Stuff You Should Know - How Pepper Spray Works

Episode Date: December 20, 2011

Lt. John Pike of the Davis, Calif., police department brought the wrath of the Internet on himself when he casually doused peaceful protestors with pepper spray. Find out what was in the can in this eye-watering episode of Stuff You Should Know. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Flooring contractors agree. When looking for the best to care for hardwood floors, use Bona Hardwood Floor Cleaner. The residue-free, fast drying solution is specially designed for hardwood floors, delivering the safe and effective clean you trust. Bona Hardwood Floor Cleaner is available at most retailers where floor cleaning products are sold and on Amazon. Also available for your other hard surface floors like Stone, Tile, Laminate, Vinyl, and LVT. For cleaning tips and exclusive offers, visit Bona.com slash Bona Clean. 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 work. Be sure to listen to The War on Drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready, are you? Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. Don't spray me, bro. Yeah, I forgot about that guy. Don't taze me, bro. Florida. I know. Man, leave it to a gator. Who was it that was speaking at that? I don't remember. Was it Al Gore?

I don't remember. It was a politician. I think it was Al Gore. Kids got rowdy, and they tased him. Don't taze me, bro. Yeah, that was fun. That was a fun meme for a little while. So speaking of memes, Chuck, crazy that you brought that up. Yes. Have you seen the casual pepper spray cop meme? Yeah, I have seen it. I think that what this, this University of California, Davis Cop, who famously sprayed these very docile, peaceful students, it was awful to watch, but this meme is hysterical, I think. Yeah, well, they keep taking them and inserting them into, like, famous pictures, photographs, and paintings, and things like that. My favorite one I've seen so far is he's spraying Julie Andrews in the field for sound and music. Yeah, I saw that one.

There's a whole tumbler. I think it's just pepper spray cop is what it's called. It's already, by the time this comes out, that will already be old, I think. I think it's pretty much there now. Yeah. I had a pretty short run, but it's a pretty good example of how, you know, if you do something in the age of the internet that the general populace doesn't like, they're going to get you for it. And they got this guy, Lieutenant John Pike, of the Davis Police Department, right? Yeah. And apparently Anonymous published his, like, home address, his cell phone number, his email address, all this stuff. That's not cool. I thought that the home address is maybe a bit too far. Yeah.

But anyway, this guy, this pepper spray cop, just everything about it has been extremely controversial. Yeah. And actually, the guy who helped weaponize pepper spray, the FBI, Comron Logeman, he basically said, quote, I have never seen such an inappropriate and improper use of chemical agents. Basically, the ACLU is saying like, you can't do this, dude. Like you can't just pepper spray people who are sitting quietly and peacefully and non-threateningly. It's supposed to be as a, you know, for cops, it's supposed to be if someone is threatening me physically or resisting arrest in some way physically. Right. And in that sense, pepper spray is extremely effective. One of the reasons why is it doesn't trigger your, it doesn't depend

on a sensation of pain. It circumvents your pain center and just elicits a completely physical, non-cerebral response. So whether you're on PCP or totally drunk or psychotic or whatever the case may be, and there's, you're in some sort of state where you can't experience pain, this stuff is still going to incapacitate you. If you can experience pain, it's going to incapacitate you and it's going to be extremely painful. I think what was so startling about Pike was that, how casual it was in the video, it looked like he was spraying, you know, weed, be gone on his yard. Yeah. Well, I think that's what got everybody. Yeah. That and the fact that everybody was just sitting docile and quietly, you know. It was horrifying. Did you see what

Megan Kelly said on Fox News? Yes, I did. She dismissed pepper spray after this incident as quote, a food product, essentially. This is right in some ways. I mean, it's definitely derived from food. You can say that pepper spray is a natural, it's made from natural ingredients. I'd like to see her get sprayed in the face and see if she still said that. It's a food product. I would, I would take a McDonald's cheeseburger spray to the face any day of the week. Oh yeah. Pepper spray, not so much. You want to talk about this? This is one of our rare topical, timely, timely topical ones. Well, yeah, because it's being used all over the place. I mean, UC Davis got such a lot of coverage because it was so casual and heinous,

but they're using pepper spray all over the place with this Occupy Wall Street movement. All over the place. And the problem is, is you're not supposed to be doing that, even though it is considered a non-lethal weapon, even though it supposedly wears off after four to six hours, you're not supposed to spray peaceful demonstrators who are exercising their second amendment, first amendment right to assemble. Second or first? It's all of them. So, all right, let's talk about pepper spray. We, we know the active ingredient pepper spray because it's also one of the active ingredients in peppers, chili peppers, and cayenne. It's a oleoresin capsicum or OC, as they like to call it. Yeah. You know, I wrote the article on bear

spray on the site. Oh, you did? Is this the same stuff? Same stuff. Basically, it just shoots farther for obvious reasons because you'd want to stop a bear 30 feet away and not five feet away. Right. But the OC is a natural oil found in a lot of peppers, a lot of different types of peppers, and OC has a compound called capsaicin. And that is what is responsible for that burning sensation, even though it's colorless, odorless, flavorless. That's the burn you're going to feel when that seed, actually the pepper itself, but especially the seed, it's your tongue. It is the seed, isn't it? Yeah. And capsaicin itself is colorless and odorless and flavorless, but it's extremely potent. Very. So one milligram of pure capsaicin can cause blistering on your skin.

That's substantial. That's pretty serious stuff. Yeah. So it's a natural compound. It's also a blistering agent. You know, I think people are like people like Megan Kelly who say, well, it's just a food product. It's natural. Right. It can still cause blisters on your skin. So with pepper spray, basically pepper spray is capsaicin mixed with say water or oil. Well, OC is oil already. Okay. But it can also be mixed with an oil-based or water-based solution. Yeah. Then you put it in a canister with a propellant that helps shoot it. Yep. And you aerosolize the whole thing. You pressurize it. Is that a word? It is now. I like it. You pressurize it. So then when you press a button and everything's depressurized, it goes shooting out and sticks to

the face of some protester or a man on PCP. Or in the case of the article I sent you from the New York Times, it had a lovely picture of an 84-year-old woman at Occupy Wall Street that was pepper sprayed in the face. Yeah. And it looked pretty awful. I can't remember her name, but she's like a lifelong protester and lifelong activist. Really? And yeah, she got sprayed in Seattle, right? I bet she's had it more than once then. Yeah. She's like, ah, take more than pepper spray to stop me. So there's three basic patterns that you can spray this liquid pepper out of your little dispenser. It can be the stream and chances are if you have one of the little tiny caps, not capsule size, but like a little canister in your purse, then it's probably

going to be the little stream that you see coming out. Yeah. Close range, right in the eyes is where you want to put it. But I mean, it packs a punch. Oh yeah. Because it's super concentrated. Yeah, big time. It's just tough to hit your target. Yeah. So that's just like right up on top of you. Right. The mist is fine, you know, mist. Obviously liquid is sprayed out and it's going to cover a larger area, make it much easier to hit your target. And then the fog is similar to a mist, but it's even wider. And it looks like pike was using like the hip from the hip canister. A big one. A big one, mist and or fog. And there's also another one that's not mentioned. There's foam and foam has the. What's the deal there? Foam has the added advantage of not blowing back

in your face, which is a kind of a problem. If you ever are spraying somebody with pepper spray, like an assailant, just know where the wind is and get the upwind. Do you watch cops? Uh, no, I watch it occasionally for fun. I think I mentioned that before because it makes me feel better about myself. Yeah, you have. I saw one the other day with this guy, like he wouldn't come out of this really dense shrub. And so the cops went in there after him and then another one like sprayed the heavy fog one and all these cops came out and they were like, we got him, we got him, but they couldn't see anything. It's like, man, you guys did that in the wrong order, my friend. Right. And it wasn't funny. Of course, I don't want to see cops pepper spray. So I'm not making

fun of that, but it was pretty funny at the time. So you're going to get about one to 60 bursts in your little thing in your purse. It's about four and a half inches long. Yeah, if you have the little personal dispenser. Yes, which basically is just the canister, the trigger button. And if you're smart, you bought the kind that has a safety mechanism. Yeah, you don't want that going off in your purse. No, you don't. And actually a pretty good thing to do is to look to the left or the right of the pepper spray you're buying at the hardware store and get the medicated wipes specially formulated for treating pepper spray. How did they sell those right next to them? They tend to, yes. Nice. So if you have some in your purse and you're

carrying that, you probably want to keep these medicated wipes to just in case of an accident. Because that would stink. Yes. 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 2200 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 jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. A new season of the travel podcast that the New York Times, the Economist and the Atlantic named best of the year. In each episode of the new season, I'll share an audio postcard from where I've been, talk to a travel writer about their work and invite a famous frequent flyer to come by and answer your travel questions. If I'm sitting in the seat and the person beside me

is acting our rate, I'm going to call a flight attendant before I stick my size 13 foot up there out of your ass. Ah, the joys of air travel. Listen to not lost on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. I saw the history of pepper spray, not the spray, but people have actually been using hot peppers as defense and as torture devices for like thousands and thousands of years. Yeah. And apparently the Japanese geisha would stick these peppers in there like slice them open, stick them in their kimonos. Yeah. So if any guy got a little too rough, just put it in his fat face. Put it in his fat face. Yeah. That would do it. And the Maya actually had, they were well

aware and well versed with hot peppers living in Central America. Of course. And so anytime they were in a fight or a battle, they would light a bunch of them on fire and the smoke would carry to the other army and make them die. Never thought about that. Make them want to die. Do you cook with peppers? Sometimes I actually made a New Year's resolution this year that I'm going to be able to eat hotter stuff in 2012 because I'm a total wuss. I'm a pretty big wuss myself. I've gotten better at it over the years. Yeah. But like, yeah, a jalapeno can take me out. Yeah. But some of that stuff is so hot. It's like, it's not like a pleasurable eating experience any longer. Yeah. For me at least. No. There's also a lot of people who feel the exact opposite.

For some reason, they really like peppers. Like there's this place in San Antonio called Chunky Burger, I believe. I like it already. They have a, they have a burger with, it's called the Four Horsemen and you have to like pre-order it. Uh-huh. And it has habanero. It has three kinds of peppers that you've heard of. And then it has a fourth pepper called the Ghost Pepper. Yeah. The Ghost Pepper is called Boot Jalokia. Yeah. It's from Northern India, Bangladesh area. And it is the world's hottest pepper, hottest natural pepper. And there's a video, there's plenty of videos actually on YouTube of people eating these things. And then like the reaction that lasts an hour, like just agony for an hour. But in this cheeseburger, it has the Ghost Pepper. Wow. And

when they've made it before, people who are not eating the Ghost Burger, but just happen to be in the restaurant when this thing was being prepared, have had to be carted off in ambulances before because they were in the same building as the stuff when it was seared. The Ghost Chili made an appearance on Top Chef last week actually. Did it really? Yeah, they're doing Texas this year. And so they had, one of the challenges was they had all these peppers laid out and they had their Schofield heat units, which we'll talk about here in a second, as to how hot they were. And you got to choose your pepper and each one had a different amount of money attached to it that you would win if you won the challenge. And only one dude attempted to cook with this,

with the Ghost Pepper. And he actually won the challenge. Did it really? Yep. Nice. But I got one for you. And I guess it's not natural, but the Guinness record is the Scorpion, the Trinidad Scorpion, specifically the Scorpion Butch T, named for Butch Taylor. So I guess this guy, this hot sauce guy has made his own pepper. Wow. And it registers 1.4 million on the Schofield. He's like a Luther Burbank chart. And to put that in the comparison, if you've ever had a habanero, which is generally known as really hot, that's only 350,000. Right. So that's crazy. It Ghost Chili is about a million. Yeah. And this Trinidad Scorpion is 1.4. And then pepper spray is, that is so hot, man. This is so scary. Yeah. Pepper spray is rated

between 500,000 and 5 million Schofield units. So this Ghost Pepper or the Scorpion pepper gets up to 1.5 million. There's pepper spray out there that's up to 5 million Schofield heat units. And Schofield heat units are named after an American chemist from like the 1910s named Wilbur Schofield. And he came up with a very ingenious idea of how to classify the heat associated with a pepper capsaicin. He diluted it in sugar syrup and then would feed it to human test subjects. And the Schofield heat unit, say like 9,000 or 500,000, that's the number of times it has to be diluted before it becomes undetectable by humans. That's right. And that's the old school method. And it worked pretty well, but it is subjective because it's going by a single person's

taste buds. And although I did see when he tested them, they could only taste one. And that was it. So he didn't say like, try these eight peppers. Let's try this pepper 200,000 times. It was like one pepper per session. Nowadays, they have something a little more advanced that's a little more accurate within 5%. And it's called high performance liquid chromatography. And I'm not exactly sure how that works, but it works well. Well, it's not subjective, I imagine. Yeah. And like I said, it's within 5% so they can tell. And I don't know how they, if they still display it in Schofield units or not. I think they do. Do they? And they basically, they take like the capsaicin or they take a pepper and just lay it on like a protozoa or an amoeba and see how long it takes to

dissolve it. Yeah. That's not subjective. When I cook with peppers, I dc'd and I wear gloves and a painting respirator. Very smart. Because I inhale that stuff and these aren't even the super hot ones. Yeah. I just can't take it, man. Or if I rub my eyes or my nose or any part of your body, that's bad. Because what peppers do with this peppers, the capsaicin in a pepper infiltrates your mucous membranes, especially effectively. And especially the mucous membranes that are sensitive to heat or cold. So your nose, your throat, your mouth, your eyes. And this after you cut it open. Or after you weaponize it. Yeah. But if you just take like a jalapeno and rub it on your skin, you're not going to get much of a reaction. No. No. Because like you said, the most is found in the

seeds or at the very least inside. But like we said, the pepper spray, weaponized pepper spray with a school field heat unit of between 500,000 and 5 million, if sprayed into these mucous membranes of your area, it's going to have a predictable effect on you. And it's going to be horrific and terrible for a while for you. Yes. What it's going to do, you're going to feel burning sensation in your, in your face, your eyes, your nose, in your mouth, maybe even your throat. That's going to last anywhere from 45 minutes to an hour. Your eyes are going to become really irritated. They might swell shut, might temporarily blind you, which is a great thing if you're being attacked or if a cop is being assaulted.

Because it's meant to disable the person like took me a second. That was weird syntax. Was it? Yeah. What you want to do, you're trying to disable someone long enough to either arrest them or to get the heck out of there if you're just being assaulted on the street. And I have a canister of pepper spray and it says it's not immediate. In this article, it says the effects are immediate. It says the effects are not immediate. So spray and run and make an X at the eyes. Oh, really? Yeah. I'd make a Zoro Z. Yeah. That'd be my mark. I'd just like be like, yeah, do you carry this around? Canister and run. Is this in your car? Yeah. Really? Interesting. Yeah, don't mess with me, dude. If you see me in the Volvo, you don't want to mess

with me. I got one of those collapsible batons. Do you really? Yeah. Man, those are scary. I don't keep it in my car though. You can brain somebody with that. I know. I keep it by my bed though. That's good thinking. Take out the knee. I like the pepper spray better though. I should get some of that. Hey, totally should. I mean, I buy it for Emily, of course. What are you trying to say? Hey. If I'm not carrying a clasp of baton, I'm less than a man to you. No. I think you should get a baseball bat with nails driven through the end of it, like a skate in New York. All right. You're not less than a man if you use pepper spray.

I know. I'm very comfortable with myself and my masculinity. Good. Your throat, Josh might even swell shut. It's not going to choke you to death. It depends. Well, it could, I guess, huh? No, yeah. And if you're allergic to anything in there, if you got like heart trouble, that's how it can choke you to death. It could be fatal. Yeah. There's plenty of instances of people who are allergic to capsaicin being sprayed with pepper spray and going into anaphylaxis, which is basically a whole body allergic reaction. Yeah. And one of the key stars of this reaction is that your airways close and you die. You suffocate. Yeah. It says here, though, that they've never proven that that was the sole cause

of death in any case. It's absolutely untrue. Is that? Yeah. That's what I thought. Yeah. They've proven that, right? Yeah. People with asthma are particularly plagued when they are sprayed with pepper spray. Sure. But the ACLU did just this one study of California in 1992, I believe is 92. It became legal for cops to use pepper spray. And then in 94 in California, then in 94, it became legal for the general public to carry it. So the ACLU did this study of pepper spray in California from 1993 to 1995 among cops and found that they were cops were using it statewide, basically are spraying people 24 times a day during this period all over the whole state. They found that one out of about 600

sprays resulted in the death of the person. Wow. From sprays. Right. And about 26 people total during that time died from being pepper sprayed. Really? Yeah. So potentially lethal. Well, yeah, definitely. The thing is for the average person though, no, your nose is going to burn, your eyes are going to burn, you're going to become temporarily blind, like you said. Your throat will swell some, so it will be kind of difficult to breathe, but that might last five to 15 minutes. The problem with pepper spray, other than the fact that it's just being used like it's flour lately, is that there are people out there who can die from its use and you don't know who's allergic to capsaicin. They might not even know. Like an 84 year woman in Seattle,

for instance. A great example. If she hadn't built up her hardcore immunity to it over the years of protesting, she might have died. She would have been in trouble. So let's say you get sprayed and we're not giving advice to criminals here, but let's say you're a good guy and you're peacefully sitting on the sidewalk and a cop comes by and sprays you in the face. It's oil, you got to remember, so while it may feel great to splash your face with water for a minute, it's not going to do anything in the long run because oil and water don't mix, my man. Why? Well, because one is a polar molecule, one is made of polar molecules and one is made of non-polar. So water is polar, meaning that, say, if you're looking at a water molecule, on one side there's going to be some

electrons and on one side there's going to be protons, positive and negative. Oils are non-polar, meaning their electrons are distributed evenly all around, so that's why they don't mix, which is like you said, water's going to feel good for a second, but it's not going to do anything to get the oil in the oily capsaicin off of your face. Which is what you want to do. You don't want to touch the area on your face where you've been sprayed because it's going to get all over your hands. Except, Chuck, except to get your, if you're wearing contacts, just jam your fingers into your eyes and get those out as fast as you can and just throw them away. Well, I don't imagine you wouldn't want to reuse those. No, but in this one survival guide, I saw it basically said,

don't keep them. I never thought about that. I guess if you wear glasses, you might be at an advantage if you had on your sunnies. Especially if you wear like wrap around Oakleys or something, that you wear on the back of your neck indoors and like restaurants or things. So what you're saying is, if you're a tremendous cheeseball, then you're fine. But you're probably the one spraying the protesters if you wear Oakleys like that is the thing. There's some dudes that they're like, what? What? It says in here to blink rapidly. I think you'd probably have no choice but to do that. But let's say you're not and you're just going with your eyes open. Blink rapidly because you want to tear up as fast as possible. Help flush whatever's in there out.

I use hand soap or no tear shampoo, dish soap, any kind of soap. I saw a ratio of 25% dawn, 75% water is a good way to get the oil off of your face. I would just squirt dawn all over my face. I wouldn't be like measuring anything. And like you said, medical wipes, those are what the EMTs carry when the cops spray the people and they're like, I can't see. Right. So if you got these wipes, it's a good idea. Yeah. And if you're going to go out and buy pepper spray for use as self defense or for fun, you, you are going to want to be familiar with the laws of your state and or country. Yeah, it varies a lot. Yeah. Well, like if you live in Canada and Belgium, tough luck for you. You can't own pepper spray unless you're a member of law enforcement or the

military. Canadians are so peaceful though. They really are. You know, they don't need pepper spray. The war on drugs impacts everyone whether or not you take 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 2200 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 you off. The property is guilty. Exactly. And it starts as guilty. It starts as guilty 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 Podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. Who do we become when we travel? I have never flown without wearing a suit until I refuse to do it. Who are we allowed to be? Those blue American passports as powerful as they are, it doesn't work the same for everyone. And where is everybody going? I do love to sit near the ocean and drink. Join me, Brendan Francis Nunnam for Not Lost Chat, a new season of the travel podcast that The New York Times, The Economist and The Atlantic named best of the year. In each episode of the new season,

I'll share an audio postcard from where I've been, talk to a travel writer about their work, and invite a famous frequent flyer to come by and answer your travel questions. If I'm sitting in the seat and the person beside me is acting irate, I'm going to call a flight attendant before I stick my size 13 foot up their tiny ass. Ah, the joys of air travel. Listen to Not Lost on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. All right. Stay away from the Belgian, so I'm telling you. Well, it depends. Are you talking about the Flanders side or the French side? Belgium's actually very nice. I've been there. Really? Yeah. My uncle lives there. Gotcha. So when I travel to Europe, I stayed with him for a

couple of days. It's very nice. Gotcha. Hong Kong, you need a permit. Different states have different laws on like how big of a canister you can use, whether or not you can carry it in yourself. How old do you have to be? How old do you have to be? What percentage? Of what? OC? Yeah. Of capsaicin? Yeah. So I imagine if they sell it in your state, though, it would comply, right? Oh, yeah. Not necessarily. Most likely. But check into it. Get on the web and look at your local government or law enforcement or just ask a cop. Yeah. And then you want to replace it every three years? Yeah, mine's updated, actually. You want to replace it. If you love your wife, Chuck, you want to go replace that for Emily. Yeah, that would be bad

if she ex someone's face and they were like, what? Nothing but aerosol. You got me wet. Yeah. No, I'm really mad. And what kind of prices are we talking? I don't know. $7, $20. If you have to ask, you know what I mean? Yeah. Or if $20 is too much for you to spend on your personal protection, then good luck. Right. But hey, in this economy, most of the 99% can't afford good tear gas. In that case, then do like the geisha did and go just purchase a ghost chili and keep it in your pocket. Yeah. By the way, the difference between tear gas and pepper spray, I will explain right here. Let's see. Let's hear it. Tear gas is man made chemicals. Pepper spray is derived from peppers. Boom. Yeah. That's it. And we explain why oil and water don't mix. So this was, this is a bonus.

There you have it. Bonus cast. So if you want to know more about pepper spray, if you want to know more about protests, riots, what have you, we got all this stuff on the site. Still riots. Yeah. Great one, Chuck. Good one. Yeah. You can just type any of those words in the handy search bar at howstuffworks.com and that will bring up some really great content, including this article, how pepper spray works. And, and that's it. It's time for listener man. Surprise, surprise. Hold your horses, Joshua. Oh, okay. They're hold. We have to talk about our contest. They have marketing has cooked up a contest for us. If you want to come here and meet us and dine with us, you know, lunch with us. Yeah, you can do that. Yeah. Not only you get a

trip to our fair city of Atlanta, that's right. You get transportation to and from the airport to a hotel that you get to stay at for two nights. That's right. I don't think it's a flea bag either. No, you get a tour of the office. You get to hang out with us for lunch that day. That should take about 20 minutes, right? We're going to take you out. That's included, right? One of us is going to put it on our card. If that's not in the rules, I'm picking up lunch. Right. Oh, wow. That's nice. And then in addition to all that, you get $100 American Express gift card. That's if you're the grand prize winner. There's also like a referral winner too, right? That's right. Here's the particulars. It runs through the end of the year. You can enter by

going to howstuffworks.com, Facebook page, not stuff you should know, howstuffworks.com. And you got to like it and then you can enter there. It's pretty obvious. You can announce the winners a week of January 1st. If you refer someone to enter and they win, then you win a Kindle, Kindle Fire. Right. And it's really, really easy to refer. Basically, you have to go into Facebook, you fill in your first, your last name and your email address, and then you enter. You're entered into the contest and then it gives you the option if you want to like tweet it out or change it to your Facebook status message. Sure. And then if anybody clicks that link and they end up winning, then you get the Kindle. Got it? I'd rather win the Kindle

Fire. I'm totally with you than lunch with us, you kid. But anyway. So I guess best of luck to everybody, right? Best of luck. We'll see you at, I don't know, some fancy shamancy lunch place of our choosing. It'll be around here probably. Okay. Can we get back to it? I'd like to. Great. Here's the one who stopped us. We got some big feedback on the Air Force One podcast like from insiders from military dudes. I got one that I was not even allowed to read on the air because the lady, first of all, sent it from her email address from her husband because he didn't want to be associated. I said, can I read this if it's anonymous? No. Nice. So unfortunately, you can't get to that. But if you help me with those two, I will read the third. Oh, all right. Do you want

to read the third in the middle and I'll read the first and the last or what? Yes. So, Chuck, here's one from Brandon in Pittsburgh, PA. So Brandon says, I was listening to your podcasts on Air Force One and heard you guys were a bit stumped on why the 747 couldn't fly above 45,000 feet. I felt like we got that. It disintegrates totally once it reaches the ceiling. That's not true. I'll save you most of the aeronautics engineering lingo and say quite simply, the air above 45,000 feet is too thin to support the weight of the aircraft. Getting an aircraft to fly is all about moving air over the wings. A 747 is not capable of going fast enough through the thin air to create enough lift. So to answer your question, the 747 will not fall apart or lose its

life support capabilities, oxygen. It simply just can't go any higher than that. Pretty cool. Who's that? That was Brandon in Pittsburgh. Thanks, Brandon. All right. This one is unknown. I don't know if it was intentionally unknown or not. I can't remember. But if you wrote this email, thank you. And I'm sorry. That didn't get your name. Guys, I used to work as a ramp agent in Airport in Ireland, where Air Force One would frequently stop to refuel. I held security clearance to service the plane and had the privilege of doing so on four or five occasions. First, a small correction from the podcast. The Marine One helicopter is not a Chinook. It is either a Sea King or a Black Hawk, depending on the location.

Where'd you get that was a Chinook? I thought the one's with two propellers or two front and back. Yeah. I thought that was a Chinook. Are you sure? Well, we got a lot of corrections on that. Okay. All right. So that's what he says first. Oh, sorry, sir. The Black Hawk can be disassembled to fit inside the C-17 cargo plane that accompanies Air Force One, which we got that wrong, but I think you're going to take care of that. Now for the fun details. When the aircraft is on the ground, a camera deploys from underneath the plane between the main landing gear and offers a panoramic view of all ground activity. There are also static pinhole cameras located at regular intervals along both sides of the main fuselage and in the nose landing gear. These are only

noticeable if you're standing beside one of them. Once I try to count them all, but quickly lost count. That's how many there are. Wow. The same is true for the large number of antenna, communication aerials, et cetera, which run the full length at the top of the aircraft. Next, some security details. Okay. When the president is making a multi-country trip, there will be identical cars, limos, and secret service detachments, et cetera, simultaneously positioned at each location. This ensures everything is in place at every destination. When the airplane is at any foreign airport, a hard telephone line is run from the main terminal to the plane in the event of any wireless connectivity issues. And whenever both Air Force One and its twin sister are both on the

ground, they always park opposite each other tail to tail so both can taxi and take off immediately without any interference at a moment's notice. Very nice. Pretty cool. Yes. And then you're going to bring it home here. So Chuck, I'm bringing it home with one from Bill M, UASF Retired, Charleston, South Carolina. Bill Air Force. And that was in the Air Force. Really? Here's a mechanic. Did not know that. I'm a retired U.S. Air Force load master who flew as a crew member on C-17s and C-5s during many, many presidential support missions. During the Air Force One podcast, you mentioned the president's limos being carried by C-141s. While that was once a true statement, it hasn't been that way for a number of years, so we need to go update that. Yeah. Very cool.

The C-141 fleet has been decommissioned and sent to the Boneyard. The C-17 is the main airlifter used to carry the limos communication package, marine helicopters, not Chinooks, though, apparently, and military or and myriad of other stuff and personnel used at the president's destination. I missed my military days and SAM missions were certainly a highlight of my career as I crewed over 85,000 flying hours during 21 years. So this guy's, he knows what he's talking about. And what was his name? It's Bill M. from Charleston, South Carolina. Yeah. And I want to point out Bill also had a number of very nice things to say about the show, but since it was so long with the listener mail today, I cut a lot of that out. But thank you very much, Bill. He was

very kind of you. Thanks, Bill. Thanks, Brandon. Thanks. Unknown Irishman. Okay. Oh, but wait, Chuck, if you'll indulge me. Before we go, I want to give a special shout out, a special Christmas shout out for one of our younger listeners, Casey, who's 12. She is a friend's niece. And she's very sweet. She's a big fan. And she is bribing us and we're going to totally go for it. She has asked us if we'll wish her brother Lincoln a Merry Christmas for her. She's given us five options that varies from a crocheted scarf to what my vote goes for. And I hope you'll agree, a batch of homemade uniquely decorated sugar cookies. Sure. You want to go with that one? Yeah. Okay. So we're going to take option one, Casey, and in exchange for those uniquely decorated

sugar cookies, we're going to say Lincoln, your sister, Casey, wishes you a Merry Christmas. And happy new year. That's a happy birthday, right? No, it's a bonus. No, it was a birthday. She's just that sweet. Has nothing to do with birthdays. Yeah, she's just working her networks to get some favors. Very nice. Yeah. So Merry Christmas, Lincoln, Merry Christmas, Casey, Merry Christmas to all of you. And yeah, we'll be back with the Christmas special next, right? Yes. In the meantime, if you want to get in touch with us, you can Twitter to us, tweet to us, syskpodcast. You can join us on Facebook, facebook.com slash stuff you should know. And you can send us a good old fashioned, old timing Christmas themed email to

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