Stuff You Should Know - How Avalanches Work

Episode Date: May 22, 2014

Each year, as snow builds on peaks across the world's mountain ranges, the potential for avalanches builds. Learn about the science of how these natural disasters develop and are triggered - and how to survive one if you ever find yourself trapped. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles Levy, Chuck Bryant, and there's Noel over there. It's like Jerry with a beard, and this is Stuff You Should Know. Yeah, that's a good way to describe Noel, because it's not at all accurate, except for the beard. But it's funny. It is funny.

That's the point. How's it going? It's going fine. You got a good intro for this one? No, really, I was going to mention the terrible avalanche on Everest. Oh, yeah. It took the lives of, I believe, 15 Sherpa. Yeah, that was sad.

Yeah, it was especially sad because we know how Sherpa work. We've done an episode on it before. Yeah. And, you know, to live and die on the mountain, it's kind of like, well, it's become the Sherpa way a little bit, but it's still a major tragedy. Yeah, because Sherpa, if you go back and listen to that show, I think we even called it what? Like, warm living?

Warm, friendly living. Yeah, like, they're really great, and just good souls, and it was super sad to hear about that. Is that what prompted this idea? I believe so. Just say yes. Yes. Okay.

Yes, it was. I really know a lot about snow crystal shape because of your Don't Be Dumb episode recently. I thought that might have been it. Yeah, about whether or not there is such thing as two snowflakes that are exactly alike. What's the answer? I think that's a good way to start out. No, not really. Okay.

Each one is perfect and special. If you're comparing snowflakes that are formed from a very small amount of water, then you're probably going to find some that are identical. Right. And as I say in that episode of Don't Be Dumb, if you count those, you're a jerk. So like a real snowflake, like a snowflake, like the kind that children love, and that you have embroidered on your sweater, no, there's no two that are alike. That's pretty cool.

Even though something like 70 septillion snowflakes fall to earth in a year, that's a lot of snowflakes. Yeah. But when you put them all together, they don't necessarily stick. And every once in a while, something can happen, not yodeling, that can trigger an avalanche. Yeah. And I was, when we were reading through this, I found that there were a lot of differences, obviously, between avalanches and slides that we've covered. Yeah.

We did land slides. Yeah. And I even found a few little similarities in wildfires, which I did not expect. Lay it on me. Well, we'll get to it later. Oh, okay. Like potential ways to, we'll get to it. Well, lay it on me at a future time.

Okay. So avalanches. Yeah. Basically, an avalanche is, well, it's a failure of a large or small amount of snow to stay in place any longer. Yeah. Friction once again. Yes.

Just like with landslides, the mass overcomes the force of friction that's holding it in place. Yeah. And it just kind of moves downhill all at once. Yeah. And the thing is, that doesn't seem like a big deal, but in North America, an avalanche can reach something like 230,000 cubic meters in size. That's huge.

It's about 20 football fields filled 10 feet deep with snow. How fast? I've seen up to and beyond 100 miles an hour once they really get going. Yeah. That's a big deal. Yeah. So 20 football fields filled 10 feet deep with snow, moving at over 100 miles an hour down a mountain.

Yeah. So you're in the way. Yeah. To save the day. Pretty much. You're in trouble, basically. So avalanches are a pretty big deal, even though it's just snow, and snow is beautiful and wonderful and cold.

It's like all of it moving at once is a problem. That's right. And there's a lot of different ways that an avalanche can form, but really there's three, there's three factors involved. You've got snow, you have a slope or an incline, and then you have some sort of trigger. Yeah. And like I said, it's not yodeling. Loud sounds just don't really have what it takes to trigger an avalanche.

That's in the movies that you'll see that. Yeah. German movies. That's right. Well, I guess let's back up a little bit to what we were originally talking about, which was the shape of the snow itself. Right. Because that has an impact on what's, you know, when the snow hits the ground, it's

going to form what's called a snowpack. And how stable the snowpack is depends on the snow that is, that makes up the snowpack and like how it bonds together depends on the actual shape of those little crystals. If you have a six pointed crystal, it's going to be steadier, more stable than like needle shaped crystals. Right. Packed together better. Yeah.

And then so there's different factors that contribute to what kind of snow falls, what kind of snow accumulates, and then snow undergoes a metamorphosis once it becomes part of the snowpack depending on conditions. That's right. For example, the temperature gradient has a big effect on how snow within a snowpack, which is just these blankets and blankets of snow that build up over the course of a season. If there's say a higher temperature gradient, so at the surface it's very, very cold.

But below towards the ground, it's actually warmer because of the heat, the radiant heat coming out of the earth. The larger the temperature gradient, the larger the difference in the amount of water vapor. So warmer air or warmer snow holds more water vapor and water vapor likes homeostasis just like everything else. So it moves from one end to another. And that actually helps trigger metamorphosis of snowflake shapes within the snowpack by making what's already rounded.

And that's what you want. That's a stable snowpack. Yeah, which I thought would be more unstable, but it packs together easier. Right. Rounded snowflakes pack together easier. And when water vapor moves from one place to another, it takes rounded snowflakes and actually makes them faceted, which are more angled snowflakes. Flat surfaces, basically.

And those don't lock together as well. So that's one form of instability is when you have a temperature gradient. Yes. So when you have a lot of those faceted flakes, it's going to be called a depth whore, H-O-A-R. And a whore is the light. Like you can even kind of see them on like sunny days, the sort of shiny, crystal-y surface layer on top that's like not really bonded. Exactly.

It's frost is another word for it. I like whore. Like avalanche, we should name this avalanches, the disaster with the most jargon. Because there's a lot of jargon involved in avalanches. There is. We've already skipped over some of it. Like rime. Well, yeah.

Rime is when... R-I-M-E. Yeah. It's basically, have you ever seen like a ship going through the Arctic and it has like globules of ice? Yeah. Or like a tree collecting ice. That's rime.

Yeah. Whereas just basically a bunch of water turns into ice really quick and accumulates quickly. That's rime. Whore is frost. Rime is like globules of ice. What about a grapple? That is when you have deposits of rime that build up and form pellets of snow. Yeah, but they're not stable even though they're pellet-like.

Which kind of flies in the face because I thought round was more stable. I think they're larger though. Yeah, I think they're like spherical whereas round is like flat and rounded edges. So pellets are like, yeah, those things, you know, you get a handful of those yellow pellets, roll them around in your palms like so and you're going to see like there's no friction there. It overcomes friction. That's true.

If you have, you can also get rounding if it's a low temperature gradient and you get a lot of sub-freezing going on, then it's going to cause the rounding which is actually good that's going to make it more stable like we were talking about. Right. So you've got temperature gradient. You've got rounding from a low temperature gradient. You have different types of snow that accumulate. If faceting, can that be a verb?

I just made it one. Yeah. Faceting. Yeah, faceting is basically, it's another type of metamorphosis where snowflake undergoes a change in the snowpack after it's already fallen. It's just laying there. Like you think when snow falls, it's felled, but no, it's going through some changes. Really a puberty of snow is what happens in the snowpack and when faceting happens, it's

the opposite of rounding. Those edges become more pronounced, more angular and a snowflake can turn into what's called depth whore, H-O-A-R again. Yes. And it's pretty cool. Did you see the picture of depth whore? It's the coolest looking snowflake you can find. That is pretty cool.

Like it looks carved out like, it looks 3D printed basically, doesn't it? Yeah, it does. It looks like a piece of machinery or something. But from the looks of it, it looks like it would just totally lock in with any other snowflake, but for some reason, that's not the case. So when you get depth whore, which is a very faceted snowpacked snowflake, it's not going to lead to a stable snowpack. None of these are.

Basically, everything except rounding leads to an unstable snowpack. That's right. And that's one of the triggers or one of the factors involved in an avalanche. That's right. What you have is, if you have a failure layer, and that's the weak layer inside the snowpack, it's called the failure layer because it fails you and causes the avalanche. It fails everybody. But it can be caused by a lot of things, the things we're just mentioning.

And depending on some other factors is how it's going to deal with that failure level. It can slough off the snow, and I think most people have seen that is when you see like the inverted V-shape loose powdery snow coming down a mountain. Yeah, that's slough. That is slough. And that is not super dangerous. It usually doesn't do a lot of damage. So that's not like the worst case scenario.

No, and slough is the result of typically the failure layer is high up in the snowpack. Yes. So it's just some surface snow that's going to move as part of the avalanche. Yeah. If it's deeper, then you're going to get the bad boy of the avalanche scene, which is the slab avalanche. And that's when the failure layer is deep down and it's going to bring obviously a lot more compact big chunks sliding down over that bed layer.

Or it could be a huge chunk, a single chunk reminiscent of when you have a lot of snow on your windshield and the sun comes out and heats it. And the glass becomes warmer, so the bottom of it loses friction and stability and slides down all at once. That's right. That's basically a mini slab avalanche happening on your car. Yeah. And if it's wet, your slab, it's going to be slower, which sounds good, but it's going

to hit with more force. It has more water to it. It has more mass and volume. More weight, baby. Yeah. So let's talk about that slope. What generally happened between 25 and 60 and most common between 35 and 45 degrees is when you're going to get an avalanche.

If it's more than that, steeper than that, then it's just going to be sloughing constantly and probably not be a danger. And if it's less than that, then it's not enough of a slope to cause any problems. Yeah. It's not really going to move very much if at all. This is called party time on the mountain. There's also other factors that contribute to whether an area is avalanche prone or not too.

Like if it's on the sunny side of the mountain or it gets a lot of morning sun, it will actually warm up and basically settle. The ice pack settles and becomes more stable than on the shadier side of the mountain. Same with leeward and windward. Yeah. Both of these I thought was the opposite of how it should be. I had that same problem too because they say specifically the freeze thaw cycle can create like a layer of ice in the snow pack that will be a failure layer eventually.

So if it's in the sun every day, I mean it's slightly melting a little bit, then why wouldn't that also be the case? I didn't get to the bottom of that one. I have no idea. But that's what I kept coming across in source after source. Yeah. And if like you said leeward, it means it's on the opposite side of the wind and I would think that being on the windy side would be more dangerous.

Well no, because that causes slough. The wind blows it off. Oh, okay. I guess that makes sense. That one makes sense. Which prevents the... Yeah. It's the sunny side that's just confusing.

Yeah. I still say a strong gust of wind could cause a slab. Sure. I'm going to fly in the face of the experts. And then they also rate and not rate like, this is a five star avalanche, the best I've seen all season. Right. They have a rating scale from R1D1 to R5D5 and yes nerds, there is an R2D2 avalanche.

I guess you mean me because that was going to be my first question. I sent you the chart. I know. Okay. But I'm still going to ask. So the R is the size of the avalanche relative to the path that takes into account. It's width, it's length, it's depth, the size of the avalanche. R1 is laughable.

R5 is the whole side of the mountain just came down. What's an R2D2? It's a little above laughable. It's more like a whoa. It's kind of like you would imagine R2D2 is an avalanche. Okay. You know? All right.

And then R5D5, the D stands for destructive force. Right. Like in an R5D5, the D of that avalanche can like gouge the earth. It's moving with such power and intensity and they can go up to I think 1.9 miles traveling almost two miles at a solid with a solid chunk. Pretty scary stuff. Yeah. It's scary stuff.

But before we get to even more stuff, let's take a message break. All right. 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. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends and nonstop references to the best

decade ever. Do you remember going to blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting frosted tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL instant messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper because you'll want to be there when the

nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. 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. 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. 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, 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. Okay, so I believe we're talking scary things. And what can be scarier than avalanche triggered by a yodeler?

We've already said that's not the case. Twice. Yeah. That's three times. Usually, well, sometimes it can be, usually it's people, but sometimes it can be a natural thing like if a tree falls or if the weather really changes quickly. What else? The big chunk of ice falling off a tree could trigger it.

Yeah. A cornice. Maybe an ice pack can build up over a cliff's edge and just kind of hang there and then eventually it'll collapse under its own weight and it can fall onto a ridge line below. That can definitely trigger an avalanche. But in most cases, it's people. Yeah. And apparently in most fatal avalanches, the person who dies in the avalanche triggered

it in most cases. Ooh. Yeah. Chromic nature? I guess. It seems a little harsh. Yeah. A little imbalanced.

You know? Yeah. I agree. All right. So let's say you have an avalanche happening, there are going to be three parts to this avalanche. You've got your starting zone, which is above the tree line. And that's where the slab actually, that's the top part where it breaks free.

It's also known as a crown. A crown? Yeah. That makes sense. Then you have your track and that's basically just the path that it takes. You're going to, if you go to these mountains in the summertime, you might see that track as a big open area of green grass between trees. Yeah.

Because the avalanches wipe the trees off of that slope. So if you were unclear on whether avalanches are powerful, yes, they take out trees on their way down. Yeah. And houses and ski condos and skiers. Which is another reason why they're so dangerous for someone caught in the avalanche, because it's not only the snow that may or may not bury you, you're also getting pummeled against stuff on your way down because of the force of the avalanche carrying you along.

Like being whacked into a tree or something? Yeah. And then you've got your run out as the third segment and that is where it comes to a sliding slow stop. And that is bad news because they liken it to concrete in this article and it just sets up super hard and if you're underneath it, you've got 15 minutes or so to get yourself out of there or it's bye-bye to life. Like the clock is ticking.

Yeah. Apparently, most people say that you can survive buried in an avalanche for about 18 minutes. That's tops. The best way to survive an avalanche is to never start one. And there's techniques that, well, basically local governments where mountains and ski slopes are situated and then ski resorts will hire ski patrols, basically go out and test. And there's actually people who are called avalanche forecasters. And they, I guess, study the snowfall, the atmospheric conditions, like if there's been

a freeze thaw cycle and they can predict roughly like when or where an avalanche may happen. And they say, point the howitzer that way and they'll make sure people are off of the slope and they shoot artillery at slopes to try to trigger avalanches. That is one way to do it. And that's where it reminded me of wildfires, doing controlled burns and stuff like that. Like they'll actually set off an avalanche to keep an avalanche from happening. Right. Right.

But that's really the only way. Well, there's also ski checking, which seems kind of like smoke uppers. Kind of. Yeah. But it's almost like, yeah, I guess it is a little bit, it's mind bogglingly dangerous sounding. Yeah. It's a job where you, on purpose, get on your skis and ski along the fracture line to

see what happens. To try to trigger it. Or to try to trigger it. Yeah. Okay. And then they're going to quickly try and outrun it. Yes. And they're hopefully skiing at the fracture line, at the top of it, like around the crown

rather than inside the avalanche zone. You don't want to be there. So it would fall out below them rather than carry them down. And if you're ski checking, you're never ski checking alone. You're always part of a team and everybody's watching you and you have a beacon on and all the other stuff that you're supposed to have. Yeah. It's still one of the more dangerous things I think you can do in snow.

Yeah. I hope we have a listener that does this because I'd love to know more about it. Ski checking? Yeah. Yeah, I'd like to hear that too. Some of the other things they can do to prevent or interrupt an avalanche that happens is to put physical objects in place to prevent it like nets and anchors and fences and stuff like that.

And an avalanche starts at least that can divert it or stop it quicker or maybe prevent it from happening to begin with. Sometimes they'll hire local teams to just stand there and link arms, stand in the way of avalanches. Yeah. The red rover approach? It depends on where you live. Estonia is huge on that level of prevention.

They can happen any time, they're most common in the winter obviously, but they can happen in any month and usually in the first 24 hours after a big snowfall it's going to be a little more likely. I guess things haven't settled in quite yet. Yes. And heavily logged areas, areas that have been denuded of trees because trees all taken together can kind of serve as anchors for a snowpack. Yeah.

So they're trying to reforest areas is a big thing now. And I wonder, I didn't find this out, but I wonder also if trees represent a kind of a crack in a large snowpack too and that like if there was a piece that was coming off it would take less with it because it would eventually reach a tree and that tree would represent a break in that connectiveness in the larger snowpack. I'm going to say yes. I would say yes too. That just makes sense.

But the problem is people like to do things like what are called back country sports in places where there aren't trees. Yeah. I mean the majority of avalanche victims are youngish dudes who, let's be honest, they're out there with their snowboard, but they're getting dropped in by a helicopter. Or there's plenty of do-dets who snowboard too. Yeah, that's true, but they did say males is the most common. So I think that's a fact.

Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They're bros. You know? They're ski bros. Man, I can't believe. I guess I do believe that, but the person who causes the avalanche is the person who most

likely dies. That's just... Yeah, and the reason why is because when you accidentally trigger this avalanche, you're on a line, a fault line basically that you're triggering, but it doesn't necessarily mean that everything's going to happen below you. Right. You could be skiing right through the slab, and the stuff above you is going to come down too.

Yeah. So like this whole slabs is going to come down with you in the middle of it, so you're the one who triggered it, you're the one who got buried alive too. All right. Well, we don't want that to happen to anybody, so how can we... I guess we should talk about how to do your diligence as a back country bro and avoid these things. Yeah.

What you should do. Before you go out, you want to check with any local message boards or websites that have avalanche warnings. Yeah. The bro hotline. Right. Yeah. You want to call.

Yeah. Be like, is there going to be an avalanche? Right. And there's like people who are paid to monitor this kind of thing and alert the public, so step one is to know whether there's a high likelihood of an avalanche happening where you are. Sure. You also want to have taken a course in surviving avalanches.

Yeah. If you're doing this hardcore back country stuff, then hopefully you've done that beforehand. And there's a lot to learn too. Oh yeah. Like this isn't... We're just kind of scratching the surface here. Like there is a lot to know, to understand avalanches, to be able to forecast them and to test.

Yeah. Like doing field tests. So you want to really know what you're doing before you go out. You always want to go with somebody else. Got to have a bro buddy. The thing that I think you would just have to be a total idiot to not have is a beacon. Yes. A functioning beacon on you at all times beneath your clothes so it can't be swept away.

Yeah. And you want that set to transmit if you're the person, the transmitter, so they can find you when you're buried and dying in 15 minutes. They're not expensive. They're not hard to come by. And if you go out doing anything in any back country sport and you don't have one on again, Josh Clark thinks you're an idiot. And well, we may as well go ahead and talk about a couple of other pieces of equipment

that you should have if you're into this. They have these little backpacks now that have airbags in them that you basically like pull a little ripcord and a big pillowy bag erupts sort of like a car airbag outside the top of it. And what that's going to do is take up a bunch of space so you have air to breathe once you're buried and you have a big hole of air at least. Right. Plus, it also has the effect of if you ever have a canister of mixed nuts and you shake

it, you'll notice like the bigger nuts, the Brazil nuts all move to the top. Same thing with you and an inflatable vest. You become bigger so you will move toward the top of the avalanche slab. Yeah. And some padding in case there's debris. Yeah. And then the other cool thing is called the Avalon, A-V-A-L-U-N-G. And those are usually built into your backpack too and it's super simple.

All it is is a sort of like a little scuba mouthpiece that you breathe through and what it does is it diverts your exhalation down through the backpack and out like where your butt is. Right. Because the danger there is if you're trapped under snow and we'll get there in a second, you're going to have a small like pocket of air and one of the ways you can die is from poisoning yourself with your CO2. That's right.

So if you've got the Avalon, you've got your airbag and your backpack. Your beacon. And maybe an inclinometer to see what that slope is before you go tackle it with your snowboard and say, bro, that one's 48 degrees. Well, what do you want to be above 60? Yeah. Geez. I know.

Not me. That's awfully close to 90. Yeah. Maybe then go toward the 25 slope. On the podcast, HeyDude the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, HeyDude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use HeyDude 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. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and non-stop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting frosted tips? Was that a cereal?

No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL instant messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper, because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to HeyDude 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. 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. Yep, we know that Michael and a different hot, sexy teen crush boy band are 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 Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You also want to do some tests too.

Like where you're going to be skiing, snowboarding, high marking, be proactive. You want to dig what's called a quick pit, which is basically you become an amateur. What is this? No person like smell a sense of snow, avalanche, oligest, snow, snow, oligest, it is a snow oligest, but there's a word for it, right, you want to become an amateur Santa Claus. You dig a pit that affords you a view of all the layers of the snowpack so you can basically visually inspect it for a failure layer. There's other tests you can do as well that we won't get into, but if you are going to

go out there, they should be teaching you this in your, in your back country survival class. Yeah, of course class, sure. But you can also familiarize yourself on the U.S. Forest Service website. They have a bunch of step-by-step instructions with pictures for testing for avalanches. Yeah, and we looked at these and it's just no, it doesn't do any good to try and describe it. We would just get you killed. So go look at the diagrams and you also want to, you know, prick up your ears and listen

for whooping noises or hollow sounds and avoid shady ears, like just keep your eyes peeled. If you're experienced out there, then you're probably going to know what to look for. Yeah, and then there's one other thing too. If you see tracks already in a snowpack, that does not mean that it's already been tested and is safe. No, that means you can go that way, right? No, it means that the person who went before you is lucky, technically. Possibly.

Yeah. Never, never travel above your partner. Like... Oh yeah, it's a big one. Yeah. If your partner gets above you, then they're being very selfish. Yeah. Or trying to kill you.

Or you, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You should wonder, wait, that travel insurance policy I signed, now I get it. So if you've done all this, you know how to do a rush block test and you know how to dig a quick pit faster than anybody else and you never travel above your partner and you still just triggered an avalanche. You've done everything right, but it's real.

Right. You're the person. Stuff is real. You're the victim, let's say. Yes. All right. We're going to give advice for two people. The victim and then the person who sees it and goes, oh my gosh.

The witness. The guy just got buried. Yeah. All right. So, bro victims, three ways you can die, physical trauma, like we said, let's say you get smashed by a tree on the way down. You can suffocate in the snow or die of hypothermia. Take your pick.

None of those are good. If you find that the avalanche is happening, this is before you're buried alive, and let's say you're a skier or a snowmobiler or some other extreme sports person, they say to try and out ski it and out ride it if you can. You know, get that little rear view mirror going and hit the gas as quick as you can. Ski off the slab, and if you can do that, then great. If you can't, then you may be buried. The first thing you want to do is block your mouth so it doesn't fill up with snow.

You want to try and put your arm over it or block it as much as possible if you don't have one of those airbags because whatever little space you create in front of your mouth is your breathable air. You want to use one arm or your hand or something, and with the other arm or leg or whatever you can, you want to thrust it toward whatever you think is up. Try to get some sort of visual cue of where you are to people. Yeah, and they suggest a swimming motion. That's on your way down.

You're trying to basically swim your way to the top of the pile of the slab that's carrying you down. Well, yeah. And then once you start to come to a stop, then you throw your hand in front of your mouth and you try to thrust the leg up or something like that. Right. What I read though is you're going to be so disoriented, you'll have... Good luck with any of this.

Right. That's like punching a shark. Yeah. But some people can do it. Yeah, it happens. Some people have the presence of mind to do it. Those people are the ones who these instructions are for. Right.

They advise you to bail on your ski gear. If you have one of those backpacks though with all your emergency gear, obviously you want to hang on to that. Here's the hardest part. What? Stay calm. Yeah, stay calm. They advise you if you are on a snowmobile and you get removed from it, I don't know

how you would do this, but try and get out of the path of the snowmobile as well because that will kill you. Yeah. Again, this is all happening so fast, it's just, I guess you rely on instinct. I guess so. You turn into a steely, nervd dude. Bro. And then again, staying calm.

Stay calm. You're now buried under snow and the best advice is to stay calm. Yeah, don't start screaming because you're burning your oxygen. No one's going to hear you because they're still pretty far away. Yeah. They have, they watched you the whole time. We'll get into that in a second. And you just have to do what you can by conserving your energy, conserving your breath, and conserving

your voice until you hear somebody above you. Yes. Then you can start screaming as loud as you want. Right. But there's no sense in screaming whatsoever until you hear somebody. And then you better have that beacon on. If you have that beacon on, you're set to transmit, you're with one or more other people who were with you when this happened.

Yeah. Hopefully they're not buried too. Your chances are actually pretty good. There's something like a 92% survival rate for people who are dug out within the first 15 minutes. Yeah. That's pretty quick though. So I guess that brings us to, if you are the other bro and you see this happen to your

friend, this is what you're going to want to do because you are their first help. Like you may not have enough time, you know, you got 15 to 18 minutes. You may not have enough time to ski to the rescue unit to get word out. So it's sort of up to you to try and get your buddy out. Yeah. If you're in a larger group, then yeah, you send some people back for help and then some other people stay to conduct the search and rescue themselves. If it's just you, basically every bit of advice is if you have any idea of where they went

down, where you think they might be, go straight there. Yeah. It's more like following your golf shot, like if it starts to happen, you don't want to look around for help or anything. You want to lock your eyeballs on your buddy and follow that as long as you can until he completely disappears. Right. And wherever he disappears, or she, that is your last, that's the point of reference

you're going to want to hit first. Yeah. You want to just keep your eyes on that point and go straight to it. Basically, you want to wait a second. Well, yeah, yeah. It could be another avalanche. Yeah. You want to make sure the snow is settled and then you go over to the area where you last

saw the person and you take your own beacon because the cool thing about beacons is not only do they transmit, they receive. That's right. So anybody with a beacon can transmit for help and receive to lend help. Right? Yeah. But if you're just one person, you go to the last place you saw the person and you start your search using your transponder and you start doing zig-zagging motions down the mountain.

Yeah. Basically, you do a sweep of the avalanche area. You do a sweep. You might have something called an avalanche probe on you and that's a super long 10 or 12 foot pole that collapses down to a couple of feet so you can have it in your little backpack and, you know, it's basically a big poker that you can poke down in the snow. Yeah. If you hear your buddy go, ow!

Yeah. Then that's great. And then some ski poles also have like the bottoms come off so that they can be turned into avalanche pokers. And hopefully you have a shovel on you because that is highly recommended as well. I don't think we ever pointed that out. Yeah. You can shovel a lot faster.

You can move snow a lot faster with a shovel than with your hands. So if you have a beacon, a probe, and a shovel, you could be okay. That's a t-shirt. Yeah. And the other side is a guy like falling off a snowmobile. So you said zig-zagging if you're by yourself, if you're with a group of folks, they recommend that you lock arms and sort of like, you know, when you're searching for a dead body in the woods, you just set up a line of people to cover as much ground as possible.

That's right. So if you find your buddy, dig them out and treat them as quickly as possible. They may need a little CPR. They may need a little TLC. So turn on our CPR podcast while your friend is... You did a little of this? Yeah. Remember staying alive?

Oh, yeah. And just pump the chest to the beat of staying alive and everything will be all right. That's right. And I've got nothing else, do you? I don't either. No, that's about it. Or if you want to avoid this stuff all together, you do like me and don't ski. No bad country sports for you, huh?

No. I mean, I used to ski, but I was never very good. And once you hit a certain age and you're not a great skier, it's like, why even go out there? I've got a 50% chance of injuring myself. I would say you probably have a higher percentage chance than that. You think? Yeah.

And I took a... I was in Vermont skiing one time and I took a spill that it was sort of like Chevy Chase on Christmas vacation. I slid... I had to have slid a half a mile down this mountain without being able to stop myself on my butt without my skis and a little 12-year-old maybe snowboarder snowboarded down with my skis, stuck them in next to me and said, dude, I've never seen someone slide that far in my life and he snowboarded off and I said, well, you're pretty young. But yeah, it was pretty entertaining to see, I'm sure. And this is when I was younger, it'd be much funnier now even.

Oh, yeah. You know, like when the old guy falls, it's always funny. Sure. That's... I mean, like you said, Chevy Chase movies. I do have one more thing, Chuck. It turns out the St. Bernard as a mountain rescue dog with its whiskey or brandy cask around its neck supposedly is a myth. They did have St. Bernard's in the Alps and all that and they did use them to carry supplies

and stuff and sometimes even spirits around their neck but they were never used as ski patrol avalanche rescue dogs. They were just in the same area that avalanches happened in a lot and they just happened to have booze around their necks. I call that confirmed. Well, just the popular conception that a St. Bernard is going to run up to you and dig you out and then you have a whiskey. Yes.

It's not correct. It's a Napoleonic lie. I am going to say that it's happened once because I want to think it happened. It's pretty cool. Yeah. And St. Bernard's are cool dogs to be sure. Of course. But if you want to know more about avalanches, like we said, if you're serious about back

country sports, you better go take a course. You better go to the Park Services website on avalanches. Get that beacon, dude. Yes. Or else Josh Clark thinks you're a dummy. Yeah. And you can also go to HowStuffWorks.com and type in avalanche in the search bar there and since I said all that, that means it's time for a listener mail.

I'm going to call this defiling history and this dude purposefully said, if you read this, please don't show Josh because I want to hear his reaction. Okay. So here we go. Hey guys, I was listening to the 4th of July Extravaganza from a few years back and realized I might have ruined a piece of American history. A few years ago, I bought a thicker, older book looking to hollow it out so I could keep money and other important items in there that I wanted, that I didn't want to keep in my

personal safe. This guy in prison? Yeah. He's not. A few days ago, I was listening to the part two of that 4th of July Extravaganza and on the way back to University of Wisconsin, Go Badgers, and I heard you talking about the book Epic of America. Do you remember talking about that?

Vaguely, yes. Because we had guest hosts. We had Joe Rendezo and Wyatt Sennach and Joe Garden and Halle Haglund. So they may have referenced that book, but I don't remember that. I knew that was the name of the book I bought to hollow out, but thought surely it wasn't the same book. So I got home, took a closer look, and it turns out I was wrong. Upon further research, I found I had bought a first edition 1931 Bonafide copy of Epic

of America by James Truslow Adams, and I cut a hole in the middle of it. I thought it somewhat ironic I chose to fill the Epic of America with money, and nonetheless I'm distraught with my lack of knowledge and accidental disregard for one of the great analyses of the American dream. That is from Grant Hermes. Where'd he go, Grant? This is Reaction Grant in Dignation. He's ticked.

You know, we got hollowed out books from the guys who make Rick and Morty. Yeah, Adult Swim. Yeah, hollowed out to fit perfectly a flask. Yes. A Rick and Morty flask. It was pretty neat. Thanks for that. Why don't you get one of those, Grant?

I thought when I saw that book, I thought, well, that's neat. They sent us a book, and it was called Interesting Science Stuff or something like that. I think it was called Boring Science Stuff. Boring Science Stuff. Yeah, to ward people away from the book. I don't want to read that. Right. Then you open it up, and you're like, whoa.

I've got it on my bar right now. Nice. The book? Sure. That's awesome. Where else would it be? I guess on my shelf here at work. In your work bag?

Yeah. With you at all times. If you want to tell us about some bonehead thing you did with a piece of Americana or anything else, we want to hear about it, you can tweet to us at SYSK Podcast. You can join us on our Facebook page at facebook.com slash stuffyoushouldknow. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast at discovery.com, and as always, hang out with us at our home on the web, the illchill crib stuffyoushouldknow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit HowStuffWorks.com.

I'm Munga Chauticular, and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to believe. You can find it in Major League Baseball, international banks, K-pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable happened to me, and my whole view on astrology changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, give me a few minutes, because I think your ideas are about to change too.

Listen to Skyline Drive on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey guys, it's Chikis from Chikis and Chill Podcast, and I want to tell you about a really exciting episode. We're going to be talking to Nancy Rodriguez from Netflix's Love is Blind Season 3. Looking back at your experience, were there any red flags that you think you missed? What I saw as a weakness of his, I wanted to embrace. The way I thought of it was, whatever love I have for you is extra for me.

Like I already love myself enough. Do I need you to validate me as a partner? Yes. Is it required for me to feel good about myself? No. Listen to Chikis and Chill on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.