. I mean you look at it and it looks like the alphabet. It's such a long word, you know. UM. But yeah, r d X will call it r d X, and that's what you want to use if you have steel supports and UM. If dynamite explodes at a rate of about six dred tons per square inch, r d x um explodes at about twenty seven thousand ft per second. That is like some serious stuff. And you're not exploding steel because you can't explode steel. What they're actually doing there is they are cutting through the steel, splitting it in half thereby weakening it. Yeah, it's like um using a lub or a scalpel. Yeah, exactly. Uh. To easy to one of these, though, like you said, you need a blasting cap. That primary charge the fuse, and the fuse is just explosive junk inside of a chord, like when you see like the old timey fuses, you know, like a sparkler. That's explosive material just packed inside like you know, a tight chord. Right, And the whole point of the fuse is it's a delays the blast. So depending on how you want to sequence your blast, UM, you're gonna use varying links of fuses. Again, if it's nineteen o two, that's right, Um, And that fuse eventually will reach the point where it sets off the primary charge and that's where the action happens. UM. These days, they use electrical detonators mainly, UM, probably exclusively, don't you think I would think so? And that is, you know, sort of like a fuse, except it's just it's a lead line made of electrical wire, or it is electrical wire. Um, You've got your debtonator end where the wire surrounded by this explosive material and then that's attached directly to the primary charge and then the main explosives and they you know, they have some sort of battery device heats up the wire and eventually it'll get hot enough to set off that junk on the detonator end sets off the primary charge triggers the main show, right, Like you know the old plunger that they use like in in Bugs Bunny cartoons to blow up stuff. You mean when the when the mocking bird lands on Italy behind coyotes back and it slowly depresses. Um. Apparently that is an electrical um detonator where you would have a charge going and then you press the plunger and it would release that charge. Um. That's the same thing, except we we don't use that old timing box and plunger any longer. Um, But it's still the same change. It's very gratifying. But yeah, I would imagine. I think I wonder if they have fake ones, just sort of like a ribbon cutting like that you like connect your I phone. Well that actually works though, well I'm sure this works to know, but if you just have a fake when you like the owner of the company is very old school. We have to set this up for him so you can push it down. Yeah, he loves giant scissors. Yeah, but no, I mean, like maybe there's like the little uh, the little remote control is in the box and when you press the plunge on it pokes the button and the owner of the company is like, yeah, exactly, do it again. Wow, that's funny. I guess we're both three year olds a part um. Okay, So they have to control this sequence sometimes, like maybe they don't want the first floor in the twelfth floor going off at the same time. Maybe there's a delay so they can actually have a delay in the fuse areas where the fuse burned slower than others, right, or you just like I said, you use longer lengths of fuse, you know, um, but yeah, you can put a a little you can put say, uh, you could charge a fuse and then add a little extra fuse between the original fuse that you just delivered the charge too, and like a delay fuse and the blasting cap and then yeah, you can time it, and you want to time it again. You don't want everything falling down on top of itself and ending up supporting itself. You want like columns coming down and then columns coming down all on top of each other and they're pushing one another down. Remember in the World Trade Center episode that we did it, it's called pancaking. It's where the rubble on one floor hits the rubble on another floor with enough force that that floor comes down and it again and again and again. Yes, and it picks up speed as well. That's right. And you know once that happens, like there's there's no going back. Yeah, and sadly, as we all saw a nine eleven. And if you've ever watched the internet videos, it only takes a few seconds and it's done. Yeah, it's very quick process. Apparently people are surprised by how fast happens, Like who people who have never watched these videos. It says in the article that the people people, it's the one thing they're surprised by most is how quickly a building collapse. Show me these people. I love it when I think when people write these articles like that, they just sort of say I was surprised. So people are full Yeah to do in journalism? Um, all right, So let's say you're gonna take down a building in a neighborhood. You might want to hire a consulting firm to come in. And the idea I get is that they sort of document the process, maybe work with the neighbors, um in a little pr sense to assure them that everything's gonna be okay, Yeah, they're gonna film it, of course, because you can learn a lot from watching it. Yeah, not only put it on YouTube, Yeah, you can put it on YouTube, but also like that's also how one of the ways you're going to figure out how to take down the building you're working on now is going back and looking at how you've taken down similar buildings. So the owner would come in and say, hey, pull the the bank in Houston from eight. That one was perfect and it looks just like this one. Yeah. Um, so you've called in your consulting firm, they've done all their due diligence, they're working before things hit go time. You're gonna, of course do a really thorough check to make sure no one's in there. Um, you don't want to. Like in Heathers, remember that movie, Hea, there's uh there's a riveting Magnum p I episode where Magnum and Higgins are in not only in a building it's about to be demolished, trapped in an elevator in a building. That's about it. It was almost unwatchable, it was so tense. I don't remember that one. Yeah, and Heathers, I think the dad was an implosion expert and like killed the mother that way, right. I don't remember that because you said something about Christians later since about yeah mom, I saw a mom in the window or something, and oh yeah that's right. Yeah yeah, I think the mom kill herself was the implication. Oh by being in there. Yeah, I love my dead gay son. Yeah that was man, that's a good movie. That's a great line. Um, so they've calculated the perimeter obviously as well. Not only going to check inside the building, you're also gonna to make sure that you have a safety zone around the thing allowed implosion enthusiasts like to sneak a little closer, shaking his head in dismay. Right now, why just do you have a computer? Do you have access to the internet. I guess there's nothing like seeing it in person, maybe you know, Oh yeah I can. I can understand people who go around and like check that out, but to get closer, to get within the blast zone, which has been carefully calculated by the blasting company. And then they have said this is a dangerous area. Yeah, this is a safe area. You can see it from the safe area, so just stay in the safe area. Uh So what you want is a very controlled situation. Um, you don't want, like we said, over over blasting. You don't want underblasting. You want to do it just right. Um. The impression I get is times out of a hundred, it goes according to oil and it's just you know, it works out great, No one gets hurt. You might blast out a few windows of businesses around there to be expected. Yeah, of course with this kind of stuff if if you're close enough to it. So wait a minute. Now, there's been a ten minutes siren, a five minutes siren. Yeah, the air is totally still. It to crisp day. This guy is blue, Maybe a bird flies by. You have the higher up, Michael Buffer to do your ten eight countdown? Who's that? He's the looks get ready to room d D D D d D. Do you know which money he gets paid for doing that? I imagine a lot. So you get the one minute siren and then the countdown. That's right. If you're using an electrical detonator, you your guy has had his finger or her finger on the charge button, and it's very much like charging a camera to the camera flash. Yeah, you can't stop one after the other. Just gotta build up that charge it's like anybody's seen Um Silence to the Lambs at the end when Jodie Foster is being approached by Buffalo Bill, one of the greatest. Yeah, but remember that high pitched sound. That's the camera flash charging again. That's what you're doing with the electrical Debtonary's got the finger on the charge and then they get to one and you press fire and the electrical charge is released and the building goes kaboom. That's right. Have you ever played the camera flash game? No, I need to say this because it's really one of the more fun things you can do, and I don't think it can hurt you. I'm gonna look this up after. I think it's very safe. Go. Uh. If you have an old fashioned camera flash that you can charge and pop off like that, get into a pitch black room with your buddy, you know, find where your faces are, so you're a couple of feet apart like we are, and UM point the flash towards your own face, have them looking at you, and you pop it off and immediately you get this perfect black and white in you know, it registers with your brain and you can see it. It's like right in front of you and it's really really cool and creepy. My brother and I used to do it all the time. It's a lot of fun. So you get a perfect image of the other person's face. Yeah, Like they're pointing it like I would point it at my face. You're looking at me when the complete dark. Uh, And I popped the thing off and then you see like this, weird It's almost like a lithograph of my face. It's very very cool. Did you know that if you if you write that, that ultimately damages your eyes permanently. I don't think so. If you if you take a flashlight and you look like you hold the flashlight up to your face with the beam pointing away from you, and you look right over the top of it, like right over your knuckles, and just basically down the beam and just shine it around on the ground, you can see spider's eyes. I'm not sure what that means. You can see the eyes of little spiders that you could never see in the dark, but you can see their eyes reflecting back at you. It's really neat and unnerving, but there you you get you all of a sudden start to grasp just how many spiders there are around you at all times, so just like on your kitchen floor, yeah, or outside better wow? Yeah, I mean you just just take a take a flashlight and hold it up to your face and just look down the barrel of the flashlight under the ground between that and just shining a flashlight on the angle of reflection. It doesn't work. You have to look right, and I'm not This isn't like an old listen snipe hunting or anything I've done to myself. Like you, you just look down the barrel of the flash lighting and check out the little spider's eyes looking back. It's terrifying. It is. It's surprising it for it's not like that, but it's it goes from like not seeing anything all of a sudden you're like you realize, okay, there's a spider and look there's another spider. And I didn't even realize that I could do this. And they're green and tiny to all the ones I've ever seen with little green eyes. Totally trying that tonight. And if I'm telling you it doesn't work, don't be like Josh got me, Like, just keep trying and just the angle or something. You'll you'll see it. Okay, boy, that was along us sorry about that. Um, so we've we've detonated, you've detonated. The building has imploded. It's gonna send a huge dust cloud up, as you've seen on uh YouTube, as we've said two thousand times, and uh it may be a bit of a pain for the neighbors. But um, they will argue, the blaster guys will argue that it beats like a month of slow demolition, like this cloud will dissipate pretty soon and then it's gone forever. Apparently, if you have allergies in the area, they say, just go away for the day and when you come back it'll probably be fine. So, Josh, I want to be a blaster? Can I go to Blast University? Yes, it's uh Blasters, right, it's an adjunct of Brown University. Um, and uh, you just go and roll there. They'll let anybody in. It's free and you'll be a blaster the day you get out after two weeks of training. Bamn. Not there is no such program at all, no organized school. Um. The best way to get involved in this business is to get a job. Um, probably sweeping up I would imagine, at first for one of these companies, and work your way to the top. And um, like we said, there's only about twenty well established ones in the world or in the United States, probably in the world. And uh, you know, work your way up if you're into it, and maybe one day you can start Josh and Chuck Demolition LLC. Maybe, but yeah, you probably do better to try and warm your way through the company. Plus you will also owe it's royalties if you name your company Josh and Chuck Demolition, LLC. That's right. Okay, well, I guess it's implotions, right, I got nothing else. We nailed that one, didn't we, I think so. I hope you guys didn't skip this. Obviously you didn't if you're hearing me say this right now, and if not, then they never knew. But good for you for for getting into it, because it's pretty neat stuff. Uh. If you want to learn more about building implosions, you can type building implosions in the search part how stuff works dot com. Uh. And that means, of course it's time for message break listener mail please listen to mail time. Okay, I'm gonna call this, um. Leeching still happens real. Yeah, So this is from Annie. His husband leeches. He works for the Mayo Clinic. So this is legit. Well, what does he do for the movie? He sneaks leeches into people's beds. Hey, guys, just listen to the E c T podcast. At the end, you guess what would be the next archaic medical procedure to make a comeback, and you specifically mentioned leeching. News for you, leeching is still totally happening. Don't call her comeback. My husband isn't. Uh, boy? What is he in? Otor oh Oto laryng Jola jollagist Oto laryngologist. Never heard of that. He does a surgery on patients that need facial tumors removed. I would call myself a facial tumor remover LLC. That's right, uh. And they take tissue from other places on the body to repair the site. And if the flap doesn't have good circulation after the repair, they will stick leeches on it to get the blood flowing and um. The medical grade leeches are huge and greenish and they fall off when they're full, so the nurses have to keep an eye on them in the hospital. Isn't that crazy? I had no idea that that went on, honestly, So that's still going on, and she ends by saying, so gross leeches and more love Annie, that was a great listener mail. Yeah, short and sweet and who knew good one? Annie. Uh, if we have mentioned something that's sweet, thought was done but is still going on, we want to hear about that. We want to know what's going on basically, So tweet to us at s Y s K podcast or go on to Facebook dot com slash stuff you Should Know and tell us what's going on, or send us an email with the subject line what's going on you now with the question mark because I'd be asking us what's going on and we want to know what's going on. You would direct that email to Stuff podcast at Discovery dot com. Or you can find out what's going on at Stuff you Should Know dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com? Hey. Netflix streams TV shows and movies directly to your TV, computer, wireless device, or game console. You can get a thirty day free trial membership. Go to www dot Netflix dot com slash stuff and sign up now.