The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz - The Big Suey: The Life of an Explorer

Episode Date: June 22, 2023

Chris Brown, an explorer who paid a deposit to be in the infamous Titanic submersible and eventually backed out, joins the show. He shares with us the dangerous human experiences he's witnessed in his exploring, the fears he has for the people he knows in the sub, the red flags he saw with the mechanism, and much more. To learn more about Chris, visit inaccessibility.net. If you are having thoughts of suicide, you can call or text 988 to reach the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to Giraffe King's Network. Welcome to the big suite, presented by Giraffe King. Why are you listening to this show? The podcast that seems very similar to the other Dan Levitard podcast. I'm sorry, I'm not going to apologize for that. In fact, the only difference seems to be this imaging. I have been tempted in restaurants just walking past tables to grab somebody's fries

that if they're just there. That hasn't happened to you guys. I've done it. And now, here's the marching man to nowhere, that face and the habitual liar. A tweeter writes in, does anyone else have zero interest in this sub story? Like this is just another example of people having more money than sense.

He's that guy. All right, congratulations. You're the one who's not interested in this sub story. You stay strong over there. But the hours are dwindling of breathable air. Chris Cody just said to me during the break because he's marveling at this part of it, the way that I think we all are with, uh, morbid curiosity, what a terrible way to die to know that you're down there running out of air.

I think we talk about the Titanic. We can talk about the interview yesterday, we did with a former Navy submarine captain and how dangerous these things actually are. But this man here is an explorer, Chris Brown. He has been to the ends of the earth. He was going to go down on this thing because he understands the excitement and the titillation of going where people don't go. However, he refused after putting down the $10,000 deposit to be in that submersible. He backed out and he's here to tell us why. So before we get started, Chris, and thank you for being on with us, what would you say to us is the most dangerous exploring thing

you've actually been willing to do at the edges of these adrenaline rushes and the historic looking around the world in terms of discovery and wonder and pushing human extremes. Most dangerous. Can I pick two? Sure. They fall into totally different categories. Probably the most dangerous overall was I was the first person ever to the pole of inaccessibility in Africa just to recap for your listeners a pole of inaccessibility is the point that's furthest from

the ocean in any direction. For Africa that pole lies in Southeast Central Africa and in public right on the border with DRC, the Congo and South Sudan. So a pretty fighting region. There's bandits, gorillas, ISIS, anti-government insurgents, the Wagner group is active there. There's corruption in the police and there's corruption in the army. So that was very much a human danger. Before we get to the second one, why did you do that? This is my own little project. If you got the time to go into a short history, I went to the South Pole, actually with Hamish, it ties in together, actually, with Hamish and

Busolder in 2016. When I arrived at the South Pole, I was told something that I didn't really know that there's five South Poles. There's the South Pole base, which the American base they call that South Pole. There's a ceremonial South Pole where you've got all the flags and everybody takes that picture. There's a tier of magnetic and the geographic cell pole. But there was this fifth one called the pole of inaccessibility.

I'd never heard of it at that point. Roll on two years up Everest doing the world's highest dinoparty. Yes, another of these things that we do just for you can do it. And I came across people doing the Seven Summits project. I thought that's quite a cool thing to do. That's why you climb the highest mountain in each continent. But not really being into mountaineering, I thought, oh, what can I come up with myself? I just put the two together and came up to try and be the first person to all seven continental polls of inaccessibility. What was the biggest danger on the route

to the pull of inaccessibility? What was the place that you found with all of the things that you described where you were like, okay, now I've gone too far, I've gone right to the brink of stupidity? That one, I didn't reach that point. When you plan expeditions, you're going on these things, you look at all the risks

that are involved, and you try and mitigate against those risks. You might want to bring along some experts to help you in a particular area. You might want to employ specialist equipment. It may even be something simple to mitigate a risk by just changing when you go. In the African instance, you try to go in the dry period, whether it be less water around, so it'll be a smaller chance of people being in that area. I was able to mitigate those by taking along some American special forces, actually. We got some help from the government because they didn't want foreigners to come to harm in their country, so we got American Special Forces actually. We got some help from the government because they didn't want foreigners to come to harm

in their country, so we got some soldiers there. We took some steps to avoid being kidnapped by flying into one place and out of another. Even I didn't know which of the four possible landings that we're going to go into. So that's an example of managing the risk. When we get onto the sub, it came to me that I could not manage those risks. So that's why I pulled out.

All right, hold on. We'll get to that in a second, but what was your second most dangerous adventure? That was another poll, but it's a very different danger. I was trying to get to the part of an accessibility for Antarctica. So it's probably the most inaccessible place on the planet. It's given that Antarctica is the most inaccessible place, and this is the most inaccessible point of the whole of Antarctica. When it's supposed to be a seven to ten day expedition,

and it'll be in SIGFAR 28 days, four storms rolled through, two of them were the biggest storms that the operators and the people in Antarctica had ever seen in the 17 years of operation. At one point, fresh food had run out. It was precipitating, snowing, which it shouldn't do in Antarctica, because it's a desert. Another indicator of climate change. And the snow was causing the heating elements to fail because they're not built to have snow coming in the exhaust. We'd been stuck without any air relief. There'd been a couple of boom-rank flights,

come in, gone back, a couple of failed ones. This was at a time COVID, so we're having difficulty getting anything in and out. Moral was low, and I think we were one accident away from just a bit of a meltdown. That was an environmental risk. That's humans versus planet Earth. What does a bit of a meltdown look like?

And what does the worst storm in Antarctica feel like? Everyone's first, we had wins of the regular wins with 90 miles an hour, it was going to signal to 120, which is high. You can't go outside. Everybody had to get into like a communal tent. We all stayed in one place. You move around in pairs. Nobody goes outside without another person, but the height of the wind, you just can't go out. You can't stand up. In preparation, we put up poles between the food and essential accommodation sections.

Everyone meets them apart because you can't see more than a meter. I've got some great footage where I challenge people to tell me what's in the video and it's burning and blowing and I'm telling you it's something quite big and it's one of the Arctic trucks and you can't see it. It's only five meters away from the camera. A meltdown, everybody's morale is low and they're hungry and if something goes wrong it's easy for people to start getting a bit rassy with one with that in that kind of environment. You know you shouldn't, you try your best, you can't, well, you're energy levels. Sometimes, you know, just going to be disagreements. energy levels, sometimes, you know, just going to be disagreements. If we've had an accident, if somebody's had a bad accident, we can't get them out. You know, no flights, no planes can come in or go out at all.

So it's quite a dangerous position. And as we establish your Bonafide's here because the people listening to this, you seek these things. you want to challenge yourself. Dinner on Mount Everest compared to these things is easy, dinner with dinner party, but yes, is the answer. Dinner party on Mount Everest with your friends, easy compared to these other two things

that you're talking about. And the third that we're having you on for that you deemed too risky. Yes. Okay. Did you guys eat on Mount Everest? What was for dinner? All right. So it was an attempt to also set a record for the world's highest in a party. So it had to be Michelin's start food. It was it was it was it was a lamb to Jean

with I believe it was like a souffle like a puddingator putting a real dressed up in DJs and the ladies were ball gowns. I don't feel bad for these people. This is throwing away money, all of these people to show off and you realize there's a backlash against the rich for being this flippant about life, correct? When one of the things that's happening at the bottom, literally at the bottom of the sea right now, is a whole bunch of people saying, you deserve it for taking that risk. What are you doing?

Why are you being so flippant about life? I think everybody seeks enjoyment and adventure in life. I think as humans were born to explore, we always have, otherwise we'd just say in a one little Ethiopian continent where we developed. Going out there, finding the world, experiencing new cultures, advancing science. That's what it's all about. You deemed this one though, this expedition was advancing science because going to see

a famous shipwreck, it is exploration of the sea, which has been less explored than space, but you're exploring something that other tourists have already explored for $250,000. As far as human achievement goes, it's a bot and paid for tourist attraction, is it not? No, the original purpose of the dive was to go down and make a 3D rendering of the wreck, which would then be repeated after a few years so that you could analyze what parts of the wreck, which would then be repeated after a few years so that you could analyze what parts of the wreck are decaying, so that we could then take steps to preserve the Titanic wreck. All right, we're going to keep you right there for a second, Chris, because I want to ask you, I want you to take me through the specifics of how you come to put down the

$10,000 and then how you pull it back, why it is you decided never mind if you got a refund and what it is that you're thinking about the present predicament because forgive me, you said his name earlier, you were friends with one of the people who was down there, correct? That's correct, Amy Shalady. And the backstory there that the audience needs to know because this is a real horror for you watching this, I'm sure the backstory of your connection there is how deep. We're both the exploration arena is relatively small,

the extreme exploration arena is even smaller. So you tend to come across the same people again and again. I should share an expedition to the regular South Pole, aforementioned with with Hamish in 2016. We went there with Buzz Aldrin, your astronaut. And as a sign of the sort of person that Hamish is, it's an extremely pleasant guy, easy to get along with, very calm and collected, and a property implored that Ilabina real asset is a real asset to the people in the submarine. So most of all, sorry, when we were at the South Pole, Buzz Aldrin developed some problems with his health.

We were allowed into the base, which most people aren't unless you're in real difficulties. You go to the South Pole to be able to take your pictures at the ceremonial pole, maybe go to the geographic, to you, you might take your poles, take your photos out there, Hey, Michelle, for when, all of that to look after Buzz in his hour of need. So he didn't actually get to the pole because he was looking after Buzz. That's the sign of the guy. que se le hagas por la gente porque se ha visto pero es un gran tema. No sabes que confiar. Oíden las personas que os piden que mireis, si queréis seguir convido. Birdbox Barcelona, estreno en Netflix el 14 de julio.

Te atreves a ver. ¡Dán leba tard! Es la clásica, la primera bala de Hall of Famer, la música. Ok, donde es... Es un muerto de la casa, es un orquestra, Okay, where it can be a creaking door. It can be an orchestra Tuning up before a concert and the bassoon is a little bit off key and it comes up

Like that stugats the musical for it's some beauty It is a beautiful me Sorry This is the down libertar show with this two guys. Chris Brown is with us as I said, he has gone to the ends of the earth and he just gave you his

bona fides. Basically, it's a very small community of extreme explorers going to the edges of human discovery in the pursuit of wonder or and invention really. So thank you for being science and science. Thank you for being on with us. And I should point out it's just the coldest among us on social media, heartless among us on social media who are thinking about this story and saying you shouldn't be so flippant

with your life, not understanding the need for adventure that would risk life in this way. So Chris, thank you again for making the time for us. Tell me though why it is that you decided to not go deposit and then there'll be a couple of milestones along the way where you pay a bit more. Ocean Gate continuously missed those milestones which were related to depths of depths that they got to with the use of merciful, cause it was an experimental craft. That's one flag. Secondly, I saw what they were using on the vessel when it was being tested in the Bahamas, using construction pipes as ballast. That's a kind of thing, you know, that if you and I

is, how do we get across this river? You go get the wood, I'll get the string and we try and get across the river. Using construction pipe as ballast on such a thing to dive down to three, three thousand eight hundred meters, that's another flag for me. They had an electrical strike on all the testings. All of the electric equipment blew out. That's going to happen. Mother Earth decided it was going to strike it with lightning. But my question was, where's the redundancy? It completely stopped the testing. There should have been redundancy in that, and there should have been backup on the mothership

that could replace those things. There's another flag. And then the final thing, the nail in the coffin for me, was it became evident that they weren't going to seek any form of certification for this craft, not to certify that it could get down to 3,000m, but more importantly, get down to 3,800m repeatedly. It's not steel, it's not iron, the traditional materials for going down to that depth, it's carbon fiber. And that was the final nail in the coffin, that's why I thought these are the risks, I can't control any of those risks. And they're starting to pile up. You throw in the fact that they're using an Xbox controller to steer it. Now maybe that is the best method

of steering the craft, but why don't you take that bit further, develop the controller and make it something just a little bit better. The thrusters on the outside, they're quite small, but the cables to the thrusters are on the outside of the vessel. Now we're going down to a wreck, a large wreck, lots of debris around. If I was designing craft, I wouldn't want cables on the outside of my vessel that could possibly snag on the ship. And then also you, you've seen that there's no turret on on the submersible. That means that you're sealed in.

You have to be let in, let out from outside it sealed. So even if the sub was bobbing around on the surface, which would have been the best scenario that we could envisage for this, just bobbing around on the surface, just can't communicate with the ship. They would still be running out of oxygen because you can't get to it to let them out. So can you see how it's just a accumulation of red flags that caused me to pull out of this? And what did Hamish think about you pulling out?

Okay, that conversation didn't take place. It took place with another couple of future astronauts. There's another thing we've thrown our lot in to go up into space with Virgin Galactic. One of those, one of those other guys, his industry was shipping, he pulled out with the same concerns as me. Another guy stayed in for a year. They all went out to Newfoundland the following year, which would be 2019, expecting to do their dive in June, July, the small weather window when you can go down in this crack. And they all

got to Newfoundland to be told that it was off because the company hadn't secured the uses of a support vessel. There's another flag is that because those things should be booked, you're using our bands, you should have options. You don't get all of your customers if you like Michigan specialists or whatever you want to call them out to new foundmen and just tell them that you're not going that year. Do you have any theories about what has happened? Do you have any expertise that you can offer us thinking about how that could have been you if you had ignored some of those red flags? It has crossed my mind. It could quite easily be the three of us to call out, just sitting

there in the cold. It's going to be about zero degrees if it's sitting on the bottom. The oxygen is running out you'll have presumably run out of power before then because you devused it to try and get off. If you snagged on something, if you've just been sunk to the bottom you'd have been using the power to try and get to the surface. So the chances are they've been out of power for a while, there'll be no heating. The oxygen is running out, but there's also to my knowledge, no scrubbers in the vessel, so the carbon dioxide will be building up and people will be falling safe. And it's also very cramped conditions for high people in that vessel. It's just looking the size of it there. It's sitting on the floor, cramped conditions, oxygen in our high-calve dark side, dark and freezing. It's a, it's a bleak thought.

Would you have hope in there somewhere that there could be a rescue or would you have such expertise that you would want to end your life early because there's no rescue here that seems easy or possible or how do you hold on to hope? I've been asked this several times, even in difficult situations, as the explorer and Paymish, three of the people in that vessel, I'm not so sure about the day

would experience explorers. As an experienced explorer, you probably know yourself, if you're in a situation, you're looking for ways out. If the storms there, you think, oh, well, you know, storm, we've finished in a couple of days, you're in an out of food. Okay, well, when the storms finish, some food could come in, we can survive on dried drushens anyway. Heating's running out. Well, let's get out there. In the storm, we'll risk ourselves going out there to clear the exhaust.

You're coming up with ways of looking after yourself. Unfortunately, for these guys, they'll be extremely limited what they can do. I'm not even sure that ending your life early would be an option. You wouldn't have the facilities for doing it down there. The only, now I don't want to get into speculation

whilst they're possibly still alive. It's not fair on the friends and family to be going down that room. We've still got to hope that there's a miracle. Do you remember the footballers in the Thai cave? Everybody had pretty much given up on them and they were saved at the last minute. Let's just hope something can come through. Maybe

the French AROVs can find it and they can get it to the service really quickly. Maybe the the guys in the South have found a way to lower their oxygen. I started using less oxygen right from the very beginning. If they had sleeping tablets or just cause themselves to sleep or just breathe slowly, there's always hope. We should have hope and I forgive me if it seems indelicate or cold to sort of prod around in the macabre details here because I do think a lot of people are thinking about these things but don't have the expertise to know what the answers are. Imagine also the breathing air would cause nausea, right? I'm looking for the places where there might be some relief. Sleeping tablets would be one of them. Yeah, the relief would be natural. The buildup of

carbon dioxide will cause you to sleep. You're also very cold. That's a negative one as well, because it will cause you to shiver, which uses more oxygen. But if they carbon dioxide builds up a new very cold, you'll just... I'm not a medic, but I would think you just pretty much go to sleep. I would assume, because we had a Navy submarine veteran on with us yesterday, who explained with a real understanding what risks are involved when you choose this kind of exploration, but realizing in a, in a small space that the choice that you have made offers you very little in the way of hope, correct? The people there aren't confused like I would be about not knowing what my fate is.

The people there know better than anybody, how difficult it is to extract them from this situation. So they're alone with that as well. They have more knowledge of what the risk was involved in this because they chose the risk, correct? That's right. And that's something as explore as we often neglect when it comes to our friends and family, that it's almost worse for them because they have no concept of what it's like to be in these situations. They can't even imagine. We're kind of looking at three scenarios for this, the friends and family probably can't imagine what it would be

like to be in those conditions. But when you're in that position, it's kind of pointless giving up hope. There's always going to be hope until the end. Because survival is the greatest instinct, correct? That's right. Yeah. Can you explain to me and the audience what you think happened or is it unfair to speculate because so many things could have happened? Really the latter. If I had to pick the most likely, I think it's been dropped possibly directly onto the wreck. They lost cons about one hour 45 in, which would be roughly the amount of time it takes to get down to the wreck. I've heard transcripts from other people being down on these diaries previously. One dive landed so far away from the wreck, it took them about 90 minutes to find it, yet another arrived really close to the wreck and they had three hours going around it and

scanning it. So it seemed a bit hard-hatted where they were going to land. There's a chance that it's landed at the wreck or on another piece of debris and snagged. That would be my personal yes. That's not based on expertise that I'm afraid. I think the guy yesterday was probably better making guesses in that area. Chris, thank you for your expertise. I do appreciate that and the time. And condolences on what must be a difficult time thinking about somebody, a kindred spirit in a truly horrific situation.

Thank you, sir. Pleasure.