Stuff You Should Know - Desert Survival: Josh and Chuck Save Your Tookus

Episode Date: March 19, 2019

The chances are pretty low that you’ll find yourself lost in the desert, but on the off chance you do you’ll thank yourself that you listened to this episode, where we guide you to safety.  Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass

and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, ya everybody, about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say. Bye, bye, bye.

Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant,

and there's Jerry over there. You put the three of us together, and you've got Stuff You Should Know just in case you ever get lost in a desert. This is what we're going to give as our gift to you edition. You know what's funny is I was reading a podcast newsletter today, like an industry newsletter. Sure.

And... You're not gonna buzz market it? No, I'm all right. And I mean, there's only one. No, there's probably more than one. There's several. Are there? I think so.

All right, I should get on the other. I've seen at least two. Two can be several, right? Sure. Isn't that the biblical unit? Several is two. I thought the biblical unit was a qubit. Right.

I'm glad we can laugh in this one. Sure. And it said there was an article specifically about podcaster Burnout, and they interviewed someone that was like, you know, she started podcasting in 2017 and blah, blah, blah, and experienced Burnout. And it got a laugh.

So I was like, I mean, I get it. Like people burn out in different ways, and they may have a tougher workload than us, but I just sort of snickered that after 11, or going on 11 years, very soon. Do you have this April, buddy? It'll be 11 years. Like we have moments of not burnout.

Like we get a little warm. Kind of like, oh, this again. But that quickly passes. Very quickly. You know, I'm never like, I'm never burned out. I would say that. To where I don't want to do this or anything. No, I know.

I would say there's probably been like literally five times. Sorry to use the word literally, but I literally mean literally in this sense. Yes, because you've built a statue of paper mache after each time representing each burnout. Right, right. And they're on my desk. So you can count them, there's five.

But it comes in like just digging into a topic at a time when there's like a bunch of other stuff going on or whatever, it's just been a really long stretch where maybe we're recording more than usual. And then when we get in here to record, it's gone. Agreed. That's when it doesn't happen. I don't think I've ever been, and let me knock on wood,

I don't think I've ever been in a recording session with you and been like not wanted to do it. Agreed, my friend. And weirdly, I'm more burnout with movie crush at times. Like it sounds, trust me, I'm not seriously complaining, but ask Emily how many times I've been like, oh, gotta watch this movie tonight. Notes on it.

Because it takes long, I have to pause to take the notes because I don't want to miss anything. So it takes like three and a half hours to watch a movie and take notes. Plus I would guess you're fundamentally not able to enjoy the movie. It's not like enjoying a movie, right? You're analyzing a movie.

It dents it a little bit. And it's at night. So I'm right kinda, I guess. Yeah, you're right kind of. But it's at night, so it's like I'm technically not at work. And sometimes it's just like, I don't want to watch whatever. Yeah, don't. Point and break.

Who's it was, Point Break? Jordan Morris of Bubble and Jordan Jesse Goh. Oh, okay. Yeah. Point break is a good one. That was great, right? No, no, no, no. It was really kind of fun watching that actually.

I don't know why I pulled that one up. Okay. Because it was the most recent one I watched. I got you, so it was in your working. But to take notes on Point Break, it can be a little tedious. Right, brah. There's that one great part where they do the midnight surf

and Keanu has just learned, you know? And you just hear this, because it's obviously ADR, like recorded afterward. And you just hear him yell, I'm effin' surfin', man. Nice. That's just such a great line. Does he say effin' or the f-word? Well, he says the f-word of that.

It would have been better if he would have said I'm effin' surfin'. Maybe on TNT, that's how it sounds. Oh, boy. Oh, there's one. Oh, have you seen that? Sorry, I know we haven't even started yet, so let me just pile on here. Yeah, that's great.

Let's get it out of the way. Have you seen that video of Keanu on the New York, I believe, subway giving a seat up to a lady who's standing? No, but he is a legendary good guy. Yes, who's been through some horrible stuff. Yeah. And I just want to be his friend. Keanu Reeves, if you're listening.

Yeah, be my friend. Let's be Josh's friends, okay? Well, he's your friend first, because you asked. Well, we can share him. Okay, all right. I get him on Tuesdays and Thursdays. That's fine. So we can listen to stuff you should know together.

Yeah, okay. All right, that's a fair deal. You can have him, we'll alternate weekends. Okay. Because, you know, Keanu on the weekends. That's a party. You think he's a good guy on Monday through Thursday. See how many seats he gives up on a Saturday.

All right. Wait, hold on one more thing. Can you imagine Keanu Reeves listening to his conversation at first kind of chuckling himself, and it's getting like weirder and weirder. Right, right. He's finally pressing stop, and maybe he never listens again.

We just blew our chance, Chuck. All right, one more thing. And then I swear I'm done. I meant to tell you that I did some LA sessions recently for Movie Crush and the great show High Maintenance on HBO, it's one of my all-time favorites. The dude on there, Benson Claire, as the guy, the weed delivery guy, is just like one of the main reasons

I went there in person was just so I could meet him. I meet him and the first thing he said was, hey man, I used to listen to you and Josh, when I was a shusher at this lesbian poetry bar. And I was like, what? I was like, first of all, it's a shusher. He's like, it's a poetry bar, you know? I sat there and shushed people.

And he's like, but I used to listen to you guys. I always wonder what you look like. He did Josh quit smoking. And I was like, why don't you people ever reach out? Right. I was like, do you know what that would have meant to me? Yeah. Which he was just a shusher at the time.

So maybe I wouldn't have known, but. No, he's made it. Yeah, so anyway, I told him that you quit smoking, you're doing great. Yeah. I don't think he's listening for a bit, but. Do you think he's listening now? I don't know if he got back on the train or not, but.

If he did, do you think he's friends with Keanu Reeves? Oh, maybe. But Ben Claire gives up his seat for no person. Gotcha. That's his. And if you say like, maybe you should stand up, he goes, shh. No, he would give up his seat for sure.

Okay. Anyway, let's talk about desert survival. Imagine Chuck, Benson Claire is making his way through the desert in his car, a Prius, we'll say. Mm-hmm. And he runs out of not just gas, but electricity as well. Which he might, he has a big RV actually that's worked into the show.

Okay. He's in his RV. So he just straight up runs out of gas. Sure. Which probably happens a couple of times a day in a big old RV. I would imagine. Okay.

Ben's in trouble because Ben was not expecting to have this extended stop and unexpected stop in the desert. So he did not bring a few things. Okay. If Ben were paying a little less attention to whether people were talking and need to be shushed or not, and more attention to his desert survival,

what would he have packed in that RV, Chuck? Well, Benson Claire would have had probably a pound of weed. Okay. So he's got a good start there. Cause he could burn that for a signal fire. Mm-hmm. Or for comfort and warmth.

Yep. Well, I mean, I wrote this dumb article. This is a great article. Did you notice my stupid thing I did with the music titles? Sure, the Oasis thing and. All of them are song titles. All the sidebars are song titles. And that was back when I was like, oh man,

I am the most clever person alive. So I got the Wonderwall one, rescue me. Okay. Rescue me. But I was thinking more of the TV show than the song. There's also, so everybody, if you go on to howstuffworks.com right now and look up how desert survival works,

each page, almost every page has a sidebar and the title of the sidebars are song titles. Rescue me after all, you're my Wonderwall. What could it be? It's a mirage. What could it be? It's a mirage. What is that?

I'm telling y'all it's sabotage. Oh, okay. That's a good one. And then finally, a little shout out to Annie, Food Glorious Food. Okay. So that was what used to make me happy at work. Yeah, I remember those days.

Yeah, you too when you do like a clever photo caption. Right. And that would get you through the week. We would stand up and like share it over the cubicle wall. Yeah, look at this photo caption. In here. Yeah, this is gonna blow everybody's mind. All right, so you're in the desert.

You want to have, well, let's just talk about this stuff. Okay, yeah. What should be in your kit? Water, a mirror. That's a big one. Wait to start a fire. Yeah, that's a big one too. Basically it's a lighter.

Food, water. If you're gonna cross the desert have a lighter, which seems counterintuitive because it's hot in the desert, but no, trust us. Well, you'll see, you want a lighter on you. A mirror, which you'll see too. Yeah, that's what we'll do. We'll say what's supposed to be in the pack

and in the RV and then we'll go back and we'll. Okay. I'm suddenly burned out. Should we take a break? Yeah. All right, let's take a break and let's start the podcast in earnest. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast,

Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough or you're at the end of the road. Ah, okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation?

If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh, man.

And so my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yeah, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life.

Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen. So we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. All right, everybody, welcome to Stuff You Should Know.

I'm Josh. There's Chuck. There's Jerry over there. We're talking Desert Survival. So let's get to it. Yeah, and this is all due to the fact that we just recorded a very tough episode. So we're clearly just goofing off now.

So we're talking about deserts. And we did a desert episode and a desertification episode too. And I think one on the dust bowl. But something that all deserts have in common is not sand, is not even heat, it's a lack of water. Technically, Antarctica is the largest desert in the world. And there's lots of water, but it's all locked up as ice. There's no available water in exactly the same way

as there's basically no available water in Death Valley in California. Right. Deserts have the next thing that they have most frequently in common is, again, not sand, but exposed bedrock. All of those cool formations or whatever. That's actually the bottom of the earth you're seeing, exposed. All the soil has been dried out for so long

because of the lack of a millable. Basically, it's been pantsed. We got some good pants stories, by the way, coming soon. Yeah. The soil is so dry that it can't be held in place, so wind is blown it away. And so what you're seeing is the exposed bedrock. Sand only makes up something like 20% of the world's deserts.

Yeah, I mean, you've got pebbles. You have desert soil sometimes. That bedrock you were talking about, we're going to talk about OACs. Yeah. So I think Antarctic survival or even Arctic survival deserves its own episode someday. So we're just going to be talking about hot deserts.

And all of that sand and exposed bedrock and pebbles bakes in the sun and shoots that heat back out, and it's just super hot. OK? Yeah, so water is the biggest, obviously, the biggest, biggest problem if you get trapped in the desert on foot or in a car. And you think about, like, oh, I never go to desert hiking.

I don't need to worry about this. But have you ever been like, oh, I'm going to take the long route through from Texas to California because it's more scenic, and then your car breaks down, and you're in big trouble if you don't know what you're doing? That happened to a woman. I can't find her name right now, but she is a grandmother. I believe she's 72, who was driving in her Prius,

and it ran out of gas and electricity on the way, I believe, to Phoenix. And she had an unexpected trip with her dog for nine days. Oh, I think I remember that. And survived, actually. Amazing. Yeah. Did she eat her dog?

No. OK. Luckily, she did not have to eat her dog. Did she survive on the saliva of her dog? Yeah, well, they spit in one another's mouth. So it was kind of. But they did that anyway. It was a wash.

So dehydration is obviously the first kind of physical symptom you might experience if you run out of water. Decrease frequency of urine, of course. If your urine is very smelly or very deep yellow, your mouth is going to be dry. As things increase dehydration-wise, you're going to get sunken eyes. Your heartbeat's going to increase.

And if you get to the stage where you literally have no urine, or if you're vomiting and have diarrhea, then you're pretty bad shape. Yeah, so vomiting and diarrhea is like that last thing you want to do while you're dehydrated. Because all it is is just getting rid of any remaining hydration you have. Yes, not good.

That's a bad reaction to dehydration. And we'll talk about heat casualty coming up. I'm kind of psyched about that bit. Oh, yeah? But when we talk about water and rationing water, there's an old saying, ration sweat, not water, meaning don't drink all your water at once. But ration your sweat like they say not to,

if you are lost like this, don't go hiking to find civilization during the peak of day. You want to ration how much output and how much you're sweating. But you do have to take in that water. Yeah, so when you're in the desert, you recommend, or I should say the experts recommend, because it's obviously a very well-researched article,

that somebody drink a gallon of water a day. Well, I mean, that's what they say if you've got like a, you know, unlimited amounts of water, a gallon a day. You need to ration it somewhat if you have very limited water, obviously. But what you don't want to do, which happens a lot of times,

is to be found dead with water in your canteen. Yeah, which is kind of haunting. Sure. And like you said, I mean, you want to ration your sweat, not your water, but you do kind of want to ration your water. Like you don't want to be a little water piggy right out of the gate, but you also, you recommend via the experts

that you don't just wait until you're thirsty, because you'll only get about two thirds of the amount of water you actually need just by going by thirst. You want to actually stop and like drink more water than you think you need. Yeah, and if you're hiking around, again, we talked about morning and evenings

are the best time to go look for help. If you see a trail, go down that trail, because you have a better chance of finding someone there. Follow the birds, birds generally and animals go toward water. Yeah, apparently if they're circling in the morning or the evening, they're probably circling around water. Trying to get some groundwater going.

But very wisely, you point out through the experts that if there's like a little, you know, small mountain in between you and those birds, and a longer way around the mountain that's flat, take the longer way that's flat, because even though you might cut off a couple of hours between you and the birds, you're going to really exert yourself

going up that mountain. Whereas instead you want to take the longer, but slower, less exerting path to get to that water where the birds are circling. For sure, if you're with someone, don't talk. I mean, you know, you can talk some, but don't just chat about your day. Try to conserve your words.

Try and breathe through your nose. What do you think about Grace Jones? If you happen to see any wet sand, or standing water anywhere, then you're in luck, because you can dig down in there, and you will probably find more water under, you know, this groundwater underneath it. Yeah, which is, that's a benign thing.

Oh, sure. If you find like a groundwater in the desert, you're probably going to be okay. Yeah. If you don't find any water and you run out of water, you're probably not going to be okay. No, you'll also want to fire, which you said isn't very intuitive,

but if you've ever spent any time in the desert, the temperature swings are huge. You can get cold in the desert at night, and then fire allows you to purify water. There's that whole safety feeling. It keeps mountain lions away. Right? Sure.

I would guess just about any critters don't go near fire, because they associate it with wildfires in the desert. Brush fires. Rescue signal, you can do that old trick. I think we even did a show on smoke signals early on. No, I don't think so. No? No, and I wanted to, I keep forgetting to write,

are you sure? I'm pretty sure. It was like an early, early, early, up the spot. I'll have to go listen to it. Yeah. Because I've wanted to do that one. It's probably not very good. But your whole point of all this is to find people

and to get rescued. Yeah, you make a great point about that. Yeah. Like the point of being lost in the desert is to make yourself visible. Yeah, the point of not being lost, rather. Sure. Or being lost in finding rescue.

The key to being found, how about that? Right. So if you are in a car, if your car's not working anymore, it's out of gas or whatever, flat tire, blow it up. Basically. Stick a hanky in the gas tank and just blow it up. So you want to stick the hanky in the gas tank, you want to fashion a bow and arrow, light the arrow,

stand back and shoot the car's gas tank. That's what you want to do. No, you want to open your hood and tie a rag to it or a bandana around your antenna or something. Anything like a typical sign of distress. Right. Anything to make it like, something's up here. Sure.

Yeah, like even if the hood is fine, like you raise a hood as an indicator. Yeah, like if there's no engine trouble. Right. You can still raise the hood. It's all right. Nobody's going to arrest you when they rescue you. If you can spell out SOS or something like that

with help, clothing or help on the ground for if a helicopter or plane is nearby. Yeah, that's the woman in Arizona was rescued by writing help. I think that's actually how they found her. She wrote help and sticks. Oh, really? Yep.

Nice. Her dog told her to do it. That stuff works. Yeah. If you are in your car, you've got a leg up because you have your rear view mirror or your side view mirror that just go ahead and break that thing off and use it. Yeah.

I think we said in the first few minutes that we're trying to forget about now that you want to have a mirror in your survival pack no matter wherever you're going hiking. Yeah, but a lot of people don't have survival packs in their car. Like most people, I think. I mean, I don't know.

I think about it. I've got like jumper cables and some renex. Does that count? Yeah. You know, after that last stupid Atlanta ice storm a few years ago that stranded people. The snowpocalypse. Yeah.

I think I had something in my car rack for that, but I have a different car now. It wasn't much, but it was like some water and a blanket and some granola bars. I need to like stock up mine and Emily's car with that stuff. Yeah, for sure. You never know.

I think there, remember when we had some tornadoes in Atlanta a few years ago? You mean I were like, we really need like a crank radio and like all this stuff. We started to get together. And then you're like, oh, I wonder what's on TV. Before you're watching the Japanese game shows, you'd forgotten like eight hours go by.

But a signal mirror is important. You know, you just flash that thing. It says here to, I was about to make fun of it, but I realized I wrote it, but practice on a nearby rock. I thought that was, that's good advice. Yeah, why not? I mean, you don't want your first attempt

at signaling somebody with a mirror to be while you're trying to signal somebody in a passing aircraft. Probably so. And I mean like, if there's no cloud cover, you can get somebody at like 30,000 feet if you do it right. So heck yeah, practice on a rock. What else are you gonna do while you're sitting around in the shade?

Nothing. Yeah, there might be a Delta pilot up there that's like, ah, God, what is that? That's so annoying. You should have a whistle in your survival kit so you can blow it if you see someone from far away. And they recommend that if you honk your horn for help, to be like honk, honk, honk, and then wait,

and honk, honk, honk, because if you just lay on it like you're, if you're in traffic, someone might hear that and just think this car has this horn stuck. Yeah, those be like, that's so annoying. I'm gonna continue on past this weird path in Death Valley that no one should be down. So let's say, somebody's horn is stuck.

Let's say you are in your car. Your car is jacked up and you're like, all right, I've exhausted my resources here. Screw this, I gotta go take a hike. Leave a note on your car and say like, hey, I'm broken down and I've gone Northwest to a PM on Tuesday. Also, I'm Chuck Bryant,

who hopefully you're looking for. You found it. Check out my podcast, Stuff You Should Know. And Movie Crush. Yeah, never miss an advertising opportunity. But if you do stay with your car, like just don't sit around in your car, like sit in the shade.

Even say to sit on a blanket. Yeah, the reason being is because there can be something like a 30 degree Fahrenheit temperature difference between the ground and the air above the ground. That's nuts. That's how barren and hot the ground gets. And it's not like the air above the ground is cool. It's still hot because the ground is heating it,

but the ground itself is taking in all of that unbroken, unfiltered sunlight directly into it, holding as much as it can and then shooting it back out as basically infrared heat back into space through you. And if your butt is touching the ground through conduction, it's going to transfer directly to you. Whereas through the air, it'd be going through convection from the air to your butt,

which is not nearly as efficient as conduction. So don't sit directly on the ground. Even sitting on a rock is better than sitting on the ground. But ideally, you wanna find the shade that your car is producing, whether it's the hood that's up or just the car itself or whatever, and sit in that shade as best you can. Get your feet off the ground, like you said, I think too.

Yeah, and take off your shoes and socks, especially if you're hiking around during your breaks. They also say to not take off your clothes, your instinct might be to take your clothes off, but those clothes, you want them soaking up sweat because that'll cool you down. And also, you don't wanna take your shirt off and also have like a third degree sunburn

after day one either. I thought about that too. It's like, that's, I mean, that clothes- Make a bad situation worse. Right, it's doing something to protect you from the UV. I think the average T-shirt has like a SPF of four or something like that, that's better than nothing. Better than nothing.

Also, Chuck, if you are, and I guess if you're actually using this information we're giving you right now, first of all, good luck, we're pulling for you. Secondly, if you are gonna take off your shoes, don't do it in the sun, because just that exposure of your bare feet to the sunlight for that short of a time

can make your feet swell, and you might not be able to get your shoes back on, which if you do end up having to hoof it out of there, you want your shoes. Yeah, you want your feet all swallowed up. No, so take your shoes off and let your dogs air out in the shade only. Make a little hat, if you don't have one, out of whatever.

You got something in your car or something, whatever. Like, if you have a piece of cardboard, put it on your head. This is the greatest sentence in anything. Oh, God, I know, Jesus. No, I loved it. Are you really, you didn't like this article, huh? I don't know, it's just sort of a reminder

of darker days at this job. So, may I read this? Sure. If you don't have a hat to wear, fashion a head covering with what you have on hand. You may look silly wearing a cardboard hat, but your goal is to survive, not win a beauty contest.

Oh, good Lord. And drink a liter of water per hour to stay properly hydrated. I know, we cut out that part earlier, so that didn't sound right. I mean, maybe that's if you have all the water in the world. Yeah. But that just sounds like-

That's a lot of water. Yeah, you burn through your water. Sure. If your car is stuck, and this actually happened to me once, I got a car stuck in the desert one time in the middle of the night with my friend. Oh, really?

Yeah. I got it out. That's scary. Without deflating my tires, but they say if you're stuck in the sand to deflate your tires just a little bit, don't start goosing it, because you're gonna dig yourself in more,

just apply steady accelerator pressure, and turn your wheels kind of back and forth a little bit. Let out a little bit of air, and you might be able to get out of there. Yeah, again, don't let a lot of air out, because if you do get out, you still need to drive back home. Sure.

You don't want to do that on overly deflated tires. No. Okay. So if you're going to, should we take a break now, you think? Oh, why not? Okay, we're gonna take a break, everybody. There's a lot more to come.

You're not toast yet, because we have more stuff to tell you how to survive in the desert right after this. ["The New I-Heart"] Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new I-Heart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to

when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. Ah, okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place, because I'm here to help.

This, I promise you. Oh, God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS, because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. Oh, my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me.

Yep, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life, step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general, can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, ya everybody,

about my new podcast, and make sure to listen, so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the I-Heart radio app, Apple Podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts. We, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we. I really do love that sentence.

That was a great sentence. There's one more in here I can't wait to call out. Oh, I'm sure I know what it is. Should we talk about OACs? Sure. I mean, it depends on where you are, but you know, the, an oasis is just when wind has blown away enough sand that you get down to that groundwater. Yeah.

That's all an oasis is. Yeah, you know, like an aquifer? Yeah. Imagine if there's nothing above the aquifer, now you've got a lake. Boom. That's an oasis. Yeah, but they can be big enough and exposed enough that you can have this like lush oasis in the middle of the desert.

There's really no better word for it. Yeah. And you know, if you're in the Sahara Desert, like the communities form around these oases, there's one very large one called the Carga Oasis that is 100 miles long and depending on where you are, 12 to 50 miles wide. Yeah. That's plenty big to hold small towns. Plenty big.

It is. It is. I'm just laughing at this article. I can't believe I wrote this thing. I really, I value this article. I think it was great, well written, well researched, approachable. This is when I was assigned, you know, your survival guy and I wrote a lot of these. You know, we've covered a few of them on the show, but I thought those days were over.

If you are hiking, the first thing they say is to walk slowly. You may, your instinct may be to get out of there fast and find help fast. Very good advice. But that's no good. No. Not only do you want to remind yourself to slow down, because that's what it takes. You're not going to just walk slowly automatically. You're going to be freaked out.

Yeah. So you have to stay calm and say, I've got to walk slow and just take breaks every about 10 minutes out of every hour, I think. But if you're with a group, you want to walk, you want to set your pace by the slowest and least fit person in the group. Just everybody walk that slow. That person will help pace everybody else. And it will keep that person from just dying, trying to keep up, like literally dying, trying

to keep up. I mean, everyone else has to be like, geez, big Larry in the back is really holding us back. But big Larry is probably walking at the right speed, right? Which is slow. Yeah. At least for you. He's walking slow enough for you to slow you down.

That's right. That's not a t-shirt, but it's still true. Should we get to your favorite part of this, which is heat casualty? Yes. I know you've got some science on this, right? Yes. Well, the three major categories are heat cramps, heat exhaustion, and then heat stroke in that order.

Yeah. And heat cramps, or you can get those on a hot afternoon if you're out playing frisbee. You can. And all of it comes down to, it's just basically an escalating imbalance between water and salt loss. And like the electrical conduction in your muscles and all that from your heart to your legs is out of whack because you have lost a lot of water and you still have a higher salt concentration, or else you've lost a lot of salt and there's still enough water

that your muscles aren't working quite right, so they can cramp, right? If that happens, you say, drink like a Powerade if you got it. What are you sitting there holding onto it in the first place for? Yeah. If you're lost in the desert with a Powerade, just go ahead and fire it down. It's like, I don't like blue, I don't like purple. That's true. So that's step one.

If you have a Powerade, if not, if you have some water, drink the water, the cramps are going to go away. You can overcome heat cramps pretty easily, it sounds like. But you want to stop, rest, get in some shade, stop moving and attend to the heat cramps, for sure. Yeah. That may lead to heat exhaustion if you don't have water. And this, like you said, is just an escalation of that imbalance.

You may be irritable or feel weak or have a headache or if you're vomiting and have nausea or clammy skin, then that's like heat exhaustion is seriously setting in. It is. And so again, like salt and electrolytes are really important to the electrical conduction in your body and your body moves through electrical conduction. It's a big component, so if that's off, your body's off. But then if you're really in trouble, you enter into heat stroke. And this is the point where your body's system at getting rid of heat has been overwhelmed

by the heat it's taking on. And you're in big trouble when that happens, basically. On a cellular level, your body is failing systemically because proteins aren't folding correctly and proteins do just about everything there is to do in a cell. They're starting to clump up and get weird and then cells are suddenly dying. One of your body's main tricks at getting rid of heat is through convection, sending your hot blood to the surface of your skin, which is why if you go into a sauna, your skin gets flushed.

But also if you'll notice your heart is pumping, is beating really hard, even though you're just sitting there, you're in the heat. And the reason why is your heart is working overtime, shooting blood out to your skin to get rid of heat so that your body can cool down. It's using your blood as a heat transfer mechanism and your heart actually speeds up. You're actually pumping out up to eight liters a minute of blood more than your heart usually pumps out when you're starting to enter heat stroke. So it's a big deal.

Yeah, I would imagine that would put you in danger of cardiac arrest. Yes, I think that's one of the results of that whole thing. Of severe heat stroke. So bad headaches, very dizzy, nausea, vomiting, your muscles might be spasming that heart rate like you were talking about as way high and you may be full on hallucinating at this point or you may fall unconscious. Heat stroke is no joke. So you got to find shade fast, which is, I mean, that's the biggest part of, or biggest

challenge in desert survival is finding shade. There's just nowhere. Yeah, but the big rock can be your shade. Exactly. Whatever. It doesn't matter. Just find shade because the difference between shade and sunlight in the desert is substantial. Yeah.

And they, like if you have any water, like now is the time. This is when you're found dead with your canteen full of, half full of water because you're like, no, like I still am a day away from finding help. Right. You have no idea how far you are. Yeah. Like this is go time to save your life. Plus also, if you have any cool compresses, put them in your armpits, put them in your

groin, do whatever you can to cool yourself down. If you have any cool compresses left over from the party around the campfire the night before, apparently. Yeah. You're like, if I can only cool down, oh, wait a minute, I have a frozen compress that can put in my crotch. There are all kinds of animals in the desert that can be dangerous. Whether it's spiders, tarantulas are scary looking, but they're probably not going to

kill you. Yeah. They don't really care about you. They don't want to bite you. And even if they do bite you, you're just like, ah, stupid tarantula. Yeah. I mean, none of these things want to find you. You will find these brown recluses and black widows under rocks or under brush or something

like that. Yeah. So don't go reaching in there. Don't go reaching in some hole like Timothy Dalton and Flash Gordon. You know. What hole did he reach into? You saw Flash Gordon, right? No.

The old one? No. Oh, you should probably enjoy that. Timothy Dalton in there. I thought it was a blonde guy. Well, he played Flash Gordon, but Timothy Dalton played the bad guy. Oh, okay. One of the bad guys.

Okay. But there was a challenge where they had to stick their hand in this big hole and there was a stinging creature inside this blob. It sounds like the Joe Rogan show. What was that called? You mean the Joe Rogan podcast? No, no. The fear factor.

Yeah, I remember fear factor. Yeah. I used to like that show. That was a good show. I could never have done that show though because of the stuff you eat. Yeah, there was some gross stuff. That's where I was like, I can do all that stuff, but I can't eat gross things. You could have done everything else though.

Well, I mean to a certain degree. Sure. Not I. But yeah, there's no way I could eat those nasty things. Yeah. You'd probably have an easier time with that than me. I don't know, man. I think that would be pretty disgusting.

On top of that though, like doing things like sticking my hand in something or having like a box full of like spiders put over my head or scorpions or whatever. I could do that. No, I would not. I'd be like, for what, to be on TV? Well, exactly. It's all right. Being on TV isn't so great everybody.

No. It's not all it's cracked up to be. Certainly not where the box of scorpions on your head. Speaking of scorpions, there are 30 different types, more than 30 different types of scorpions and just Arizona. And they're all over the place. You know, they're in Georgia and then the mountains and the woods of Georgia. Yeah.

Very few of them are poisonous. No. Not very many at all. I think a couple of them can actually kill a person with their venom by stinging you with that tail. They'll still hurt you though. Just don't go near the scorpions. Yeah.

I mean, you can get sick from any of these things. Like a black widow is probably not going to kill you either. No, but if you're already like in danger of something like heat stroke. Exactly. The black widow bite is not going to help and it's going to be exacerbated tremendously. No. But if you do get stung or bitten by something like that and if you don't have that cool compress in your crotch, use that cool compress around the biter sting.

Yeah. Don't elevate it. Yeah. That's a big one. Sure. You also want to put it kind of a loose tourniquet around it. You want to be able to fit one finger in the tourniquet. So tight-ish, I guess is the way to put it.

Yeah. And get in the shade, wash it off with some soap and water if you have it, and then just dump that water all over the ground. This is used up. And then we have snakes, rattlesnakes and coral snakes are going to be your biggest danger. Okay. And remember coral snakes are red, yellow and black and there's a very helpful saying,

red touches yellow, it can harm a fellow. Red touches black, make it a snack. No, red touches black, it's okay for Jack. And this raises my second favorite sentence. No, I know. Just remember, you're Jack in this scenario, it's okay for Jack, no typo now. And then finally, I think we sound drunk, we're not. I did have a kombucha earlier.

There are lizards, specifically the, do you say Gila monster or Gila monster? I think it's Gila. I think it is too. I think the British say Gila and they're wrong. Oh, right. Yeah. They say aluminium. Yeah.

So the Gila monster and the Mexican beaded lizard, the beaded is only in Mexico and Guatemala, but you can find those Gila's in the US of A. Those are big daddies though. Yeah. They get up to like two feet, I think. And this is actually my favorite sentence. So I'm talking here about the Mexican beaded white to yellow spots and stripes on their raised scales. It's about a foot long.

I describe the Gila monster and they say, however, if you see a two foot long lizard coming in your direction, maybe you should just walk the other way. Sound advice. I thought you were joking when you picked this article. No, I think it's a good article. I don't understand why you're being so hard on yourself. All right, this last part is legitimately interesting, I think. The fact of the podcast is contained in here.

Like the uncontended fact of the podcast. Sure. Go ahead. No, no. It's your fact. It's not my fact. This is. All right, two other big dangers are sand storms and flash floods.

Sand storms can be very fast or they can last for a long time. They can last weeks in the Middle East. But if you're driving, you don't want to drive through a sand storm. So pull over and put on your hazards, roll up your windows. Yeah, why did you say turn off your headlights? Do you remember that? I get why you put on your hazards, but why turn off your headlights? Is it because you don't want to wear your battery out maybe?

I think so. Okay. Yeah, that would be my guess. Because I didn't know if maybe that created electrical conductivity or something and led to lightning maybe. If you're hiking around and there's a sand storm, then try and tie something or pull your shirt up over your face, put on those sunnies. They say if you have spare water, wet the cloth before you put it over your face.

And then I'm granting you the fact of the past. All right. Let's talk about flash flooding. Flash floods because the desert does not absorb water very easily because it's basically bedrock and water doesn't go into bedrock easy. If it rains, it rains hard and it rains fast and a substantial amount comes down and it collects very quickly because it has nowhere to go and can create what are known as flash floods.

Because of this, more people drown in the desert than die of thirst. That's what they say. That is an amazing fact. That's one of the most amazing facts I've ever heard in my life. It really is. And then what was the James Franco movie, the true story where he was... Like 127 hours? Yeah.

Like there was a flash flood in that, right? I don't remember. I think so. But he was... it rained and he was like, oh, thank God it's raining and then the water just started rising really fast around him. Yeah, you're right. Because he was in a gully. But if... like don't camp out overnight in a dry creek bed because it is no joke.

It can happen really fast. And I was driving through New Mexico once on my big out west trip post-college and my friend and I drove through the most hellacious storm I've ever seen in my life. And we literally saw water running, flowing uphill. Wow. And I was like, am I seeing things? And he was like, no dude. He's like, that is definitely uphill.

And water was flowing uphill somehow. Yeah. I guess it was just so much of it. But we drove through it until we saw in front of us telephone poles like down in the... on the highway, like all in front of us and we were like, I think we should probably pull over at this point. Right. Yeah.

But they're usually pretty quick. It's not like it does this for like a days like it does in Atlanta. No. It was like 30 minutes of rain. Right. But it can be inches and inches of water. And again, like... Amazing how fast.

Like six inches can pick up a car and carry it away. It can certainly pick you up off of your feet. Yeah. And there's plenty of stories about people being drowned in canyons in Petra Jordan, the very famous archeological site. People like every 10, 12 years, like a couple dozen people will suddenly drown in a flash flood because they were totally unprepared and in the wrong place when the sky just opened up on them.

Crazy. So it definitely does happen for sure. Yeah. The good... the plus thing about the desert with thunderstorms is you see it coming from a long way away. Like it's... they happen fast, but it's just so wide open out there. Right. Like we... I remember driving for like an hour and a half toward this storm.

Yeah. And it looks pretty bad up there and the closer we got, then it was just like hell had been unleashed on us. Right. So what'd you do? Did you like drive to higher ground? No. We just kind of just pulled off to the side of the road and waited like half an hour.

Yeah. Then it lightened up. Yeah. But it was... Yeah. It was crazy. Yeah. It was pretty scary.

Yeah. I mean, not being in a car, but just seeing how like it went from sand to feeling like we were in a river in like 20 minutes. Yeah. That's crazy. Yeah. Glad you made it, Chuck. That's a good article.

That's right. Which was a good article. If you want to see this article yourself in person, go to HowStuffWorks.com and type in Desert Survival by one Chuck Bryant. And you will agree with me. It's a good article. And since I said that, it's time for Listener Mail. Hey guys.

Listen to Central Park episode. Really enjoyed it. The content was spot on as always, but Josh made a comment about the podcast being too conversational. I think this is a really appropriate Listener Mail, Chuck. How funny is that? I think the conversational aspect is one of the most special things about it, guys. The banter between you two makes me pause for thought and oftentimes laugh.

As an educational podcast, I think having dialogue and debate about these subjects is important. In my own household, Stuff You Should Know is very important part of our lives. I introduced it to my boyfriend almost three years ago and it's taken a special place in our relationship. For two years, we were long distance, myself in Canada and him in Sweden, wow. And we would download episodes when traveling. It always gives us something to talk about and keep the conversation going.

Makes us laugh together and we even sing the jingles. My favorite is the opera version, much to his dismay. My favorite episode is the golden age of grave robbing, which makes me laugh so much that I had to put it on that I still like to put it on when I'm having a bad day. That was great. I loved hearing that. That was the live one, right? Mm-hmm, from London.

That's right. I once joked that I would sell my dog, my first dog, for a ticket to one of your live shows. You don't have to do that. You can exchange money instead. That's right. Or Stacey, if we're coming to a town near you, give us an email. Yeah.

I'll put you on the old list. Just threaten to sell your dog and we'll get you in for free. That's all it takes. Guys, thanks so much for giving us a jumping off point. For more conversation and debate, please give a shout out to my boyfriend, Jeff. Wow. I'm sorry, Jeff, that I got a listener mail before you. Yeah.

Take that, Jeff. Yeah. That is Stacey Coombs. The only way that that could get any more appropriate is if this episode comes out and Jeff is lost in the desert. I hope that didn't happen. I hope so too, but I mean, that would really round out this episode, don't you think? Yeah.

But Jeff, if you're out there looking for an RV, Ben Sinclair might be inside. He'll probably give you some weed. Thank you, Jeff and Stacey and Stacey's unnamed dog who is not for sale. If you want to get in touch with us, you can go to our website, stuffysnow.com and check out all of our social links there. You can also send us an email to stuffpodcast.howstuffworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the

cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it. And now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass.

Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. Get a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts.