Stuff You Should Know - How BASE Jumping Works

Episode Date: June 16, 2015

You should never BASE Jump. It is one of the most genuinely dangerous sports on the planet. But with that out of the way, you should definitely learn all about this pastime where people jump from tall structures and outcroppings for fun and thrills. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I'm Munga Shatikler 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.

Just a Skyline drive on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HouseStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. There's Jerry.

We are dancing on the ceiling. Whoa, what a feeling. That song holds up, by the way. I heard it recently. Oh, yeah? Well, I don't know. Richie holds up my man. Yeah, sure.

The Commodores? Great stuff. Great, great stuff. I think like two of the most underrated bands of the 70s were Earth, Wind, and Fire and the Commodores. I think Earth, Wind, and Fire was underrated. They were a super-starred group. Underrated as far as like today, like, I don't know, you don't hear a lot about that kind

of thing. They all, like, about the big rock bands. Yeah. Oh, you mean, like, Badfinger and Foraner and... Like Hat. Yeah. Is that what you mean? Yeah.

Maybe they weren't underrated. How about this? Two of the best bands from the 70s were the Commodores and Earth, Wind, and Fire. I agree, man. Rated just perfectly. I've said, well, and I don't mean to be argumentative. No. I mean, I've said that before.

Like, I wonder if Earth, Wind, and Fire is possibly the greatest band that's ever been. They're pretty amazing. They are amazing. And the different sounds that they took on. Absolutely. Like, it was never just like, you know, we hit it and we're going to stick with it. They were not like ACDC in other words. And ACDC's great, man.

They got their thing, but they figured it out from song one and they're still doing it today. Simple rock riff, played over and over and over. Right. Yeah. But it works for them. Yeah. Earth, Wind, and Fire, man.

They tried it all. Yeah. And please don't write in about the complexity of ACDC. They love ACDC, but they will even admit that they do one thing well. Yeah. Which is rock. Yeah. It's a blues riff.

I used to think they were heavy metal when I was a kid, which is very funny to think about. Yeah. You know, first heavy metal band? They're not heavy metal at all. Who was it? I always hear black Sabbath, but I suspect it goes back before that. Uh, Sabbath is usually kind of counted as the first. Yeah.

But it's all sort of variations of the blues still. Right. You know. All comes down to the blues. That's right. Now you, nobody leave here without singing the blues. Can you name that movie? Is it Crossroads?

You would think. No. It's the opposite movie of Crossroads, Adventures in Babysitting. That's the opposite of Crossroads. That's funny. Yeah. I remember that part. Uh, so bass jumping.

Mm-hmm. Has nothing to do with the blues unless you die. Right. Unless you're one of the bass jumping fatalities. And one of the dudes, which I will touch on later, uh, wrote one, a big bass jumper wrote an article like, uh, like how to get started, Tom Aiello, and one of his frightening things he says this, if you are not ready to die bass jumping, then you are not ready to bass jump.

Yeah. I ran across that kind of sentiment too, um, like the dangers are so vast that you can anticipate being injured almost certainly at some point if you do a lot of bass jumping. That's right. That's absolutely true. Yeah. I mean, like it's pretty much the next step in danger is to just jump off a cliff without any parachute at all.

Yeah. And I think one of the, uh, that's if you, like, I don't think a lot of people bass jump once, then they're like, yeah, that was kind of neat. Yon. Like it kind of, it's your like, it becomes one of your driving forces in your life. Bass jumpers are all in. Yeah. That's the best way to say it.

Um, and I remember it kind of like came up in the nineties, wasn't it? It was like it became a big deal in the nineties. That's when I became aware of it, but it's way older than that. Well, it's a couple of decades older. It's about a decade older than the nineties. It's from the late seventies. I guess there's another way to put it. Well, before we get into history, let's at least say what bass jumping is because some

people might live under a rock and they don't know what bass jumping is. It's actually an acronym. It is. What does it stand for? Uh, it stands for buildings, antennas, spans, a.k.a. bridges, and, uh, earth, a.k.a. cliffs. Yeah. Buildings, uh, are probably quite a rush to jump off of, but they're tough to get in.

Yeah. And you're most certainly doing something illegal. Yeah. I mean, there's pretty much not a building in existence you're legally allowed to jump off of. No. Unless you have a special arrangement. I'm sure.

Meaning you've lined the mayor's pockets with cash. Yeah. If you're doing, you know, imagine something like the Red Bull team arranges for a famous jump. Right. And Red Bull lines the mayor's pocket with cash. All right. There you go.

Uh, antennas are super popular, um, because they're not as heavily guarded, but they're still really tall and usually out in the middle of nowhere. Right. You know, it's a little bit of a ceiling. A little less risky. Right. Um, not for death, but less risky for being caught. Right.

And for, um, causing injury to other people, which is a big thing with buildings. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Antennas, it's like you're going to injure a cow that you run into. Right. You know, who cares? Uh, spans, uh, these are very popular, not only because it's fun and gorgeous to leap

off of a bridge like the New River Gorge, uh, bridge in West Virginia. Yeah, thing that connects this podcast to bridges. Um, but because sometimes it is legal, like the one day of the year that they have bridge day there. Yeah. Um, there's also one in Idaho where it's legal year round that without a permit, you can just go and jump. And there was actually a fatality there.

A guy said his parachute on fire is part of a stunt and, oh, I pulled that article. That was just a few weeks ago. Was it that recent? Yeah. Oh, I had the impression it was a couple of years back or whatever. So he said his parachute on fire and died. Yeah. Yeah.

73 year old guy. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Unless it was just an updated version than it is old, but, uh, it's new unless it's, right. I got you.

But, uh, yeah, he said his parachute on fire with the aim of throwing another parachute out. Right. And it was just not a very smart thing to do. No. His, his flaming parachute, I think continued on without him. And I guess his other parachute, I think he just came out of his other parachute and never deployed.

Yeah. It's on YouTube, which is sad that they have that stuff. There's a lot of that on, there's a lot of base, base jumping and skydiving deaths on YouTube. Yeah. Tons of them. Well, you know why? Cause they all film each other.

Well, yeah. Thanks to the GoPro, you know, um, and finally earth, uh, and that is when you're jumping on off like, uh, El Capitan or a cliff or a fjord pretty, what, it's just like the word fjord. It sounded like the list could have just kept going indefinitely and I do like the word fjord though. It's a good word. You rarely see an F and a J next to each other.

Yeah. That's true. You don't get along historically. All right. So you want to talk about the history? Yeah. I think before we get started, we should say Chuck that, um, no one should base jump ever. We certainly aren't saying that you should.

We're just talking about base jumping. Well, you should definitely, um, do what we talk about later, which is how to get started in base jumping and follow those rules. Get started in base jumping, think about base jumping and then don't do it. I think it's super cool. Like I can watch those videos all day long, but, um, not for me as far as execution. I have to say also, I ran across a video that to me is even scarier than a base jumping video and it was these two dudes.

I don't know if they were Ukrainian. They're part of the former Soviet States. Um, I don't remember where they're from, I'm sorry, but they just climb stuff. Oh, I've seen it dude. And they climbed the like with their iPhones or like look at where we are. Yeah. Like no ropes, no harnesses, no parachute, no nothing. It makes me want to bomb it.

I almost fainted, I literally almost fainted watching this video. I've totally seen that man. They were climbing the, the world's second tallest building. I can't remember what it was called, but the, um, it's in China and the tops of other skyscrapers are hundreds of feet below them. Yeah. There's cloud, the cloud line is below them and they're just standing on this antenna connected to nothing.

Yeah. I mean, there's, there's no fear going on whatsoever. They're not capable of it. Like you have to be just completely out of your mind. Like they're, they're, like they're broken in some way shape or form to be able to do that and not just like, I think I'd probably just be like, I'd just let go because I'd want the terror to be over one way or another. Yeah.

You know what I mean? And these guys are just like, Hey, how's it going? Like giving each other five. Yeah. The whole thing just makes me nervous. Have you seen the trailer for the new, you know, they're making a movie about the, uh, the guy who did the highway or walk between the two hours, I did see that before Mad Max. Yeah.

Which is awesome. Did you like it? I left Mad Max and I was like, I want to go buy all the Mad Max toys now. I want to see all the sequels are going to make right now. Yeah. I just, it was great movie. Well, you came in wearing the iron face mask. I thought it was interesting.

Yeah. I made it myself. Could you tell? Out of aluminum foil and rubber bands. Long story short, which is not true, uh, that, that trailer for the, uh, Robert Zemeckis movie with, uh, Joseph Gordon Levitt, yeah, um, that made me want to vomit when he just, I was waiting for it to, he didn't hit me like that. Oh man.

Well, it's just a teaser. He just basically like walks up to the top and looks and says like in his mind, I want to do this, but he just stands up on the edge and I just, I can't take that. And it's based on the guy who actually did that in real life for, and they made a documentary about it. I think back in the seventies called man on wire. Yeah. It's fantastic.

Um, and a dude in the mid seventies who was a high wire artist, what illegally went up to the top of the world trade center and climbed from one tower to the other on a high wire. Yeah. Great documentary and, uh, faith in this movie. It is thick. It's in 3D, isn't it? Or it's going to be. I'm sure.

I don't know. I can't imagine that one though in 3D. I saw tinting in 3D. It was all right. Yeah. Yeah. I'm not into it. I mean, I know what you're saying.

Did you see Mad Max in 3D? No. I didn't either. I don't see 3D anymore is what I'm saying. Did you see, did you ever see, uh, was it Friday the thirteenth part three came out in 3D? Nope. That was a good one.

That was back when 3D stunk. Yeah. You know. Oh yeah. When it was like things looked still kind of blue and red at the same time. Yeah. Like now it's supposedly good. I just don't enjoy it.

The cardboard glasses were cutting into the bridge of your nose and you were bleeding on. Man, we can get sidetracked. Although that wasn't much of a sidetrack because we talked about, you know, how we're walking. It's an extreme sport. That's right. Just like base jumping.

So we're going to talk about the history of base jumping. Yes. Uh, if you talk about the, the distant history, um, early 19th century, there were some things going on that is essentially like base jumping. Uh, there was a dude named Frederick Rodman Law and he jumped, um, off the Brooklyn Bridge at one point. Yeah. And the Statue of Liberty.

Yeah. And the Banker's Trust Building on Wall Street. And this is in like the 1910s. Yeah. So, I mean, technically he was base jumping, but these were just one-off stunts at this point. Yes. The same as in 1975 when Owen Quinn leapt from the World Trade Center.

And uh, there was another guy named Ron Boyles who jumped from the Royal Gorge Bridge in Colorado. So all this is happening, these little one-off stunts. And then in 1975, this guy named, uh, this guy named Carl Banish, there's a documentary about him actually called Sunshine Superman. Yeah. Did it look, did you see the trailer? It is.

It looks really good. It does. Uh, and I think that is like now that that one's coming out. It's in 2015. Yeah. Um, so he gets this idea, he goes to Yosemite to film some hang gliders. And these hang gliders, there's three dudes on a single hang, uh, or a glider, I guess you call it.

Right. And once they get out over the land, two of them drop off. And I think they're flying off at El Capitan, which is like a few thousand feet tall, right? Uh, I don't know how tall it is. It's pretty tall. I think it's like 3,000 feet tall. I mean, I've seen it, but from the bottom. Okay.

Very impressive. Yeah. Um, so these two dudes, Rich, uh, Picarelli and Brian Johnson, they dropped off. They parachuted, uh, into the valley below and Carl Banish was like, very interesting. I think we're onto something here, fellas. And so he got, uh, Rich Picarelli in, uh, 1978 said, let's do it, brother. And let's go to El Capitan and jump off of it. Right.

Like forget the hang glider, leave that at home. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Apparently when they went scouting the place to see if you could just basically base jump off of it. Um, they lowered Banish over the edge on like a rope and they heard him shout, Eureka, we can jump from here.

Now pull me back up. Please. Right. Although from what I gather from this guy is probably like, you guys can just go, I'm going to hang out here for a while. Yeah. Yeah. That's true.

Uh, so on August 8th, 1978, he took this new crew, uh, back to that location. And, uh, he, I think was just filming at the time and one by one they jumped. And if you look at this documentary footage that's on the trailer of Sunshine Superman, these guys like way before the GoPro, they're wearing like these toaster ovens on their head, essentially attached to helmets because even back then they wanted to film stuff. Oh yeah. Apparently Carl Banish, like for that first jump, he had a number of different cameras going for different angles and, um, when he was documenting it, he would make people

like do different takes of like walking into frame and stuff like that. He'd be like, okay, you know, get, get back and do that again, like walk again. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, well that's why they have with a great old footage. Yeah. So I guess thanks to him. Um, sadly he died, uh, base jumping, base jumping, but he was doing it solo, I guess

in 1984, um, he, he did a solo jump off a cliff in Norway and, um, no one saw him die, but they figured that he probably was steered into the cliff, um, that he jumped from, which is called an offheading jump, which is one of the bigger dangers in base jumping as we'll see. Oh, sure. Well, that's where he originally, um, I don't think we mentioned that these two guys, uh, Michael Pellke and Brian Schubert were the first two that he heard of that actually did jump from El Capitan, but they did it with the old school round paratrooper parachutes.

And they got slammed into the face again and again and again, breaking bones and foot and legs and things like that. There's, that's another video. There's a, um, the woman who skied or who base jumped and she got, um, she got, she went on to an offheading, uh, opening, is that what it's called? I believe it is. Um, and you just see like she's getting just directed right into the, the cliff face again and again.

You're just, I can't imagine. I mean, it killed her, but I can't imagine how anybody could survive something like that because you're going so fast. Yeah. And all of that velocity is just being slammed into a cliff face and then you'll bounce off and float away and then just come back in again. Yeah. Yeah.

You're at the mercy of nature at that point. Right. But that's what happened with those two dudes in the sixties, the first two to parachute off of El Capitan, um, and Carl Banish was like, I don't think they're the idea of jumping off of El Capitan with the parachute was wrong. I think their gear was just wrong. Yeah. And that's why Carl Banish is credited as being the father of, um, of base jumping because

he applied the techniques that are now the hallmarks of base jumping. Yeah. And the equipment. Yeah. Yeah. And he was also the guy, if you complete all four phases, uh, the B, the A, the S and the E, then you are assigned a number and he's the one that started that. But he was base number four though.

He wasn't even number one because he was filming people, I think that's right because his wife was base three. Right. And, uh, so he was a feminist as well. He wasn't like, good, good to be in front of you. Yeah. You're a girl. Uh, so base one, uh, was Phil Smith from Texas.

And as of now, it's hard to get numbers than they point out pretty reasonably that a lot of these things happen under cover of night and they're not reported necessarily. But as best as we can tell, they're, uh, they're up to like base 1800 plus. Yeah. At this point. That's what I thought too. And that's who is, those are people who have completed again, all four phases. Buildings, antennas, spans, and, uh, earth, earth, and originally it wasn't called base.

It was called best. Yeah. It was going to be, uh, buildings, earth, span and tower. Yeah. So they just rearranged it a bit. Yeah. Apparently Carl Banish's wife, Jean said she liked best, best, but Carl liked base, um, particularly because the first definition of the word was a platform on which something

stands. Yeah. So it makes sense. And before I knew, I've known for a while as an acronym, but before I knew it was an acronym, I just thought that's what it meant. Like you go stand on some base and you jump. Oh yeah. You know.

Carl Banish would have been proud. That's right. Uh, all right. So let's take a break and then, um, we will talk about some of that gear right after this. I'm Mangesh Atikular and to be honest, I don't believe in astrology, but from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life in India. It's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get secondhand astrology.

And lately I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention because maybe there is magic in the stars if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, major league baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop. But just when I thought I had a handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world came crashing down. Situation doesn't look good.

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you listen to podcasts. All right, dude. So if you want to base jump, you just get an old 1960s army parachute and you go at it. Right? Yep. Add some, uh, get a, um, a weight vest. Yeah.

Yeah. Scooby diving. Uh-huh. So you can fall fast. Some ankle weights. A pair of sunglasses. Maybe. Yeah.

Drink a gallon of whiskey. Yeah. And just fall off of the cliff. That's right. No. No. No. No.

No. No. What you need is the right gear. And what they found out pretty quickly was that something called a Ram air parachute. And these are the ones that you see nowadays. You don't even see the round parachutes anymore. I guess you do if you jump from outer space. Or if you're like, uh, kind of a hipster vintage skydiver, you know what I mean?

You need to do one on skydiving, I guess, but, um, Yeah. I guess we haven't. No. Yeah. Cause I was like, this doesn't sound familiar. Like we've spoken about it before. So I was like, we're doing base jumping before skydiving.

Yeah. I like that. That's the opposite of what you're supposed to do, especially if you're actually base jumping. We, well, that is true. Um, so the Ram air parachute is the one that you see a lot now, uh, mostly now, which is the one that is a rectangular and they give you a lot more control on where you're going. Because you want to be able to steer this thing pretty quickly.

Right. So you don't slam into the rock cause that's one of the, the two dangers is slamming into the rocks or slamming into whatever the building. Right. The two dangers are slamming into the thing you jumped, you jumped off of. Yeah. Which is apparently the, the more frequent danger or other things around, I guess. Right.

So you're slamming into the ground and like your shoot not opening or something like that. Yeah. And I think mostly though, most injuries occur from slamming into structures and not, uh, improper deployment. Right. And the thing about the Ram air parachute is it's this, um, rectangular parachute that allows you to maneuver yourself, guide yourself, increase or decrease your speed. You're much more in control than you are with a round parachute, which basically just slows

your acceleration towards earth. Right. That's right. Um, and with, with a Ram air parachute, uh, it works so well that when you are base jumping, you're faced with a problem. Cause when you're skydiving, you have a lot of time. You're jumping at like a well over 10,000 feet usually, right? You get to free fall for a while and then say about 2000 feet, you open your shoot and

your shoot can just take all the time in the world to open. Well, ideally it's pretty directly. Yeah. But it's not like packed and then open. Right. There's a, there's a process that does take place over the course of maybe a second, a second and a half. Yeah.

I know what you mean. That makes a lot of difference in going from free fall to floating, right? Yeah. As far as your body's concerned and as far as changing your velocity and direction. Well with base jumping, you don't have that amount of time. You need your shoot to open pretty quick. And so when you, when you open a Ram Air shoot all of a sudden, it can basically snap your neck.

It opens so, so quickly and jerks you up. Yeah. Right. And since you have a lot of velocity because you're in free fall, when your shoot opens and all of a sudden you're not free falling any longer, you're transferring some of that velocity to the shoot, which can slam you into that cliff side. Yeah. So some things that you have to, to deal with if you're a base jumper that a skydiver wouldn't

have to deal with. And there's been some clever solutions to those things. Yeah. There's one device called a slider that basically reduces the rate at which those parachute lines spread out. So it's not going to deploy as quickly and snap your neck in half or not your neck, but well, I'm not sure what would happen if it jerks you. Are you spying or something?

You tear you clean in half. Okay. So the slider is just like this piece of fabric that, that slides down the lines. And by doing that, it gives you a measure of control over how fast your shoot opens. That's right. You know, the little pilot shoots? Yeah. Like if you've ever seen a skydiver, there, there's that little shoot that comes out and

then that helps deploy the big shoot. Same with funny cars. But do they have a pilot shoot? Mm-hmm. Really? The good ones too. Uh, so you have a larger pilot shoot if you're a base jumper because you talked about velocity. There is some velocity, but not like your skydiving.

So you're actually going a lot slower in most cases unless you're really like, you know, jumping off something super, super tall. Right. So you're not going to be at like terminal velocity, which is what you count on for that shoot to open real fast. So because you're not going as fast, you want a larger pilot shoot so it can gather more air to deploy the real shoot faster. Right.

And since you don't have that velocity, you also don't have the same amount of air pressure you would if you were at terminal velocity. Right. So that larger pilot shoot gathers more air even in this, it balances out the fact that you have less air pressure. Right. So yeah, it's going to open your shoot faster. And you talked about if you were skydiving normally, if your shoot malfunctions or something,

not good, but you've got your backup shoot and you have time, which is key, to think, well, things aren't going well with my regular shoot. Let me deploy the backup shoot. Right. Base jumpers probably don't even have backup shoots. Let me make some toast. I'll eat my toast and then I'll deploy my backup shoot. And the toaster up in all my head.

But a lot of times base jumpers don't even have backup shoots because there's just not enough time anyway. Right. That's not like they're like, screw it, man, although they probably are, you know, they're extreme dudes and ladies. But even if they were like, I don't want to screw it, I really want a backup shoot. They're totally useless, basically. Josh wants a backup parachute.

All right. So let's talk about that shoot and the accessibility. If you've ever seen a base jumper jump off with the parachute wadded up in their hand, that is a thing you can do if it's a shorter jump because you just want to be able to throw that thing out almost right away, not a lot of free fall going on in that case. No. If it's a little higher than that, they might just pack that pilot shoot like in their pocket or something like that, but they leave their hands free and then they'll just reach into

the pocket and pull out the pilot shoot rather than using a rip cord to deploy it. Yeah. Most of the base jumping, I think most of the rigs today have like a Velcro flap type of scene that they use. It's not even a rip cord necessarily. Gotcha. Just sort of packed in a pouch, a Velcro pouch. And you just pull the Velcro off?

I think so and just rip that away. Gotcha. Again, I will never do this, so I'm just going on research alone. Same here. No interest. If you're below 300 feet, you might even have to use a static line and that is when there's a line actually attached, I think, to the thing you're jumping off of, right? Yeah.

And it just immediately opens up. Yeah, it like pulls your pilot shoot out and then it disconnects from it, hopefully. And that guy, Frederick Rodman Law, who jumped off of the Statue of Liberty, that was a static line jump. Yeah. Like when you see paratroopers like one after the other in a plane, a lot of times those are static line jumps. Yeah.

When they're leaving, there's a cord that's left behind after they jumped out. That thing just pulled their pilot shoot out. That's right. That's a low altitude jump technique. That's right. I think off-heading opening, is that what you were talking about earlier? Yes. That's when you deploy the shoot again and you just start going crazy.

Yeah, because again, especially if you're in free fall, if you have a couple of seconds to go into free fall with no shoot deployed, no resistance other than your body, you can build up a pretty decent amount of velocity and when your shoot opens all of a sudden, you transfer that velocity to your shoot and your shoot can spin you around in another direction and all of a sudden you're going back toward the cliff or back toward the building and you can be in big, big trouble. Yeah. While you have some control, it's not the kind of control that you're used to in a car or

something. Yeah. You can't just be like, oh, let me stop immediately and go in the other direction. Yeah. If you are an experienced base jumper or skydiver, it's not like you are using the cords on your parachute as often as you are on your car, so it's not necessarily as natural reaction as it is to steer your steering wheel out of the way of an oncoming truck, so it can be very easy to pull the wrong way or do the wrong thing or not react quite in time, even

though that ram air parachute is giving you more control, you have to think so fast and under such sudden stress that you might not make the right decision. Yeah. Well, that's one of the things that Tom Aiello says, think about if it's right for you. He said that it's a good fit or it could be a good fit. If you are intellectually curious, you have good reactions, you respond quickly and correctly without having to think during an emergency and you are very organized and detail oriented like if you are sloppy, if you are lazy, if you take too much time to suss out an emergency,

you are not going to be a good base jumper. You don't even try it. You don't even try it, no. So body positioning is important. When you deploy that chute and I think the super safe way to base jump, if you call it that, would just be to jump off head first in that traditional face down form. Of course, now you see him doing flips and tumbles and joining hands and spinning each other and those are like the seriously experienced chute people.

But even when you do jump off and you are face toward the earth and you are horizontal parallel to the earth with the chute deploying behind you, you don't want to take necessarily the normal skydiving pose with your arms out and your legs splayed. You want to keep your arms to the side and your legs together and basically turn yourself into a bullet going away from the structure that you just jumped off of. It's called tracking and it can reduce your chances of an off heading opening. Yeah. That makes sense.

You want to get as far away from the thing that you just jumped off of as possible. Exactly. You want to do that is to turn your body into a bullet that's being directed in the opposite direction. Yeah. Let me correct something. When I said that these people now tumble and flip into all those things, they do but they still, when they go to deploy the chute, will end up in that traditional position.

Right. It's not like they're upside down. They're like, this is a great time to throw out my parachute. There was a pretty cool video that surfaced in the last year or two, I think, of some guys who jumped off the New World Trade Center Tower at night. It's just crazy. A lot of base jumping happens at night for obvious reasons, which seems super scary. So we'll talk about the legalities and the ins and outs of base jumping right after this.

I'm Mangesh Atikular and to be honest, I don't believe in astrology, but from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life. In India, it's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get secondhand astrology. And lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention because maybe there is magic in the stars if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast.

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All right. So why my friend, uh, is base jumping a fringe sport besides the fact that you could kill yourself? Uh, well, it's, uh, it's kind of a sport of outlaws. That's right. Uh, the Grabster wrote this article and as he puts it, even if the jump itself aren't it, isn't illegal, gaining access to prime jumping spots often involves trespassing, picking locks, climbing fences and deceiving security guards.

I'm sure that is all part of the rush. Yeah. You know, deceiving security guards is a felony offense. What's that from, or do you just make it up? It's kind of a days and confused reference. Oh yeah. Yeah. It's like a box of federal offense here says felony offense and some of the, uh, small

parts in that movie. I'm pretty convinced we're just regular folks. They weren't actors. Oh yeah. I'm sure they're just friends of link letter who lived in Austin. Yeah. For sure. A lot of the adults like the convenience store guy and, oh yeah, he showed up and I think

he's in boyhood. Yeah. He played the convenience store guy. Yeah. That's a pretty nice little call. But he's a convenience store dude. Um, so the national park service, uh, obviously national parks are pretty popular because they have tall things and they don't have many people and they don't have many cops or park

rangers. I mean, if you talk about the land mass, you're not going to see a park ranger for days sometimes. Yeah. So the national parks are like, sure, based jump all you want, right? No. For a little while, um, certain parks would allow it with a permit. Um, Yosemite and El Capitan, they let that happen for like a few months. Um, before they realize it's probably not a good idea to be on the hook.

Yeah. Well, I mean, the park service experience with base jumping from the start was a bad one. Yeah. Those two guys who jumped in the sixties had to be rescued and like medivac out of there at great cost. Yeah. The, the national park service had to foot that bill.

Yeah. So just from the get go, they were like, yeah, base jumping sucks. Please don't do it here, but there's, and there was a law already on the books against having a parachute in the national parks. And apparently, um, it was to prevent hunters from resupplying using parachutes. Oh, really? Yeah. They had nothing to do with base jumping.

Interesting. So like a supply drop. Yes. So like, no, if you want supplies, you have to go out and then come back. Yeah. I guess so. They're like, uh, needs more ammo to blow some deers head off. I want a parachute.

So nowadays you're going to get fined a couple of grand or more. Um, you're going to, uh, get arrested. You're going to have to pay for any cost of medivac-ing you out. Yeah. They're going to take your gear. It's an expensive proposition if you get busted, uh, in a national park base jumping. Yeah. It still happens.

It sounds like such a school principal move. Yeah. I'm taking your parachute. Your, your parachute has been confiscated. They put it in the drawer. They put it back at the end of the semester. It's the chattering teeth and the, uh, buildings is always illegal. Almost always, always illegal.

I didn't see one single building where it wasn't illegal. I didn't either, but the fact that the article says almost makes me think there might be one. Okay. Or maybe it meant if there's an arrangement, right? Like there's a great video of two guys. I think there were Red Bull guys. Going off of the, the, the building in, uh, Dubai.

Yeah. Did you see that thing? Yeah. That was nuts, dude. Vince Ruffett and Fred Fugen from 2014. And again, thanks to the GoPro, uh, you can get all of this stuff. Like the footage is amazing because you always have someone jumping with you, at least one other person with a camera, um, just filming you, and then they have cameras set up for

the wide shots. And I mean, these dudes did, they flew in a spiral around the building. Yeah. They did some pretty amazing stuff. Yeah. I mean, I could watch this stuff all day. It's amazing. Again, not interested in doing it.

I would skydive though. I'm going to do that at some point. That seems less risky. It is much less risky. And I mean, when you go, you, they, they like sit you through a class and like it's just much more structured and formalized. One of the things about base jumping is that you, um, like normally if you're a base jumper, you're doing it after you've already become an experienced skydiver.

And you're probably being taken under the wing of an experienced base jumper. Ideally. Whereas with skydiving, it's like, this is a business come sit down in this airplane hanger and watch this video. And, um, I'm going to teach you exactly what you need to know. We're going to go up and it's been, we've already done it 50 times today. Yeah. It's like a, for a tandem jump.

It's like, if you've got $75 and sign a waiver, then you can jump out of a plane this afternoon. Exactly. Yeah. And they're still very scary. Yeah. Have you ever done that? I did a tandem jump and yeah, it's very scary, but I can, I just can't imagine a base jump. Did the person, the one thing I worry about with the tandem jump is I would just want

the person to shut up behind me that's attached to me. Yeah. Like I would want to experience it just myself and not have someone in my ear going like, bro, check it out. Isn't this awesome? I think if that happens, the skydiving company gives you a free, another free one. If you're like, the guy was saying, bro, in my ear, I want to, I demand another jump that's uninterrupted.

See, I figured all of them did that. Like you having fun man in this great? No, I don't know. I mean, not, not that I know of. Because I would have felt bad saying, I'm very excited, sir, but please keep it down. Can you shut up? I'm experiencing the majesty of this experience. Well, I just don't want to be reminded that someone's attached to my, my butt.

Dude, there's a video of a woman who is doing a tandem jump. First to start off with, she's holding onto the sides of the plane and is pushing back on the guy who's trying to push her out. The tandem jumper. Oh, she's fighting the jump. He has to grab her wrists and pull them in and then push her out. Is that legal? I wouldn't think so.

And then secondly, she's obviously not, she's not wearing a suit. She's just wearing her street clothes. So she's got like her arms in the harness, not hooked into the harness, just her arms are. And almost immediately she starts to slide out. So she's doubled up with like her legs and her arms, like at her face, her feet sticking into the air. Is this in Turkey?

Just hanging out. I don't know where it was, but just, it didn't appear to be in Turkey. Or Dollywood. Right. But Dollywood never allows something like that in her part. I mean, you'd be offended. And she survived. They lived, but like the shoot, it's just like the, the pilot shoots just hanging out

at first. Wow. You're like, what is going to happen? It is so scary. And to start, the woman obviously didn't want to do this. Yeah. So she slides out of the plane and then like almost slides out of the harness. Well, it sounds like she was like doing her taxes and someone abducted her.

It kind of looks that way actually. Send me that video. Yeah. I will. Very interesting. And it's not a movie. You sure? It didn't look like a movie.

I'm like, wait, that's Kathleen O'Hara. Right. That's romancing the stone. That's Kathleen Turner. I know. And I think it's Catherine O'Hara. It made me think of romancing the stone. Yeah.

I hear you. Catherine O'Hara? Yeah, I think it is. Yeah. I don't know why I thought of her. She just seems like someone who'd be down with that. She was the mom in Home Alone among many, many, many other things, right? That's right.

That's Catherine O'Hara, right? Okay. She's an SCTV vet. I think so. Jerry just nodded. So at least she knows what SCTV is. It says guarding your spots. What base jumpers don't want to do is mess it up for other base jumpers.

So they say the worst thing you can do is either get hurt or killed because that's going to be a dead giveaway, literally. Or just being a jerk, getting arrested, drawing attention to this otherwise cool spot to base jump. Right. It's a very secretive thing. Yeah. It's among the code.

I couldn't find what it referenced, but apparently there was a base jumper in Atlanta who got caught trying to jump off of a building. I looked for that too. And some other base jumpers, like went to his house and beat them up for bringing heat onto their sport. Locals only. Yeah. That is kind of a point break, yeah.

Well the new point break is our base jumpers. Why can't Hollywood come up with a brand new concept? Even if all of the good ideas have been used before, right? In everything still a category, like a spy movie, a bank robber movie, a romantic comedy, like all of these things are still just categories. There's still room for creativity. Still that you don't have to go, what movie was big in the 80s? Let's remake it, except worse.

It drives me crazy, man. I've not seen one remake with the exception of Mad Max that was worthwhile. Well that wasn't a remake at all. Was it supposed to be like a prequel or something like that? No, it's just that it's, I guess you would call it a reboot, it's just like a reboot. Here's a new version of a character that's already been established, but it's not canon as they say. Oh yeah.

You know what I'm saying? Yeah. But do you agree? Oh, of course. Can you think of, okay, can you think of one thing that was already done from the 80s, like a good movie from the 80s that was redone recently, or even added to? That was better. Yeah, that was even good.

I'd have to look. I mean, there's probably a couple, but not many, you know? It always seems like a bad idea for sure. Let's remake Ghostbusters, or just let Ghostbusters exist as great. I'm reserving Judgement on that one. Well, it may be good. They've got a great director. Who is it?

I think it's Paul Feig from, he directed Bridesmaids, but he did a lot of the freaks and geeks back in the day. Oh, okay. He's a very smart and funny guy. For some reason, I thought you were talking about Mike Figgis, and I'm like, that's his directing Ghostbusters. Can I read a little more about how to get started from this guy? Tom Aiello, I think this was in, was this in Apex, from the Apex website, perhaps?

So after checking yourself to see if you're a good fit, like I said, if you have good reaction time and handle emergencies well and all that good stuff, then make the decision to do so. And he said, in my short time in the sport, I've seen two life flight helicopters from the outside, two more from the inside, inside the back of a police car, several broken noses, and a funeral. I've also spent three weeks in intensive care in 18 hours in neurosurgery. So his contention is if you base jump like hundreds of times, like most of those people

do, you will get hurt at some point, and just know that getting into it. People do die. Oh yeah. From what I saw, 180 people have died since 1981, but that was as of February 2012. And by the way, I think we should say, we're making a lot of jokes about how you can dive base jumping. It's obviously super tragic when someone dies doing anything. So I don't want to make it like we're making light of that kind of thing.

Yeah. I didn't think we were, were we? No. I just wanted to make sure. I'm sensitive to that kind of thing. Well, sure. Yeah. Someone dies is tragedy.

Yeah. Especially when they die young. Yeah. Which most base jumpers, except for the 73-year-old. Right. Who let his parachute on fire. And again, I giggled. Not funny.

Wait. This is like an Ouroboros. I know. I think I get uncomfortable about death, and I make, and I laugh. And have you ever seen that one King of the Hill where Khan is giving that, that eulogy at a Buckley's funeral and he talks about the man who's being chased by a tiger and the tiger chases him off the cliff and the man starts to fall, but he stops and he grabs himself and he holds on by this root.

And it turns out it's a strawberry plant. And he says that he knows at that moment that he is going to die. Yeah. He reaches up and he plucks a strawberry from the strawberry plant and eats it, and it's the sweetest strawberry he's ever had. Nice. I remember. It's a great, great scene.

Like they animated it in like the Chinese illustration. Oh, wow. I don't remember that. It's really great. I remember when he first met Khan when Khan said he was Laotian, he was like, you're from the ocean? Right. Yeah.

Good stuff. So where were we? I think five or six have died this year. So more than 180. Dean Potter and Graham Hunt, Dean Potter is like one of the biggest like extreme dudes out there and he passed away at Yosemite recently. Really? Yeah.

He was doing the wingsuit flying. So that's pretty nuts in and of itself. It's amazing. You know, I was looking at some of that stuff you sent me, I was looking at some wingsuit stuff and I thought like, why, why would they not put wingsuits in the top of tall buildings like in office towers, just like you have life vests on a boat? I think because it takes a lot of experience to successfully fly in a wingsuit and deploy your parachute.

The thing is though, like, why not just put parachutes? Yeah. I mean, why not? It just seems like it seems like a good idea. I would guess wingsuits are a lot cheaper. Even if it's a terrible, cruddy wingsuit, it's still worth the shot. Well, have you seen some of those videos? The wingsuit flying?

It's crazy. It's amazing. Like humans are flying at this point. There was one, there was one I saw, I don't remember if you sent it to me or I stumbled across it, but they had a camera set up in like this grassy meadow and this guy comes and flies right overhead. It looks like he's like 20 feet off the ground. Yeah.

And the grass like moves like an airplane just flew over it. Yeah. Like it just ripples. It's unbelievable. I think I was going fast. That started in the late 90s. The modern wingsuit was developed by a guy, or squirrel suit, because they look like little flying squirrels, basically.

Patrick de Gaillardin in France, he died at 38 from base jumping. Are you guys seeing a pattern here? Yeah. Like a lot of base jumpers died base jumping, died young. That was based on an earlier design by this guy, this base pioneer, John Carter, that they called the Birdman and he was a Vietnam veteran in like the 70s. He was creating these wingsuits that didn't work nearly as well, but he was still jumping off of stuff.

Probably work good enough to jump out of an office tower if it's on fire. He died too. But I don't think base jumping. I think he died like in a plane crash. Banana peel. Probably going to skydive. But I mean, you can fly, I think the record, I don't know if it still stands, is like close to five miles of flight in a wingsuit.

Wow. I believe it. In four or five minutes. Wow. It's pretty amazing. That's like a mile a minute. That's 60 miles an hour. So the final few things you should think about, make sure that you are always prepared to

not do anything that doesn't feel right and not be afraid to back down. That's a big one is to be able to say, no, this isn't good because I don't want to die. I don't want to base jump successfully is the goal. And this one is horrifying. Tell your family and write a sealed letter to your friends and family on the event that you die explaining exactly why you have decided to take up base jumping and what you get out of it and why you're willing to risk death. Give sealed copies to your family and your base mentor to open in the event of death.

And then make at least 200 skydives as his and then sort of mimic base jumping as much as you can. You can wait as long as you can to open, do a lot of tracking, call it max tracking. Find a mentor, get a good base rig and he suggests spending the money and taking an actual class from a manufacturer. They have called first jump course classes and he said, even if you have a mentor, even if you've done it a hundred times, just spend the money and make sure you know how to do the rigs and everything correctly.

Wise words, Aiello wise words, Danny Aiello, um, base jumping expert, you got anything else? I got nothing else. If you want to know more about base jumping, type those words in the search bar at howstuffworks.com. Look up Paul Aiello, yes, and Paul Feig and Mike Figgis. Yeah. And then don't base jump. Yeah.

Just stay at home and watch base jumping videos. You can do that all day long. Um, and since I said search bar, I think somewhere in there, it's time for a listener mail. I don't think anyone's ever died watching a base jumping video, have they? You could. Yeah. But it's probably because you, you just eaten seven or eight pounds of Taco Bell, you know what I mean?

Uh-huh. You died in the toilet. That's it for me. Yeah. All right. I'm going to call this New Zealand mob, New Zealand gang, the Mongrel mob. Uh, hey guys, I'm from Wellington, I thought I'd share some light on one of New Zealand's more prominent gangs, the Mongrel mob.

They began when a group of mainly European mutes from Wellington and Hawkes Bay in the 1960s, uh, the mob wears red regalia, often fusing the cultural tattoo work of the Maori people. I feel like we talked about them in the Maori episode. Oh, we may have the Mongrel mob. Either that. Is it a motorcycle gang? I don't know.

I'm sure some of them have motorcycles. So I think we did talk about them in the Maori episode. I think they're a Vespa gang. They're Vespa tuts. There's one driving and then one riding side saddle and back. Yeah. Um, uh, as well as portraits of bulldogs with their tattoos and occasionally Nazi symbols that are synonymous with the gang such as swastikas and the slanted SS symbol.

Boo. Yeah. That are said to be included, uh, to provide a contradiction with the British symbol of the bulldog. I don't know, makes sense. Like most gangs of Mongrel mob is involved in organized crime and thus has been associated with an aggressive and feared stereotype of how people, uh, these people live their lives. You just said stereotype like a New Zealander.

Did I? Yeah. You went stereotype. Weird. Maybe it's how we spelled it. Nope. Stereotype. What I think is overlooked though, guys, is, uh, the communal family roles that gangs

or chapters inherit because of the need of an individual. And we did talk about that some. Yeah. Don't know how you got that as overlooked, buddy. He's a nice fellow. Uh, at least in some parts of New Zealand, the mob is seen as an ingrained part of the community and a source of solidarity. Uh, and I've thrown a link to a vice article below about a photographer who spent eight

years with the mob documenting and taking portraits, amazing portraits, um, of some of his members and vice is awesome. So we'll always plug them to just look up, uh, portraits of New Zealand's mighty Mongrel mob from vice.com. Hmm. Uh, it's pretty neat. And he said, thanks guys. Love your work.

You've killed a lot of potential silence over the years. Professional silence killers. Band name. Yeah. Killer with their bare hands. Uh, regards from the long white cloud. I guess that's New Zealand. Stereotype.

Sam Vandercolk. Great name. Yeah. Excellent name. Throw a little dutchiness in there. Great name. Dutch tilt. Uh, thanks a lot, Sam.

Also, somebody, I don't know who it was, so I apologize to you if you're listening, tweeted to us, um, an article that I have yet to read, but looks awesome. It's about Disney gangs. What? Yeah. I will send it to you. Shut up. No, seriously.

I was looking over it and I'm like, is this just like a hoax article or something like that? Is that any gangs that hang out in Disney World and rough people up or gangs that wear Mickey Mouse costumes? I don't think they rough people up. They don't wear Mickey Mouse costumes, but they wear like, they'll have like Disney gang stuff tattooed on them. They wear like Disney biker jackets with like their gang symbols have Mickey Mouse involved

and they're like Disney gangs, Disney centered gangs. You're talking about Holly from stuff you missed in history class. If she isn't a member, then she at least knows a member. There's no way she doesn't. Or she just didn't know about it yet. There's no way. Yeah. She's too into Disney.

Agreed. If you want to get in touch with us to let us know about a gang in your area or a base jump that you did or whatever, you can tweet to us at SYSK Podcast. You can join us on facebook.com slash stuff you should know. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast.howstuffworks.com and as always join us at our home on the web stuffyoushouldknow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com. I'm Munga Shatikular 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 from 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.