Stuff You Should Know - How Building Implosions Work

Episode Date: July 16, 2013

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And listen, even the shortest trip may turn into an unforgettable journey of a lifetime. So go on, find out where to next with Toyota. Let's go places. Start your journey at toyota.com slash let's go places. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey and welcome to the podcast, I'm Josh Clark and there's Charles W. Chuck Brighton. That means that this is Stuff You Should Know and you know that's right. Really?

Yeah. We are imploding the show today. I'm imploding. Josh is imploding today. This should be interesting. That's better than exploding though. I've been doing a little bit of that too. Yeah, that's no good because that affects those around you.

When you implode, at least you contain the turmoil within. Yeah. Which is really, you know, don't be selfish, don't explode. We should probably say, because I guarantee there's people out there who are like, buildings don't actually implode. Yeah, true. We should call this the how buildings, how detonating buildings so that they collapse in on themselves.

Due to gravity. Right. It's not an actual implosion where everything sucked in toward the center. Right. Right. Yeah, that's a scientific thing that this is not, it's not happening when a building implodes your rights. But if you're not a jerk, then you just call them building implosions.

Yeah. That's the nomenclature. Yeah. That's what people say. I should say you're not a jerk if you are up in arms about that kind of thing. But I challenge you to email us and tell us what we should really call it, what words should stand in them for implosions. And we will read it out on the later episode.

That's right. So considering that we're still around then. That's right. Chuck. Yes. Are you familiar with the city of Detroit? Yes. We love Detroit.

We do love Detroit. Probably my favorite name of all time. Yeah, Detroit. Yeah. Human being. Yeah. Was named. Yeah, Detroit.

Yeah. I grew up in Toledo. Been to Detroit plenty of times. Love the Tigers. Yeah. Yeah. Sparky Anderson was a great man. I'm Matt Stafford.

Place for the Lions. Oh, yeah. That's another big Detroit link right there. Love the Red Wings when I was a kid. The Pistons. Yeah. When you hear me talk smack about Detroit, I'm joking. Lighten up.

Like I find it extraordinarily satisfying when people write in, it's like, you need to lay off Detroit. And it's like, well, you need to listen to all the episodes of the podcast. I think it'd be funny. I always thought if we ever went to Detroit, which I think we should at some point for an event. Yeah. And then 5% of the people would be like, awesome, we know you guys love this.

And then 5% would just, they would come and sit there with their arms crossed. Right. You got a lot of making up to do. Yeah. What's ironic is that if you switch those ratios, you'd have the number of people who live in houses with roofs in Detroit and the number of people who don't. So also one of my favorite things about Detroit is a website called ForgottenDetroit.com. Yeah, that's a good one.

I've mentioned it a few times. It bears repeating. There is a website called ForgottenDetroit.com. And I get the impression that the guy was maybe German, Austrian or Dutch. And he's obviously knows what he's talking about with architecture because it comes through when he's documenting the building and talking about it. But he wandered around Detroit, whoever made this website, wandered around Detroit and did a lot of urban exploration of abandoned buildings, photo documented building after

building after building, went back and found original schematics, wrote about the history, and just made this exhaustive website called ForgottenDetroit.com. And the reason why it's so awesome in addition to the fact that it's just abandoned building photos, which are like the greatest thing on the planet, is that he documented buildings that are not there any longer. A lot of them have been torn down and some of them have been imploded for lack of a better word. Oh, really?

Yeah. Just to make room for something better and bigger? Yeah. To take care of the blight? Sure. To... Oh, yeah. Just like, yeah, this has been here.

Right. For too long. Exactly. With broken windows. Right. And no one's been in it, occupied it since 1980. Yeah. You know?

So let's get rid of this. Instead of a slow demolition over the course of 50 years by vandals, let's just take care of it now. Exactly. Yeah. So that's how that site ties to this episode. Very nice. Okay.

That's good. That's a good old fashioned intro. Thanks, man. So, like we said, gravity is really what's going on here. It's a pretty simple concept. What they're doing when you implode a building, or let's... This is general demolition, basically, up front, is they're removing the support structures at very specific points to cause them to fall down one upon the other from the top down.

And actually, you know, you start at the bottom, but it will still fall from the top down. Right. You know what I'm saying? This is usually for specific height buildings. Like if you've got a five storey building, you're probably going to bring in a wrecking ball, some excavators, and a guy with a little black lunch pail. Exactly.

Yeah. He's going to sit on an I-beam and eat it. Exactly. And anything over maybe eight, you're going to start to get in the concept of using demolition for... Is that the height, generally? I... This article said 20.

I don't know if there's a rule of thumb height. Yeah. I guess the key here is safety. You want to do it safely. So the key is the buildings, like where is it situated? Is it right in the middle of an apartment complex? Yeah. Then you may want to implode because you don't want the sink falling left or right.

If you've got nothing around there but empty parking lot, you're right. Maybe a 20 storey building could be fine. Right. Because it's just going to fall in that abandoned parking lot with grass growing through it. Exactly. And who cares about that? Exactly. All right.

So let's get into this. The first thing that you have to do is see if you can dig up the original blueprints for this thing. Yep. They may exist, in which case you're all set and you can, you know, if you know what you're looking at, you can see where the support structures are and where you need to kind of start your journey here to implode this thing. Even better if you can find the architect, the principal architect on that job.

He or she may remember some things about that job that are like didn't show up in the blueprints or little foibles at the building hands. And be gentle with them. They may have a tear in their eye about this whole prospect. All right. You know, don't just bang on the door and say, hey, we're going to tell your building down like a, where's it strong? You know your counting achievement?

Exactly. The only building you ever made. So that's just some personal advice. Be gentle with these people. They're going to draw up their plan of attack based on experience. And we should point out, there's not a lot of companies that do this. It's not, there's not 500 demolition companies that implode tall buildings. There's like a 20 or so.

No. And here's the reason why it's very difficult for a young up and comer to get into the demolition business with their own company because it's so dangerous, yes, and risky. Not just to human life, but the other surrounding buildings, the areas like insurance companies are all nervous watching this, that you build a track record of carrying out building implosions and you have, you're on easy street. That's what people hire you based on is your successful track record. Yeah.

And trust me, we know. Josh and Chuck implosions LLC did not, we didn't get any calls. It was a bad, we wasted a lot of money on that Kickstarter campaign. Well, your mom called, but she was just trying to pump us up. Exactly. Honey, you're good enough. You can upload this thing. So they draw on their experience sometimes if they don't have the blueprints or if it's

a little more complicated, they may even do a 3D computer model and try it out ahead of time. Yeah. I would guess that that's pretty standard these days. Yeah. You think so? Yeah. I read this awesome article about people who, I think it was maybe wired, people who salvage

huge, huge like ships that haven't sunk yet, but are about to, these people like figure out how to keep them from sinking. Oh, right. And even in that case, like they'll have some, some guy fly with them and build a computer 3D model on the, on the fly. I think everyone's like, yeah, playing with 3D models. Right. Exactly.

You know, but so I'm sure if they're doing that to like salvage tankers, they're doing it for like demolition too. Yeah. You know, you want to build a model. For no other reason than as children, we all love to build and destroy models. I get depressed when they're next, watch. So like we said, we're cover implosions in a second. If you don't have to implode and you can just knock this thing over in an empty parking

lot, you're going to do it kind of like you would a tree. You're going to, if it's, you want it to fall north, you're going to weaken it and blast it on the north side. And sometimes you might even have cables pulling it that way, just like you would that oak tree in your courtyard. Pretty basic stuff. If there is a bunch of junk around there that you have to protect and you need it to fall on its own footprint, then you're going to have to go the implosion route, which is

kind of cool. I think everyone likes watching these videos. Yeah. Oh yeah. That's a really fun way to spend the day. Yeah. And there are enthusiasts even, as we learned in this article, that get a little too close sometimes to see these things in person.

Right. Like building implosions are like the McRib of the demolition world. Like it's got groupies and like people go around the country. It doesn't happen that often. Right. You got to take it while it's there. Yeah. And it could kill you.

Yeah, so if you're imploding, they set these blasters and they look at the building basically as a series of towers instead of a one building. And what I gather from this is that each tower, quote unquote, is like a support structure. Is that right? Yeah. Like if you're looking at just like a rectangular building, I would guess you'd probably break it up into four quadrants and then go after the support structures in each quadrant. Right.

And then the aim is to bring them all down toward the center. Right. So like you said, if you wanted to bring a building down to the north, you'd put some blasts, some charges on the north side to weaken it. Well, if you had four quadrants that you were trying to bring down toward the center, you would weaken the side closest to the quadrant and then have them all fall in toward the center and then collapse the building downward. Right.

And then the solution is to actually weaken the center of the building. Right. And that would cause everything to fall inward as well. Yeah. But if you broke it into quadrants and then collapse everything toward the center, you would want to time it because you don't want everything just collapsing toward the middle and just holding one another up. True.

You know? Yeah, that would stop it. That's the blaster's worst nightmare. Then you have the Transamerica building. Oh yeah, exactly. Isn't that triangular? Yeah. Yeah.

So let's say, for example, you have a 20-story building. You're not just going to set charges all on the first floor and hope that gravity does its work. You're going to set charges on that first floor and then maybe some on the 12th floor and then maybe some on the 15th or 16th floor. Yeah. And typically, just a couple or just blowing up the first and second floor and then adding just a little bit of gravity will demolish the whole building.

But you're doing the 12th and say the 15th floor, too, to kind of break up the material that's coming down the rubble to make cleanup a little easier. Right. Because you watch the video on YouTube and it takes five seconds and then you click on, you know, a guy gets kicked in the groin or sports bloopers next and then you don't think about the fact that, yeah, a guy's got to clean this stuff up. Right, exactly. You want small pieces is my long-winded way of saying that.

Sure. And the blaster is like, hey, I put some charges on floors 12 and 15. You can thank me later in the cleanup gusses. Thanks. And the blaster, I told you, thank me later. He says, can I, I'll trade you an apple for that tuna sandwich. He's like, you kidding me? He's my wife's tuna.

Yeah. Give me the apple and the banana and that cookie. And the other third one comes up and he's like, hey, you got the Mott's. Remember those ads? No. You remember like a little kid at Mott's Apple Sock? Like the little single serve ones. There's a kid who looked like his name should be Spike or something and be like, hey, you

got the Mott's. It was a really dumb ad campaign. It was like a bully. Yeah. He looked like a bully, but I don't think he was actually supposed to be a bully. Weird casting decision. Yeah. Man, I didn't realize I was walking around with that one in my head.

Yeah, I had no idea. I thought you were about to say, and that kid grew up to be Shia LaBeouf. A day of travel brings a basket full of learning in Mississippi with family friendly places like the Mississippi Aquarium, the Hattiesburg Zoo and Tupelo Buffalo Park. Explore today at visitmississipi.org slash family fun, Mississippi Wanderers Welcome. The war on drugs impacts everyone, whether or not you take drugs. America's public enemy number one is drug abuse. This podcast is going to show you the truth behind the war on drugs.

They told me that I would be charged for conspiracy to distribute 2,200 pounds of marijuana. Yeah, and they can do that without any drugs on the table. Without any drugs, of course, yes, they can do that and I'm the prime example of that. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The property is guilty. Exactly. And it starts as guilty.

It starts as guilty. The cops. Are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jail. Jack-O-Move or being robbed, they call civil answer for it. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

Okay where were we? Okay. Was that a Paul Harvey reference? No, no, I don't think so. So they've got their plan in place, the detonators, the Splastin company has the plan in place and now they have to actually prep the building. Yes. First step in prep is...

They wash it. Well, no, they don't wash it. They survey the site, they walk through the building several times because you don't want to just make a cursory glance, you want to do your due diligence, you need to clean everything out of there. Right, even before that some crew has come through and gotten all the drywall and all that stuff out. Yeah, like everything.

You want it as empty as possible. Take out any non-load bearing walls. You want to make it easier to tumble this thing. Sometimes they'll even cut into some of the support structures to give it a bit of a head start. Hit it with sledgehammers? Sure. Yeah.

Release a little pin-up frustration, you know? Exactly. So then the blasting crew comes through and is making note of all this stuff. That's right. Because they've already looked at the blueprints but blueprints are...those are just pictures for college boys. You want to get in there and really see what's going on. First hand.

Yeah, exactly. Because the blueprint...I mean, you know, there could be derivations. You never know. Sure. So then once you have everything cleaned out, maybe you've weakened some of the support columns with sledgehammers, it's sort of...it's not teetering, but mentally it's teetering. It's beginning to think about teetering. The building knows like, oh boy.

Time to come down. Yeah, my time is limited here. That was a counting achievement once. So then the blasters come in. They start loading these columns with explosives, dynamite, if you're using concrete, it's a good way to go. They drill these holes, they bore holes, it's really kind of rudimentary and stuff explosives into them.

Yeah, and we should say also, it's not just a guessing game in most demolitions from what we understand. They will say, I picked the support column. Maybe probably up on like the 20th floor or something like that rather than down low. And they will blast it, they'll attach some explosives to it and do like a test blast. I don't think they're trying to blow it up there, they're trying to do a small charge to see how much damage that small charge does and then they can predict how much amount of a larger charge they will need to use to blow the columns up.

Or they might blow a column, but they'll wrap it in like chain link fence and a shield to kind of keep it in place and so it doesn't go everywhere and hurt people obviously. And what they want to do is, and this is comforting to know, they want to use the minimum amount of explosives that it takes to bring this thing down. They don't just go in there willy-nilly and just say, load it up boys. They want to use the smallest amount to still get the job done. Exactly, because if they use too much then you've got a bunch of chunks flying everywhere and there's damage to surrounding buildings and people get hit in the head, it's bad news.

If you use too little, you've got that building still kind of standing and that's extremely dangerous as well because you have to bring in a crew to knock it down like you would a lower, smaller building. But it's a tall building that's just kind of half standing and it's like a Jenga tower now. Yeah, that's no good. No, that's very dangerous. So you want to use the minimum amount but the right amount.

Yeah, well that's one reason the World Trade Center was so dangerous afterward because obviously it wasn't some controlled implosion unless you're Charlie Sheen and you get on the Internet and say that it's a government conspiracy. Well he was the uncontrolled implosion himself, wasn't he? Exactly. But 9-11 was so dangerous to clean up because it wasn't done on purpose so they didn't know what was weak and what wasn't and it was pretty precarious getting in there and trying to clean the thing out.

Sure. Super dangerous work. Yeah. So, stating the obvious. Well, we've got the test blast done. Yeah. We've got them, now they're going around and they're drilling boreholes. Let's say we're doing a concrete building.

Yeah. So you've got your dynamite. Yeah. And what is dynamite? It's just basically like kind of a paper material soaked in combustible, highly explosive liquid. Yeah. Yeah.

It takes actually an explosion to explode dynamite. Yeah. So you might have a fuse. I think if you're demolishing a building in 1902, you've got a fuse going to the stick of dynamite. Yeah. But in between the fuse and the dynamite is a blasting cap, it's a small charge of explosive material that's lit by a fuse.

That's right. It's a primer charge. The point of using dynamite and why you want to use it in concrete structure column is that it expands, creates a bunch of hot gas all of a sudden. Yeah. Really quickly. And when it's doing that inside a concrete column, it explodes the concrete column into rubble.

Yeah. Now, that'll work for concrete, but you've got yourself a steel structure. You're going to have to use something else called RDX. That's right. I'm not going to say the long name. I'll try it. I want to try it. All right.

You ready? Yep. Cyclotrimethylene trinitramine. Nice. Damn. Dude. I stumbled a little bit in the middle, but I still got it done. No, that was perfect.

I mean, you look at it and it looks like the alphabet. It's such a long word. Yeah. You know? But yeah, RDX, we'll call it RDX, and that's what you want to use if you have steel supports. And if dynamite explodes at a rate of about 600 tons per square inch, RDX explodes at about 27,000 feet per second. That is like some serious stuff.

Right. And you're not exploding steel because you can't explode steel. What they're actually doing there is they are cutting through the steel, splitting it in half, thereby weakening it. Yeah. And that's like using a club or a scalpel. Yeah. Exactly.

To use either one of these though, like you said, you need a blasting cap, that primer charge, the fuse, and the fuse is just explosive junk inside of a cord. Like when you see the old-timey fuses, like a sparkler, that's explosive material just packed inside a tight cord. Right. And the whole point of a fuse is it delays the blast. So depending on how you want to sequence your blast, you're going to use varying lengths of fuses.

Again, if it's 1902. That's right. And that fuse eventually will reach the point where it sets off the primary charge and that's where the action happens. These days they use electrical detonators mainly, probably exclusively, don't you think? I would think so. And that is sort of like a fuse except it's a lead line made of electrical wire or it is electrical wire.

You've got your detonator end where the wire is surrounded by this explosive material and then that's attached directly to the primer charge and then the main explosives and they have some sort of battery device, heats up the wire, and eventually it'll get hot enough to set off that junk on the detonator end, sets off the primer charge, triggers the main show. Right. Like you know the old plunger that they use in bugs bunny cartoons to blow up stuff? You mean when the mockingbird lands on it behind Coyote's back and it slowly depresses?

Yeah. Yeah, sure. Apparently that is an electrical detonator where you would have a charge going and then you press the plunger and it would release that charge. Yeah. That's the same thing except we don't use that old-timey box and plunger any longer. But it's still the same. That's a shame.

I think that's very gratifying. Yeah, I would imagine. I think, I wonder if they have fake ones just sort of like a ribbon cutting. Like that plastic phone you like connect to your iPhone? Well that actually works though. Well I'm sure this works too. No, but if you just have a fake one you're like, the owner of the company is very old school we have to set this up for him so he can push it down.

Yeah, he loves giant scissors. Yeah. Yeah. But no, I mean like maybe there's like the little remote control is in the box and when you press the plunger down it pokes the button and the owner of the company is like, exactly, do it again. Wow, that's funny. I guess we're both three-year-olds at heart.

Yeah. Okay, so they have to control this sequence sometimes like maybe they don't want the first floor and the 12th floor going off at the same time. Maybe there's a delay. So they can actually have a delay in the fuse areas where the fuse burns slower than others. Right. Or you just, like I said, you use longer lengths of fuse, you know.

But yeah, you can put a little, you can put, say, you could charge a fuse and then add a little extra fuse between the original fuse that you just delivered the charge to and like a delay fuse and the blasting cap and then, yeah, you can time it and you want to time it. Again, you don't want everything falling down on top of itself and ending up supporting itself. Right. You want, like, columns coming down and then columns coming down all on top of each other

and they're pushing one another down. Remember in the World Trade Center episode that we did, it's called Pancaking. It's where the rubble on one floor hits the rubble on another floor with enough force that that floor comes down and does that again and again and again, yes, and it picks up speed as well. That's right. And yeah, once that happens, like, there's no going back. Yeah, and sadly, as we all saw in 9-11 and if you've ever watched the Internet videos,

it only takes a few seconds and it's done. Yeah. It's a very quick process. Apparently, people are surprised by how fast that happens. Oh, really? Yeah. Like who? People who've never watched these videos?

It says in the article that people are surprised. It's the one thing they're surprised by most is how quickly a building collapses. Show me these people. I love it when I think when people write these articles like that, they just sort of say, I was surprised. Right. So people are. People, yeah.

They do that in journalism. All right. So let's say you're going to take down a building in a neighborhood. You might want to hire a consulting firm to come in and the idea I get is that they sort of document the process, maybe work with the neighbors in a little PR sense to assure them that everything's going to be okay. Yeah. They're going to film it, of course, because you can learn a lot from watching it.

Yeah, not only. And put it on YouTube. Yeah, you can put it on YouTube, but also that's also how one of the ways you're going to figure out how to take down the building you're working on now is going back and looking at how you've taken down similar buildings. Right. So the owner would come in and say, hey, pull the bank in Houston from 88. That one was perfect.

Yeah. It looks just like this one. Yeah. So you've called in your consulting firm. They've done all their due diligence. They're working. Before things hit go time, you're going to, of course, do a really thorough check to make sure no one's in there.

You don't want to, like, and Heather's, remember that movie? Heather's. There's a riveting Magnum PI episode where Magnum and Higgins are in, not only in a building that's about to be demolished, trapped in an elevator in a building that's about to be... Really? Oh, it was almost unwatchable. It was so tense.

I don't remember that one. Yeah. In Heather's, I think the dad was an implosion expert and killed the mother that way, right? I don't remember that. Yeah, because he said something about Christian Slater's sense of, yeah, mom saw mom in the window or something. Oh, yeah. That's right.

Yeah. Yeah. I think the mom killer self was the implication. Oh, by being in there. Yeah. I love my dad gay son. Yeah, those. Man, that's a good movie.

That's a great line. Classic. So they've calculated the perimeter, obviously, as well, not only going to check inside the building. You're also going to make sure that you have a safety zone around the thing where no one's allowed. Christian enthusiasts like to sneak a little closer. I know.

Crazy, crazy. Chuck's shaking his head and dismay right now. Why? Do you have a computer? Do you have access to the Internet? I guess there's nothing like seeing it in person, maybe. Sure. Oh, yeah.

I can understand people who go around and check that out. But to get closer, to get within the blast zone, which has been carefully calculated by the blasting company. Yeah. They have said, this is a dangerous area. Yeah. This is a safe area. You can see it from the safe area, so just stay in the safe area.

So what you want is a very controlled situation. You don't want, like we said, overblasting. You don't want underblasting. You want to do it just right. The impression I get is 99 times out of 100. It goes according to Hoyl and it's just, you know, it works out great. No one gets hurt. You might blast out a few windows of businesses around there.

Apparently, it's to be expected. Yeah. Of course, with this kind of stuff, if you're close enough to it. So wait a minute. Now there's been a 10-minute siren, a 5-minute siren. Yeah. The air is totally still. It's a crisp day.

The sky is blue. Maybe a bird flies by. Yeah. You hire Michael Buffer to do your 10, 9, 8 countdown. Who's that? He's the, uh... Let's get ready to rumble. Oh, that guy.

Yeah. You know how much money he gets paid for doing that? I imagine a lot. So you get the 1-minute siren and then the countdown. That's right. If you're using an electrical detonator, your guy has had his finger or her finger on the charge button. And it's very much like charging a camera, the camera flash.

Yeah. You can't just pop one off to the other. You just got to build up that charge. Right, exactly. Anybody who's seen Silence of the Lambs at the end when Jody Foster is being approached by Buffalo Bill. One of the greatest. Yeah.

But remember that high-pitched sound? Oh, yeah. That's the camera flash charging again. That's what you're doing with the electrical detonator. He's got the finger on the charge. And then they get to 1 and you press fire and the electrical charge is released and the building goes kaboom! That's right.

Have you ever played the camera flash game? No. I need to say this because it's really one of the more fun things you can do. And I don't think it can hurt you. I'm going to look this up after. Uh-oh. I think it's very safe. Go, if you have an old-fashioned camera flash that you can charge and pop off like that,

get into a pitch black room with your buddy. Find where your faces are, so you're a couple of feet apart like we are, and point the flash toward your own face. Have them looking at you and you pop it off and immediately you get this perfect black and white image, registers with your brain. And you can see it. It's like right in front of you and it's really, really cool and creepy. My brother and I used to do it all the time.

It's a lot of fun. So you get a perfect image of the other person's face? Yeah, like they're pointing it, like I would point it at my face. You're looking at me when the complete dark and I pop the thing off and then you see this weird, it's almost like a lithograph of my face. It's very, very cool. Did you know that if you- Good clean fun.

If you write that ultimately damages your eyes permanently. I don't think so. If you take a flashlight and you look, like you hold the flashlight up to your face with the beam pointing away from you and you look right over the top of it, like right over your knuckles and just basically down the beam and just shine it around the ground, you can see spider's eyes. I'm not sure what that means. You can see the eyes of little spiders that you could never see in the dark, but you can

see their eyes reflecting back at you. It's really neat and unnerving. But you all of a sudden start to grasp just how many spiders there are around you at all times. So just like on your kitchen floor? Yeah, or outside's better. Wow. Yeah.

I mean, you just take a flashlight and hold it up to your face and just look down the barrel of the flashlight onto the ground. Between that and just shining a flashlight on the ground. The angle of reflection, it doesn't work. You have to look right, and I'm not, this isn't like an old, this isn't snipe hunting or anything. It's like, you just look down the barrel of the flashlight and check out the little spider's eyes looking back.

Is it terrifying? It is. It's a little bit. It's surprising. It's not like that, but it goes from not seeing anything to all of a sudden you realize, okay, there's a spider, oh look, there's another spider, and I didn't even realize that I could do this. It's neat.

I'm going to try that tonight. And they're green and tiny too. All the ones I've ever seen were little green eyes. Totally trying that tonight. Okay. And if I'm telling you, if it doesn't work, don't be like, Josh got me, like just keep trying and adjust the angle or something. You'll see it.

Okay. Boy, that was a long, sorry about that. So we've detonated. You've detonated. The building has imploded. It's going to send a huge dust cloud up, as you've seen on YouTube, as we've said 2,000 times. And it may be a bit of a pain for the neighbors, but they will argue, the blaster guys will

argue that it beats like a month of slow demolition. Right. Yeah. Like this cloud will dissipate pretty soon, and then it's gone forever. Yeah. Apparently if you have allergies in the area, they say, just go away for the day. And when you come back, it'll probably be fine. So Josh, I want to be a blaster.

Can I go to Blast University? Yes. It's, uh, it's. Go Blasters. Right. It's an adjunct of Brown University. Uh-huh. And, uh, you just go and roll there, they'll let anybody in, it's free, and, uh, you'll

be a blaster the day you get out after two weeks of training. Bam. Not true. There is no such program at all, no organized school. The best way to get involved in this business is to get a job, um, probably sweeping up, I would imagine at first for one of these companies and work your way to the top. And, um, like we said, there's only about 20 well-established ones in the world or in the United States, probably in the world.

Yeah. And, uh, you know, work your way up if you're into it. And maybe one day you can start Josh and Chuck demolition LLC. Maybe. But yeah, you probably do better to try and warm your way through the company. Plus, you'll also owe us royalties if you name your company, Josh and Chuck demolition LLC. That's right.

Uh, okay. Well, I guess it's in potions, right? I got nothing else. We nailed that one, didn't we? I think so. I hope you guys didn't skip this. Obviously you didn't. If you're hearing me say this right now, and if not, then they never knew.

Yeah. But good for you for, for getting into it because it's pretty neat stuff. I agree. Uh, if you want to learn more about building implosions, you can type building implosions in the search bar at howstuffworks.com. Uh, that means, of course, it's time for message break for people who love food. There's no place on earth quite like Mississippi where a melting pot of culinary talent blends the flavors of yesterday and today, sweet, savory, spicy and smoky flavors that'll satisfy

your spirits wherever you choose to wander. On your next dining adventure at visitmississipi.org slash dining, Mississippi Wanderers Welcome. The war on drugs impacts everyone. Whether or not you take drugs, America's public enemy number one is drug abuse. This podcast is going to show you the truth behind the war on drugs. They told me that I would be charged for conspiracy to distribute, uh, 2,200 pounds of marijuana. Yeah.

And they can do that without any drugs on the table. Without any drugs. Of course, yes, they can do that, and I'm a prime example of that. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss y'all. The property is guilty. Exactly. And it starts as guilty.

It starts as guilty. The cops. Are they just, like, looting? Are they just, like, pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call, like, what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid for it. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever

you get your podcasts. Listener mail, please. Listener mail time. Okay. Uh, I'm going to call this, um, leaching. Still happens. Really? Yeah.

Uh-uh. So this is from, uh, Annie, this husband. Leaches? He works for the Mayo Clinic. Uh, this is legit. Well, what does he do for the Mayo Clinic? He sneaks leaches into people's beds. Uh, hey guys, just listen to the ECT podcast.

At the end, you guess what would be the next archaic medical procedure to make a comeback. And you specifically mentioned leaching. News for you. Leaching is still totally happening. Don't call it comeback. My husband is an, uh, oh boy, what is he in? Oto-er-el. Oh, what?

Oto-laren-jala-jala-jist. Nice. Oto-laren-jala-jist. Never heard of that. He does a surgery on patients that need facial tumors removed. Huh. I would call myself a facial tumor remover. LLC.

You do a painus cap on you. That's right. Uh, and they take tissue from other places on the body to repair the site, and if the flap doesn't have good circulation after the repair, they will stick leaches on it to get the blood flowing. Oh, neat. Um, the medical grade leaches are huge and greenish, and they fall off when they're full, so the nurses have to keep an eye on them in the hospital.

Isn't that crazy? I had no idea that that went on, honestly. So that's still going on, and she ends by saying, so gross. Leaches and more love Annie. Huh. That was a great listener mail. Yeah, short and sweet. And who knew?

Yeah. Good one, Annie. Way to go. If we have mentioned something that we thought was done, but it's still going on, we want to hear about that. We want to know what's going on, basically. So tweet to us at S-Y-S-K podcast, or go on to facebook.com slash stuff you should know and tell us what's going on, or send us an email with the subject line, what's going

on. Now with a question mark, because they'd be asking us what's going on, and we want to know what's going on. Right. So text that email to stuffpodcast at discovery.com, or you can find out what's going on at stuff you should know.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com. Hey, Netflix streams, TV shows, and movies directly to your TV, computer, wireless device,

or game console. You can get a 30-day free trial membership. Go to www.netflix.com slash stuff and sign up now. A day of travel brings a basket full of learning in Mississippi, with family-friendly places like the Mississippi Aquarium, the Hattiesburg Zoo, and Tupelo Buffalo Park. Explore today at visitmississipi.org slash family fun. Mississippi, Wanderers, welcome. The War on Drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff,

stuff that'll piss you off. The cops. Are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call, like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid. Be sure to listen to The War on Drugs on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever

you get your podcasts.