Futility Closet - 082-Stealing Abe Lincoln

Episode Date: November 23, 2015

In 1876, a gang of inept Chicago counterfeiters launched an absurd plot to steal the body of Abraham Lincoln and hold it for ransom. In today's episode of the Futility Closet podcast, we'll follow their comical attempts to carry out the bizarre scheme, and uncover the secret society that was formed afterward to protect Lincoln's corpse. We'll also puzzle over an overlooked way to reduce the odds of dying of a heart attack. Sources for our feature on Lincoln's bodysnatchers: Thomas J. Craughwell, Stealing Lincoln's Body, 2007. Bonnie Stahlman Speer, The Great Abraham Lincoln Hijack, 1997. John Carroll Power, History of an Attempt to Steal the Body of Abraham Lincoln, 1890. Thomas J. Craughwell, "A Plot to Steal Lincoln's Body," U.S. News, June 24, 2007. David B. Williams, "The Odd Reburials of Abraham Lincoln," Seattle Times, April 13, 2007. Ray Bendici, "Thomas J. Craughwell Discusses the Odd Plot to Steal Lincoln's Body," Connecticut Magazine, Nov. 12, 2013. Don Babwin, "Presidential Heist," Associated Press, May 13, 2007. This week's lateral thinking puzzle is adapted from a puzzle in Edward J. Harshman's 1996 book Fantastic Lateral Thinking Puzzles. You can listen using the player above, download this episode directly, or subscribe on iTunes or via the RSS feed at http://feedpress.me/futilitycloset. Please consider becoming a patron of Futility Closet -- on our Patreon page you can pledge any amount per episode, and all contributions are greatly appreciated. You can change or cancel your pledge at any time, and we've set up some rewards to help thank you for your support. You can also make a one-time donation via the Donate button in the sidebar of the Futility Closet website. Many thanks to Doug Ross for the music in this episode. If you have any questions or comments you can reach us at [e-mail]. Thanks for listening!

Welcome to Futility Closet, a celebration of the quirky and the curious, the thought-provoking and the simply amusing. This is the audio companion to the website that catalogs more than 8,000 curiosities in history, language, mathematics, literature, philosophy, and art. You can find us online at futilitycloset.com. Thanks for joining us. Welcome to Episode 82. I'm Greg Ross. And I'm Sharon Ross. In 1876, a gang of inept Chicago counterfeiters launched an ill-conceived plot to steal the body of Abraham Lincoln and hold it for ransom. In today's show, we'll learn about their attempt to carry out the absurd scheme and the secret society that was formed afterward to safeguard Lincoln's corpse.

We'll also puzzle over an overlooked way to reduce the odds of dying of a heart attack. You wouldn't be listening to this podcast right now if it weren't for the wonderful support that we get from our fans. If you would like to join them and help us keep bringing you your weekly dose of quirky history and lateral thinking puzzles, please check out our Patreon campaign at patreon.com slash futilitycloset or see the link in our show notes. I have to thank listener Benjamin Snitkoff for suggesting this one. It's the story of an inept attempt to steal Abraham Lincoln's body in 1876. Lincoln died on April 15, 1865, and was the center of what's been called one of the largest funeral observations, I guess you'd call it, in history.

His coffin traveled from Washington, D.C. to Springfield, Illinois, which he'd once dedicated a cemetery there. And his wife, Mary Todd Lincoln, remembered him saying, when I die, I want to be put to rest in some quiet place like this. So she insisted that he be buried there. So his coffin traveled from D.C. to Springfield, Illinois, and did it through this circuitous route of actually more than 1,600 miles because everyone wanted to see him and say goodbye to him. He stopped in 10 different cities, including Baltimore, New York, and Chicago, for processions, public viewings, and funeral ceremonies, and didn't actually arrive at the Oak Ridge Cemetery until May 4th, almost a month after he'd left D.C.

Anyway, they put him into a receiving tomb there, and he stayed there until 1874. That's because his friends had raised money to build a dedicated above-ground tomb for him, dedicated to him, built of white marble. And that wasn't ready until 1874, but when that was ready, President Grant and the former governor of the state presided over its dedication, and they put him into that dedicated tomb. He rested peacefully there for only about two years before somebody decided to mess with him. The somebody was an Irish crime boss named Big Jim Canale, who was a silent partner in a saloon and a billiard hall on Chicago's near west side called The Hub.

Canale was a small-time counterfeiter, but he had one really valuable asset, and that was one of the best engravers of counterfeit plates in the country, a man named Benjamin Boyd. This is interesting because counterfeiting was becoming sort of a big business there. This country actually didn't have a uniform currency until the Civil War. I've written a bit about this on Futility Closet, I guess. Until that point, paper money was just issued by private banks,

and as the nation grew, you can imagine that that whole system became pretty chaotic. By 1860, we had 10,000 different kinds of paper currency in this country. 10,000 different kinds. Which is ridiculous. So especially in response to the cost of the Civil War, that kind of brought things to a head. The government needed to take control of the money supply. So Lincoln finally ordered that we just have one national currency that everyone uses. That was a good thing, but it was a bonanza for counterfeiters because now if you had one good engraver like Big Jim Canale did, you could now make bills that could pass anywhere in the country. So it was sort of a big opportunity.

Oh, before like everything, currency was only good in more of a local area? Sort of more local, yeah. So the first new bills were issued in 1863. The Secret Service, which we now think of as essentially being around to guard the president, was created at first to create a guard against counterfeiters because that was such a big business at the time. Ironically, the Secret Service was signed into existence by Abraham Lincoln on the day he was assassinated. Anyway, this master engraver Benjamin Boyd, who worked for Big Jim Canale, was at the time serving 10 years at the Illinois State Penitentiary in Joliet, Illinois, having been put there by the Secret Service. So no one,

I don't think, knows where he came up with this plan. But Jim Canale came up with this ambitious scheme to get Boyd out of jail. There are a number of ways you could go about doing that, but the one he chose was what we'll do is we'll steal Abraham Lincoln's body, take it 220 miles north, and bury it in a sand dune in northwestern Indiana on the shore of Lake Michigan, and then demand a ransom of $200,000 in cash, which is about $4 million today, and a full pardon for Boyd. Go ahead and ask your questions. There's all kinds of questions. Yeah, I mean, like, I just can't even think what to ask first. Like, this is the best scheme you can come up with for thinking of getting somebody out of jail.

Like, I'm just speechless. The first one I thought of is, if you say, please let Benjamin Boyd out of jail, that's immediately going to tip off your own identity. I mean... That's a good point. Also, someone points out, Thomas Crowe, one of the authors I was following for this says, even if this whole crazy idea worked, even if they could get a hold of Abe Lincoln's body, the shore of Lake Michigan in northwestern Indiana is 220 miles north of the cemetery

where Lincoln was. And in 1876, it would take anywhere from 10 days to two weeks to get the body up there, depending on weather conditions and road conditions. And they're not going to have two weeks go by before someone realizes that the body's gone. So they're going to be on to them before they can even hope to get anywhere close to the place. I also don't know how they settled on that of all places to hide the body. There's a lot of questions here. Yeah, and I mean, once you let the guy out of jail, it's like, you know, then he'd be a fugitive the rest of his life. I mean,

they would know who he is for sure, even if they weren't sure who his associates were. So anyway, that's the plan. That's the plan. So to carry out the plan, Canali recruited two members of his gang, Terrence Mullen and Jack Hughes. Mullen was a saloon keeper. He was Canali's partner in this bar in Chicago. Hughes, my notes say, was a sometime manufacturer of counterfeit nickels. This whole thing is a really small-time operation.

I don't know why you would ever think of counterfeit nickels. Anyway, those two decided they had no experience in body snatching, so they recruited a third man, a regular at the bar named Louis Swagels, to help them. And Swagels brought in a getaway driver named Billy Brown. The great thing about this is Swagels was only brought in because he happened to be standing there in the bar while they were talking about this. And as it happened, Swagels was a paid informant of the U.S. Secret Service.

Oh. Which is just spectacular bad luck. Swagels was what's called a roper. He had originally had a checkered past. He was a criminal, but then he'd been recruited by the Secret Service to try to help catch counterfeiters. He's what we'd call an informant today. Yeah.

So they said, come work for us. We're trying to stop counterfeiters. We know they frequent this one bar on the west side. Oh, so. So just go hang out there. That makes they frequent this one bar on the west side. Oh, so. So just go hang out there. That makes it a little less of a coincidence, yeah. But still. So he was there to catch counterfeiters.

Yeah. Not to stop people from stealing Abraham Lincoln's body. So they just called him over to the table and said, hey, you want to help us steal Lincoln's body? And Swagels, who had apparently an astonishing presence of mind, said, I'm the boss body snatcher of Chicago. He just claimed to have experience in body snatching, thinking like that, which is astounding. It's not quite as astonishing a claim as it sounds now, because at the time there was sort of a steady business in body snatching, unfortunately,

because medical schools needed cadavers, and there was sort of this unspoken underground black market in dead bodies. So there were more body snatchers then than there certainly are today. And I guess you could claim expertise. I mean, who's going to call references, right? Right. So kudos to Swagels for thinking that up so quickly. Also, the getaway driver who Swagels brought in was actually just a bricklayer he knew. So Swagels went to him hurriedly and said, look, I know you're a bricklayer, but pretend that you're a getaway driver.

I'll explain this later. We're working for the Secret Service. And he went along with it. So Swaggles agreed to all this and got taken into the gang and then hurriedly went around the corner to the Secret Service office in Chicago, which was run by a man named Patrick Tyrrell, and started giving him updates. So the bottom line here is that the Secret Service was

in on this literally from day one. Right. And the crooks never even suspected that that was the case. So the plan was, the robbers planned to travel to Springfield, Illinois on the overnight train on November 6th, 1876, scout out the tomb on the following day, take the body that evening. And this is the one actually really pretty clever part of the whole plan, the only clever part of this plan. That was election night. And it was that the 1876 election was a very closely contested one, as it turns out, between Rutherford B. Hayes and Samuel Tilden.

So they figured that's the one night of the year when no one's going to be visiting a cemetery. Everyone's going to be focused on the election returns and what's going on that night, which actually makes a good deal of sense. Mullen, one of the crooks who was the co-owner of the saloon, said election night was, quote, a damned elegant time to do it. And he was right about that. So the Secret Service is in on this whole plan. And charmingly, both the crooks and the cops boarded the same train on November 6th.

Canali, the guy who cooked all those up, didn't even go, which is probably the smartest thing he did. But the Secret Service got together their team, including a couple of Pinkerton detectives, and waited on the train platform beside the last car of the train and just watched for the gang that night. And the gang at first didn't show up. By nine o'clock, there was no sign of them. And finally, it was only as the train began moving out of the station towards Springfield that the crooks showed up and jumped onto the front passenger car. And so the detectives leapt onto the last car, and they all set off together unwittingly for Springfield. We talk all the time about how these stories would make great movies, and this would just

have to be a comedy. I just keep picturing it in my head the whole thing is really comical i mean it's just completely comedic the notion that they're stealing the body of the revered 16th president of these united states is awful but every other part of this is just pure comedy so they all go down together uh 185 miles to springfield illinois and in springfield tyrell and the pinkertons the detectives all head for one hotel and the crooks go to another. They're staying now in hotels that are only two blocks apart in Springfield, Illinois. It's astounding that they didn't run into each other. The crooks are still have no idea that anyone knows they're onto them.

So now the custodian of Abe Lincoln's tomb is a man named John Carroll Power who had a very peaceful life up until this day but on the day after everyone arrives in town he gets a visit first from Tyrrell who says hi I'm the chief of the secret service in Chicago and you're about someone's about to come to your tomb and try to steal the body of Abraham Lincoln. How are you doing? So Carol, but he says, don't worry, we're on to, we have a plan

to catch them. I just want to make you aware of this. So he goes away again. And then that afternoon, sure enough, Swaggles and Hughes show up, crooks, posing as tourists and just sort of asking a lot of questions about Abraham Lincoln and the tomb. And what they learn is actually pretty encouraging. It turns out that there's no night watchman, no guards, no groundskeeper, and the custodian, Power, actually lives in Springfield, which is two or three miles away. And it's election night. And even best of all, I guess, is that it turns out that Lincoln's coffin is kept in a white marble sarcophagus in a burial room that's protected only by a padlocked steel gate.

So from the cook's standpoint, this looks pretty good. I mean, it looks like there won't be anyone around that evening for miles, and the only thing standing between them and Lincoln's body is literally just one padlock. I guess nobody thought anybody would try to steal Lincoln. Yeah, nothing like this had ever happened before. I mean, it would be sacrilege, practically. So no one thought to provide against it, because why would anybody steal a president's body? Just a word about how the tomb was set up.

There was sort of a vestibule in the front part of the building, which is called Memorial Hall, which is an oval chamber where power met visitors, kind of a reception area. Lincoln's actual coffin was on the other side of the building, 120 feet away, the opposite end of it. So the detectives showed up that night. The night was cold, so they decided to wait in the Memorial Hall, just the reception area, because that had steam heat. And they, Tyrell made them take off their shoes so they wouldn't make any sound,

and they just stood there in the dark on their stocking feet for two hours, waiting for the bad guys to show up. The plan was that they had to catch them red-handed. They had to catch them in the act in order to charge them with this crime. So the plan was that once they actually got going, Swagels would find a way to come around to the other side of the building and say, okay, they're going, you can come catch them.

That was the plan. And that's almost what happened. Mullen, Hughes, and Swagels, the crooks, walked two miles to the cemetery and jumped the plan. And that's almost what happened. Mullen, Hughes, and Swagels, the crooks, walked two miles to the cemetery and jumped the fence. The getaway driver would arrive later with the wagon. And they scouted the area first. And Swagels, again, with this amazing presence of mind,

the bad guys as they were scouting the area could have gone into Memorial Hall where the detectives were waiting, and discovered the whole thing. But Swiggles went up and pretended to test the door and said, this is all right. So that didn't happen. They went around to the other side where Lincoln's coffin was and discovered that none of them knew how to pick a lock, but they brought a hacksaw. They started to try to saw through the staple that was holding the padlock and broke the blade immediately. Everything goes wrong for them. So they had to start sawing through the actual padlock itself.

And that took half an hour. They took turns at it. But eventually got through this padlock and got into the burial chamber. And Mullen, one of them, had brought an axe that he'd stolen. It was going to just smash the sarcophagus lid. The way it's set up is that Lincoln's in a cedar coffin and the coffin is lowered into a container, a marble, white marble container that's a sarcophagus basically just to sort of hold it. And Mullen's going to smash that with an axe to get into where the coffin is. And Swagels again thinks quickly and stops him and says, well, wait, actually just don't smash it. If we can find a way to just open it less violently, then if we can get the body out and restore things to how they were,

anyone who visits will just see the sarcophagus and we'll have that much more lead time for a getaway because no one will realize that anything is missing. If you smash it, it'll be immediately apparent that something's gone. And the crooks couldn't have thought of this for themselves. No. Let it go. Swaggles has to do all this last minute thinking to try to stop disasters from happening. So they tried to do that and mostly succeeded. It turned out the sarcophagus was sealed not with cement as they'd feared, but with plaster of Paris. So they could

get the lid off pretty easily and lay that against the wall. But then after that, they couldn't lift the coffin out. It was wedged in very tightly. They couldn't even get the lid open. So not knowing what to do, they started to saw off the panel at the foot of the sarcophagus, the marble panel, just to see if they could slide it out sideways. And discovered the problem was basically, Lincoln was in a cedar coffin, but it was

lined with lead and weighed 500 pounds. And there were only three of them, so they could only move it a few inches, but couldn't get it all the way out of the sarcophagus in order to open it. So, Mullen and Hughes finally said, alright, there's the getaway drivers out there. There's three of us. If we get him as a fourth, maybe that'll be enough strength that we can get the coffin out of the sarcophagus. So Swagel says, sure, I'll do that for you. I'll go get him. And just goes whistling around to the other side of the building and tells

the detectives, okay, they're at it. You can come get them. What he said was the word wash, which was the password. So everything up to this point is a textbook perfect way to collar a body snatcher. Everything up to this way, to this point, is perfect as far as the detectives are concerned. But here things go wrong. They had brought with them, the detectives had brought, a couple Pinkerton detectives, one of whom was named George Hay, who was rather nervous and over-eager, and cocked his pistol on the way out of the Memorial Hall, and the pistol went off. And every account of this says, in the empty graveyard, it sounded like a cannon shot, which it must have. The body snatchers heard that and took off running.

So what Tyrrell discovered, he ran to the burial chamber and just discovered Lincoln's coffin pulled partway out of the sarcophagus, but there was no sign of the snatchers. And then there was kind of an embarrassing incident where the detectives were all kind of fanning out through the graveyard and couldn't see one another and started firing at each other thinking they were the bad guys. So it just kind of unraveled and fell apart pretty quickly. No one was hurt, but Tyrrell later called it one of the most unfortunate nights I have ever experienced. Fortunately, the bad guys were just true to form, went straight back to the bar in Chicago, which was probably the only place on Earth where they were guaranteed to get captured.

I guess they didn't realize. Even at this point, they still didn't realize that Swagels was a turncoat. I see, yeah. So they didn't know that anybody knew who they were. Yeah, so they just went straight back to Canali's bar, where they were arrested the following evening. They just walked in and asked for identities and just picked them up,

because they knew, thanks to Swagels, they knew who they were. Interestingly, in some cities, this didn't get any newspaper coverage, and in other cities, the newspapers printed the story but told the readers it wasn't true. I guess it just sounded like such an outlandish idea that someone would try. It still does today, I guess. You could see the editor of a newspaper thinking, you know, this can't be right. Yeah. And also the crooks had been right that the presidential race between Hayes and Tilden was actually hotly contested. And so that was taking all the newspaper space. And in fact, that presidential contest wasn't decided until the following year. So that does make some sense. What finally happened is that Mullen and Hughes were found guilty on two counts of larceny and conspiracy,

and they wound up each serving only a one-year sentence at the penitentiary in Joliet, which is not very much time for something like this, only a year. The reason is that no one had ever thought that such a crime could even happen, and so there weren't real provisions for it in the law. But after this word of this got around, the grave robbing laws were toughened up quite a bit as a result. There's an interesting sequel to all this in that Power, the tomb custodian, who is now left behind with Abe Lincoln's half-desecrated coffin,

had to figure out what to do. When the crooks and the detectives left, he's left with a half-sawed-open marble sarcophagus with a coffin sticking out of it, and the day's visitors are about to show up. So he panicked and got five of his friends to help him rebury Lincoln in an unmarked grave in the basement of the tomb.

Actually, as he was down there digging, he struck water. The water table was quite high, so he didn't even bury him down there. He just put him across some planks and covered him up with some mildewed wood just to get him safely kept somewhere. And then artfully said things, if visitors asked. He got the sarcophagus put back together.

So as far as the visitors knew, they just imagined that the coffin was in the sarcophagus where it belonged, and he would say something like, they'd say, I hear that someone tried to steal Lincoln's body. Is it belonged, and he would say something like, they'd say, I hear that, you know, someone tried to steal Lincoln's body. Is that true? And he would say something like, I can assure you that he's perfectly safe, you know, implying that he's there

when in fact he's down below. And for two years, Power kept that secret to himself. On February 12th, 1880, on what would have been Lincoln's 71st birthday, he and six other people formed what they called the Lincoln Guard of Honor, which was a secret society to serve as the custodians of Lincoln's body.

So there were only six people on earth who knew where Lincoln's body really was for a period of some years. And they weren't highly placed people. One of them was the assistant secretary of state for Illinois, but there was also a railroad ticket agent, a telegraph operator, a bank clerk, a hotel earner, just people who power happened to know who we thought was trustworthy. This sounds strange to us. Today, you'd hope what would happen is they'd put Lincoln's body back where it belonged

and just increase the security so that no one else would try to steal it. But apparently at the time, this was sort of the heyday of secret societies, and this was just thought, this is just the psychology of the time. People thought it would make more sense just to keep him safe somewhere, is the psychology of the time. People thought it would make more sense just to keep him safe somewhere and we'll just have a society to keep dedicated to keeping his body safe. It sounds strange today, but that's just how they did it. And in fact, the only person outside of their circle who knew of any of this was Lincoln's last surviving child, Robert Todd Lincoln, who approved of it. I'm not sure he knew exactly where Lincoln's body was, but they just said,

look, he's safe and we'll take care of him. And Lincoln, Robert Todd Lincoln thanked them for that. So the secret society announced its existence publicly. They didn't say because we're looking over Lincoln's stolen, Lincoln's hidden body, but they just said they existed because they were dedicating themselves to leading memorial services on the anniversaries of Lincoln's birth and death to aid, in Power's words, in keeping green the laurel wreath on the brow of his fame. In other words, just to guard his memory and not really his body. What they actually did was eventually rebury Lincoln in the north end of the basement, or as a little bit drier.

And on the way back to town, one of them realized that if there are only six people in the world who know where Lincoln is now buried, and God forbid something happens to all six of them, then no one will know where Lincoln's body is. So he wrote a note explaining all this and locked it in his safe. Two years later, Lincoln's wife, Mary Todd Lincoln, died, and her coffin was brought to Springfield, and again, at Robert Todd Lincoln's request, they carried it down to the basement and buried it next to her husband. So they were both buried

down in the basement of the tomb. And Robert Todd Lincoln knew of this too and thanked them for it. And the two lay there, in fact, until April 14, 1887, when Power finally built a new concrete fortified vault up in the memorial chamber, and both of them were relocated there. So altogether, Abraham Lincoln spent 11 years in the basement of his own tomb, known almost to no one. Researching this whole thing makes me feel bad for Abraham Lincoln. He had a difficult early life and then finally rose to president and led the country through the worst crisis he's ever faced. Four years of agony and strife, and he finally gets to the end of that,

and he's assassinated, and that's it. That's his life. And then just for the record, even after he's died, Abraham Lincoln's coffin was moved 17 times altogether and opened five times. So that can't happen anymore. He's finally done, I think. What happened in September 1901 is that Lincoln's body was moved for the last time. It was placed in a steel cage, lowered into a 10-foot deep vault, and buried under tons of wet concrete. And that's where he is today in his tomb on the grounds of the Oak Ridge Cemetery in Springfield, Illinois, where hopefully he can finally rest in peace. For those who are working on figuring out what gifts to get for people on their lists, we'd like to suggest that books can make good gifts.

They are simple and flat, making them easy to wrap and easy to mail or transport. Nothing clumsy or bulky. And there just happen to be two Futility Closet books that you can consider to make your gift-buying life easier. Both are filled with hundreds of short bursts of fun reading. Quirky history, odd inventions, amusing quotes, and brain-teasing puzzles. Look for them on Amazon, where they will even gift wrap and mail them for you. Greg's going to be solving a lateral thinking puzzle today. I'm going to give him an odd-sounding situation, and he has to work out what's going on asking only yes or no questions.

Okay? Yes, ma'am. All right. This was adapted from Edward J. Harshman's fantastic lateral thinking puzzles. To reduce your risk of death from a heart attack, you can take medication or exercise or follow a healthy diet. But these are all things that you need to keep doing regularly. What can you do once that you usually won't need to redo again for at least several years, has no side effects, and not only helps prevent death from heart attacks, but also from fire? Heart attacks and fire. Yes. Okay.

I like the puzzle um okay so this isn't i had some questions set up this is obviously not some medical intervention it's not an operation or something correct it has nothing to do with i guess diet or exercise correct heart attacks and fire something you can do once yes and won't need to do again for, did you say, several years? Several years. Heart attacks and fire. All right. Is it something somatic, some alteration you do to your body? No. Is it technological?

No. No. Does this apply to anyone? I mean, it applies to me? It would apply to you. To men in particular? No. So men and women. It's's not technological let's work on the

fire it seems like that's easier to figure out so if i do this whatever it is it'll reduce my chance of specifically dying in a fire yes and by fire you mean what i think of as a fire yes um any okay let's say that happens say if let's say I do this whatever it is okay and a fire breaks out in my bedroom okay um let's hope that doesn't happen but okay but let's say that happened it doesn't so you're saying that wouldn't whatever this is it doesn't reduce the chance of a fire occurring it just increases my chance of surviving it correct so let's say a fire breaks out and this measure whatever it is uh-huh takes effect does it just alert me to the presence of the fire earlier than i'd otherwise no does it extinguish the fire no does it alter the fire in any way? No. Or change the course of the fire?

Possibly. That's hard to answer. Okay. Probably not for what you're thinking. Does it spare me from the effects of the fire, like somehow shielding me from the heat or the smoke or something? Not like that, no. So, okay, let's say I do this and it succeeds and I'm spared from the fire. Okay.

I don't die. You don't die. Yay. Nobody dies. Does the fire still, let's say, destroy the house, possibly? Possibly, but less likely. I keep coming back to technology as the problem it's not a change i make to my own body it's not some technological right and it's not to do with information is it like would you call it an alert system of some kind um i'm trying to think what heart attacks and

fires have in common not the way i think you're thinking of it not the way i think you're thinking of it no so it it doesn't spare me from the physical effects of the fire and it doesn't necessarily you said alert me to the fire it does not alert you to it does not alert you to the fire's existence so the fire starts burning yeah stay asleep. This thing doesn't wake me up? No, it does not. The fire keeps burning. Okay. It doesn't spare me from the smoke or the heat? Not necessarily.

It just increases your chances. I don't say it definitely keeps you from dying, but it will increase your chances of survival. On the heart attack side, would it prevent, are you saying this would prevent a heart attack? No. It, again, increases your chances of survival. So it reduces your risk of dying, basically. But. Is it a way of alerting rescue or?

That's closest, yeah. Emergency personnel? That's closer. That's on the right track. But it's not technological. It's not technological, no. Does it have to do something with geography, like just living closer to a... No. Although that would make sense. Okay, okay. But what these things have in common then is that they increase or reduce the time of the response of the emergency. Yeah, I would say so.

So you would say it alerts them. No. You wouldn't say that. I would not say that. But it makes it possible for them to know sooner? No. Would you say that? No, I wouldn't say that either. But you're definitely on the right path. Okay.

So I have a heart attack. Okay, let's say you do. The first responders, the... Emergency responders, let's call them. Learn about it. They learn about it, okay. Because I call them? Yes.

Is it... You or me or somebody calls them. By telephone, let's say. Let's say by telephone. And they learn about it and they come out and they save me. Yes. And that happens more quickly than it otherwise would have? Possibly, yes.

With this intervention, whatever it is. Yes, exactly. That's the point of the intervention is to make it happen more quickly than it otherwise would have? Possibly, yes. With this intervention, whatever it is. Yes, exactly. That's the point of the intervention is to make it happen more quickly. Does that have something to do with dialing the phone? Nope. Nothing to do with technology. Yeah, but I mean, it sounds very technological. It's not.

Not at all. Very low tech. Does it involve another living thing? No. I'm just reaching around now. So I have a heart attack. You have a heart attack or you're in a fire and you want emergency responders to get to you as quickly as possible because that will increase your chances of survival, right?

This is a very low-tech thing you can do that will do that. But it's not, okay, would this work if i were unconscious like could this system be invoked even if i weren't as long as somebody called the 9-1-1 okay yeah but like if i lived alone and a fire broke out this system whatever it is would still work only if somebody else called for you so it's not just like a well that would be technological now go back to you asked if anybody could do this and i didn't answer but you said could you do it and i said yes and you said would it matter what kind of fire and then you said like a house fire and i said yes a house fire specifically and this is something that would specifically work for you but wouldn't work for necessarily anybody under any circumstances. But it would work for a house fire. A house fire

because it's a fire in a house as opposed to somewhere else. Yes. Like a hotel, say? Right. A house fire in a house, this would work for. Because the house is, it's a, whatever this is, it's applied to a house as opposed to. Yes. But it couldn't be applied to a hotel, for example? I suppose it could be, but you would more think of using this for a house. I can't get shut of the technology in it. It's not a signal? You wouldn't call it that? In broad definitions, you could, but not a technological one.

So, all right, let's go through this again. I have a heart attack. Yes, and you want the first responders to get to your house as quickly as possible. And this is something you could do to the house so that they could get to you faster. So it's just a, it's not, okay. So it's a way to make their trip here easier. Would you say that? Yes, to get all the way to you.

All right. So it's providing some means for them to arrive here? No, no. It's something you do to the house. Well, that's sort of what I mean. Yeah. Like you would put a helipad on the roof or something. Oh, that's an idea.

But it's not like that. I guess it's technology. Not really, yeah. It's very low tech, just so you make sure they get to your door as fast as possible. It's a way to identify the house? Yes. I keep coming back to it. So it's not a signal of some kind.

Is it something to do with the address of the house just so they can find it from the street? Yes, yes. And that's basically it, is have easy-to-see house numbers, which a lot of people don't, to make it so that emergency vehicles can find your house more quickly. That's fair. And that would help prevent you from dying from a heart attack or a fire, help reduce the chances. Now I'm thinking, I don't know how big our house numbers are.

Yeah, you know, most people don't have, like if you think when you go try to find somebody's house, you haven't been there before and you struggle to find a house number. Yeah. They say, so here you go, there's our safety tip for the week from Futility Closet. We should apply that ourselves. And if anybody has a puzzle they'd like to send in for us to use, you can send it to us at podcast at futilitycloset.com. That's another episode for us.

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