March 10, 2015 • 28 mins
It's a Hollywood classic: Our hero leaps in the nick of time, right before tendrils of flames close in. But could you escape a raging fire in real life? Run from wild fires and explosions in this red-hot episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb, and I'm Julie Douglas. Julie,
have you ever outrun an explosion every single morning? Yeah? Yeah?
Ever been chased by a fireball? Yeah? Every afternoon? It
(00:25):
kind of seems like that way at times, right, I mean,
because we were just constantly hit over the head with
this image of people out running explosions, out running fires
and fireballs. It's I mean, as long as you are
consuming action films and action oriented TV shows, it's everywhere. Well,
even dramas have a bit of you know, fire spewing
(00:45):
forth from time to time, and well like, yeah, I
think you were mentioning even even Breaking Bad, right, which
is considered has been considered the pinnacle of television in
recent years. Yeah, Breaking Bad will dip into a couple
of the tropes that you see when it comes to fireballs. Um,
specifically I'm thinking about Walt and I hope this isn't
(01:06):
a spoiler. This is early on in the series. This
is when he kind of takes a turn down the road. Um,
this is right after he shaved his head and he
is dealing with a drug dealer named Tuco, and he
has brought to the drug dealer something called mercury fulminate
which is inexclusive. Now the drug dealer doesn't know this,
(01:26):
thinks is the back of meth. What does Walt do
when he feels threatened, He throws a little piece of
this ampleca boom like the you know, the windows are
blown out, there's a big fireball um and it's done
to great effect, right, because at that very moment you
love Walt even more because of his science smarts and
his ability to create this um, this sort of chemical
(01:51):
combustion that gets him out of a jam. In reality, though,
with this work, yeah yeah, I mean, you'd have to
have like a stick of dynamite along with the mercury
fulm in it, and it just wouldn't be nearly as interesting.
You have to sit there and wait for him to
like stick a dynamite, and yeah, it's not not very
cinematic um for me. One of the earliest examples comes
(02:14):
to mind. Uh. It's probably from Predator, where not only
does uh does Schwarzenegger out run the explosive device that
the defeated predator sets off on its risk. Uh, it's
like apparently a tactical nuke that goes off. Essentially, they're
in the jungle. In the jungle, which is also key
as well discussed, you know, roots and trees and everywhere,
(02:35):
he's able to outrun this this tremendous detonation. Uh. And
you know he's not in the sequel, but he's supposedly survived.
Now I'm taking this from TV trips dot Org. They
say a time bomb, super weapon, crash car, etcetera is
about to explode. The heroes run as fast as they
can and try to leap behind shelter just as it explodes.
Often features a cool shot of the heroes diving towards
(02:58):
the camera. And when I read that initially, I kind
of felt that sort of mirrorner on motion, Like, yes,
I know that I've seen that trope so many times
that I feel the motion of that sentence. Indeed, I
mean another one too, is, of course, the the badass
walking away from the explosion. Explosion sets off. Generally, you
(03:20):
know it's the the guy or gal in your action
film is so in control of the situation. Uh, they
know there's about to be a tremendous explosion. They know
that they're safe, or they just don't care. They're that
they're that awesome, uh that they just walk They're just
walking and it's exploding behind them and they don't even care.
Maybe they're even lighting a cigarette. Breaking bad has another
(03:41):
example of that. Yes, in fact, it's the Salamanca Terror twins.
Oh yes, those guys definitely badasses. And I believe that
they one of them is smoking a cigarette and then
they ignite a truck and they walk away. And in fact,
there's a YouTube video that features this clip of them,
and it's the title of it is cool guys look
at explosions. Indeed they were. They were pretty cool and collected.
(04:05):
And you know that you mentioned them mere neurons. And
I think that's you know, when we watch somebody that's
so bad and in control of this situation that they
can just walk away from the explosion. I mean, that's
who doesn't want that in their life, to have that
kind of control, that kind of detachment from from the
stresses and explosions, uh, literal and metaphorical in their life,
which is why you may want to break out a
(04:25):
little board game called Fireball Island. Ah. Yes, I fondly
remember this uh board game published by Milton Bradley, which
I had. I received it for Christmas, I think one
year and uh, you'll you'll have to check out the
commercial for this on include a link on the landing
page in this episode because it was this brilliant like
(04:47):
three D board. It's it's essentially an island, like a
volcanic island, and impossibly, even as a kid, I knew
this was just made no sense. Uh, but some ancient
civilization has built this like demon shaped temple thing on
top of the volcano, like you do. And then this
thing would turn and it would spit fireballs red marbles,
uh down these different pathways, and of course the people
(05:11):
playing the game are trying to move their little dudes
along the pathway and I think they were collecting treasure
and if the marble came down and hit you, it
would knock you all the way back down towards the beginning.
But but yeah, even then, I had a lot of questions,
like what is this fireball? We're out running? Is this
just is this lava? Is this is this flame? Is
it is it an explosion? What's going on here? What
(05:31):
am I trying to out run? Why in the commercial
is their actual flame coming from the ball and mine
is just a big marble no flames. Um. I was
looking at this on eBay. They are fetching up to
three hundred bucks ones that are intact with all the pieces. Wow,
that's that's pretty impressive. I wish I knew where mine was,
right all right, So we're going to discuss this and
(05:53):
today's episode. Now, we're not going to get into the
fancy magical fireball idea, but we're going to get into
sort of are equally magical and fanciful almost subconscious ideas
about explosions and fire. Most of us do not encounter
wildfires or explosions in our daily life. We encounter on TV.
We kind of get this idea about how they work,
(06:14):
and we take for granted the uh, the the reactions
that are taking place. So first we're gonna talk about wildfires,
then we're going to talk about explosions, and we're going
to talk about our ability or inability rather to outrun
either of these forces. Before we launch in, I want
to ask you, Robert, because this is a kid sort
of dinner party question. Uh, what is your relationship to fire?
(06:37):
My relationship to fire? Uh? Currently? Um, the lighting of
stoves with a little click click thing, um, the lighting
of candles when necessary. Uh, And that's pretty much pretty
much it, because I have these memories as a kid
and my my babysitter, who is um giant hippie, loved her,
(06:57):
but she would have us um put our hands through
the candle to see if we could exert some sort
of magic force on it and not burn ourselves. So
that's sort of my first memories of that and trying
to capture and harness fire. And I think it's one
of the reasons why when we see these tropes we
get sort of excited, not just because of the mirror neurons,
but because it calls back to something primal, like, yes,
(07:20):
here's this this element and could we in fact walk
away from it if it were to try to consume us. Yeah, yeah,
I mean I definitely. I remember being into like matches
and fireworks at some point when I was a kid,
and I mean like the fire. The flamethrower is another
example of something that like from a kid level, like
(07:41):
sci fi action movie level, like flamethrowers are awesome, but
then if you look at the reality of flamethrowers that
they are hillacious, awful devices, awful weapons. Um, So there's
always a divide between that. But we can't help. But
but but find something magical in the flickering flame. So
let's kick up with wildfire. Um and let's we're just
(08:02):
gonna throw it out there. Humans versus fire speed? How
does it? How does it pan out? Well? First, let's
look at a human. According to the National Council on
Strength and Fitness, the average human can run at a
speed of fifteen miles per hour kilometers per hour for
a short period of time. Okay, and as far as
records go, the world's fastest runner, Hussain Bolt, has clocked
(08:24):
nearly twenty eight miles per hour or forty kilometers per
hour in the hundred meters sprint. Okay. Meanwhile, our friend,
the wildfire travels its speeds up to fourteen miles an
hour or twenty three kilometers an hour, and it does
so by consuming everything in its path, for naturally occurring vegetation,
to homes or even human beings. So in a short
term race without any complicating factors, the average human probably
(08:48):
has a slight leg up, and more gifted runners can
probably smoke the fire completely. But it's those complications, uh
that are that are definitely worth taking into account when
trying to outrun a wildfire, right because these don't occur
in a vacuum as we know. So complicating factors would
include the fact that you're probably running through unfamiliar terrain,
(09:11):
right if you're out in the forest, you probably don't
know it like the back of your hand. Um, So
that can add to the confusion when you're trying to navigate.
In addition, a thick fog of smoke could be rolling
through the area, making it hard to determine the best
path forward, particularly when the wind shifts direction right and
(09:33):
there's the heat from the fire because it turns out
that many more people die from smoke inhalation and dehydration
than from actual burns. So all of these things are
making this this uh, this mays through a natural disaster
that much more difficult. Yeah, and there's just so many variables.
Like I can't help but think if you were if
(09:54):
you were trying to to map and program the movement
of a wildfire, and say a board game or computer game,
there there would just be so many barreals, so many
dice rolls would have to take place because because just
the slightest change in the wind, for instance, can alter
the course of the fire. Suddenly it's it's moving. Uh,
it's moving to your left, etter to your right, etcetera.
(10:16):
And then you have to take into account the fuel
that it's consuming. You have grasses that are that are
burning easily on dry, hot windy days, branches, twigs and
leaves that are serving as as as as a tremendous fuel,
creating more heat. And then you have dry tree bark
that can carry the flames up to the tree tops,
burning more material and causing the fire to break and spread.
(10:39):
So it's, uh, there's there's so much chaos in the system.
It's it's difficult to map, certainly difficult to map on
the ground dealing with all of these complications. And yeah,
you can try to be strategic about it. So if
you could figure out which way the fire is moving,
and you situated yourself parallel to it, this is called
(11:00):
the flank of the fire, then that puts you in
a much better position as opposed to say, in front
of the fire, which is kind of like a dot um.
Another thing you could do is you could look for
a path with little or no vegetation. So a rock,
gravel or dirt path would ensure that you're not surrounding
yourself with tinder. All of those dry branches and twigs leaves,
(11:23):
that would create a little bit more forced um tinder
there for you, and then you would want to move
downhill if you could. That's because the fire will burn
faster uphill, you know. That's because the flames can easily
reach more unburnt fuel in front of the fire, and
then radiant heat preheats the fuel in front of the fire,
making the fuel even more flammable. And that's not to
(11:45):
say that any of these strategies are a guarantee of safety.
In the house Stuff Works article Can You out Run
a Fire? By Alston Cooper, she points out that the
Yarnell Hill airs on a wildfire in June two thousand
killed nineteen members of the Granite Mountain hot Shots. And
the hot Shots, of course, are they have advanced strategies
(12:08):
and they are experts in maintaining um the fires and
extinguishing them. So what happened during this particular wildfire is
that the wildfire was aided by fifty mile per hour
or eighty kilometers per hour down drafting winds of an
approaching thunderstorm. We're talking about covering one d yards in
(12:29):
nineteen seconds. And the firefighters who were in a box
hand and were trapped when the fire essentially rushed into it.
They we're talking about a dangerous and at times unpredictable
force here. It's not not the fire in your heart,
it's not the fire on your barbecue. This is a
This is fire that is quite literally wild, consuming materials,
(12:51):
shifting around, and it's easy to get caught in the
wrong place at the wrong time. Indeed, all right, we're
going to take a quick break. When we get back,
we're going to look at what it would take to
outrun an explosion. All right, we're back out running an explosion. Possible, impossible.
(13:15):
I think you will find it is the latter of
those two options, despite again how often we see it
done in our TVs and movies. Let's start with just, uh,
just getting down to brass tacks here. What is an explosion?
What is an explosive? Even um, All explosives are little
more than elements that burn or decompose at an incredible speed.
(13:36):
Um and explosions occur when a large amount of energy
is released into a small volume of area in a
very short time. So it might be hydrothermal, uh, you know,
naturally occurring in the earth. It might be chemical arising
from say a man made explosion, or it might even
be nuclear. Now, the reaction produces a massive amount of
heat and gas in a very short period of time.
(13:58):
An explosive chemical action breaks down compounds into highly compressed
gases as well as heat resulting from compound molecules being
blasted apart. Then the gas expands rapidly and the heat
speeds up individual gas particles to increase expansion speed even more.
And this rapidly expanding gas is called a pressure wave,
(14:19):
and it's key to any explosives destructive power as the
pressure If the pressure wave is fast enough to break
the sound barrier, it also generates a powerful shock wave.
So anytime you have a land explosion, a real life
land explosion from hand garnades took a dynamite exploding car,
you name it, Uh, you're gonna have a situation where
(14:39):
the blast can just almost instantaneously burned skin, tear apart, limbs,
propel objects and shrapnel through the air. Um, it's a
it's it's a dangerous situation and and uh again, we
often sort of fall into a magical way of thinking
about the explosion as just this sort of blast, this
this big fiery thing that happens, and not this this
(15:02):
this really fast chemical reaction that just sends out this
pressure wave. Yeah. To illustrate that, let's look at a
C four explosive. Now, this is typical typically used by
the United States Armed Forces, and when it is detonated,
gases are released from the explosive at the rate of
twenty six thousand, four hundred ft per second or eight
(15:23):
thousand fifty per second. Yeah, which means that if you
are within twenty four thousand feet of it, your toast
within just one second. So that really I think that
shatters the illusion pretty quickly, unless you're watching the Flash
or Superman or something. It's it's putting it outside the
normal range. Now, some other explosives like a pipe bomb, well,
(15:43):
the U. S Department of Homeland Security says the minimal
safe distance from a five pound or two point two
kilogram bomb pipe bomb is twelve hundred feet or three
hundred sixty And then you'll see as the size of
the bomb goes up, so to just the since that
you should be away from it. So a fifty pound
(16:04):
briefcase bomb you should be about eighteen hundred and fifty
feet away or five hundred sixty four a tractor trailer
bomb that would be about nine thousand, three hundred feet
or two thousand, eight hundred that you would want to
be away from it. So again the question arises, could
you get from point A to point B this safe
(16:26):
zone in any of those scenarios, And it's just not likely.
Even if you are Usain Bolt, who could cover two
hundred meters in nineteen seconds um, which is about thirty
four ft per second, that's still not gonna get you
to where you need to be. Indeed, I mean pretty
much the only scenario that even works from any kind
(16:50):
of film or actions situation would be if there's a
timer and you're you're not out running the explosion itself,
but your your character is attempting to it to that
uh that that manium that minimum evacuation distance before it
goes off. But even then, the minimum evacuation distance is
just the range at which life threatening injury from the
(17:11):
blast or fragmentation hazards are unlikely. Uh So, a person
within the safe zone of uh surrounding this explosion. They
can still suffer injuries, they're not life threatening. You can
still get hit by shrapnel, you can still be knocked
down by the shock wave. Um, all of that is
still in play, which could significantly uh impact your badass
(17:35):
walk away from the explosion, right because the badass walk away.
You don't tend to see the hero or the anti
hero with pock marks of you know, damage done by
the shrack knowledge, hearing loss or anything. No, they're completely intact. Um.
So yeah, again, abbous, but this is not very realistic.
Even the countdowns and we see them depicted in TV
(17:59):
and film aren't being true to the actual time that's passing. Yeah.
And and it goes without saying a lot of times
when you have a really cool explosion in a film,
you end up kind of seeing it in slow motion anyway,
so you get this kind of false idea about what's happening.
You do see like this fireball expanding, and uh and
you know, we just we just don't. Most of us
do not have explosions occurring in our daily life and
(18:21):
have any kind of real, uh you know, real down
to earth understanding about what's happenings as far as the
chemical reaction goes well, and if you did, you probably
would have a pretty strong case of PTSD. Right. Um,
So this, this unfortunately is the reality for some people.
And we were talking about this earlier. Probably one of
the more realistic depictions of explosions is something like the
(18:45):
hurt Locker, where they do quite a bit of really
good camera work to try to bring some sort of
very similitude to what is happening on screen. Yeah, they
did a great job at also making you feel that
bombs and particular really the explosive devices that they were diffusing,
our nasty weapons, these are not these are not fun explosions.
(19:06):
And it gets into that flamethrower are discussing earlier. You know,
there's just there's this huge disconnect between the cool explosions,
the cool weapons that we encounter in our our our
fictional media, versus the generally hillacious reality of their use.
All Right, we are going to take a break. When
we get back, We're going to attend to some listener mail.
(19:35):
All right, we're back. Indeed, let us call over the
robot here and uh and catch up on a little
bit of listener mail we received so many great comments
from you guys and gals, and you know, sadly we
we don't always have time to h to read them
here on the podcast, but today we have changes. Indeed,
all right, we have an email and I'm not gonna
(19:57):
share her name because she did not say whether or
not we could share it, but she's said, hey, guys,
have you ever researched how second hand embarrassment works? Because
I suffer from it pretty bad and I can't find
a lot about it scientifically. And I thought that was
that's really interesting. We have an upcoming episode on our
to do list about shame. And it it also made me
(20:17):
think about empathy. And I know I've mentioned this before,
but there's a book called The Empathy Exams. It's really great.
It's a bunch of essays that deal with empathy and
how it frames our world and even how it affects
our bodies, our health. So guys check it out if
you'd like. All Right, I have another bit of listener
(20:38):
mail here. This one comes from an anonymous listener or
listener that wishes to remain anonymous. Says, Hi, Robert and
Julie stumbled upon your podcast by accident, and I'm glad
that I did. It's quite interesting, to say the least. Recently,
I've been catching up on some episodes and I just
finished listening to the one you did about the zen
of pain, and one thing came to mind. I have chronic,
almost constant pain right next to my right shoulder blade
(20:59):
as well as in my right at hand. It's not
something I enjoy by any means, far from it. However,
the things that seemed to help me with it are
certain exercises uh there. They were prescribed by a professional,
which also caused pain, quite a bit of pain, putting
a lot of pressure on my shoulder blade to the
point of almost crying out with pain. But this helps too.
For some strange reason, I also know a few other
(21:20):
people who feel the same way about some of the
pains they are having. From extremely unscientific observations, it would
seem as if physical pain not only helps us reach
a liberation for from our guilt and other bad feelings,
but also from physical pain. I just thought it was
interesting observation and wanted to share. Maybe you could do
an episode on that too in the future. Keepon podcasting
and have a wonderful day. An anonymous listener from Canada.
(21:44):
I don't know that we had talked about pain in
terms of transformation in a more positive way before, but
that's an interesting angle. Yeah. I mean I have noticed,
like in just doing stretches and stuff, and if I have,
you know, ultimately you know, minor sores going on with
my with my muscles. Like sometimes you end up going
into a position or a stretch that you're you are
(22:07):
causing a bit of tension there, but your the tension
is kind of combating another lingering pain. It's indeed, there's
a there's there's a there's a lot of complexity in
uh in in the the the pain pleasure system. That's
what I think is interesting about yoga. Um not so
much that sometimes you feel pain, and in fact, if
you feel too much pain, you should definitely back off.
(22:27):
But when you're in a pose and you're pushing yourself,
there's a level of discomfort that they yoga teacher will
often say, is your opportunity to dwell with that discomfort
and not keep pushing it away, but sort of meeting it.
And a lot of the discomfort in your in your
body can translate to the discomfort that you feel in
(22:49):
your mind and We've talked about how emotional pain and
physical pain overlap each other quite a bit, so it's
an interesting exercise in and of itself. A one and
to read this next email. This is from Emmily and
she says, Hello, Julian Robert. I wanted to say good
job on the Blue podcast. I listened to it while
I was coloring pages for a comic book. Part of
(23:12):
being a colorist means a lot of color theories, so
I thought you guys touched on the subject very well.
I thought I might add a couple of ideas if
you do a few other color related podcasts. There have
been studies I've seen saying how certain stores or fast
food restaurants will use color to make people hungry but
not wish to stay too long in the restaurant. Also,
don't remember if there's been a podcast on the Man
(23:33):
to Shrimp, But these guys are extraordinary little creatures of color.
Here's a comic I love, and she's talking about oat.
Mail says, and uh, I'd love to point people to
for a little bit of information on them. Also, it's
a fun read. And this is so great. A couple
of things about this one is we are planning a
podcast episode that has to do with sensory manipulation, and
(23:57):
restaurants certainly are within that. It's a really big, uh
tangled topic, so when we unravel a little bit, we
will definitely cart it out for you guys. I want
to let Emily know that we're working on that. The
second thing is the Manda shrimp is great. That the
Oatmeal comic takes this on and talks about how the
manta shrip has sixteen color sensitive receptor cones, which is amazing.
(24:22):
They're they're an entirely different sensory world into themselves. Yeah.
That that oat Mill comic in particular is great. And
if I remember correctly, I think that one followed on
the heels of a really really solid Radio Lab episode
where they talk about the Man of Shrimp. So that
was kind of like the those two elements came together
to really propel the Mantis shrip into its current Internet
(24:44):
celebrity status. Yeah, the Matthew and Mean, the creator of Oatmeal.
He also has this great bit about how the manta
shrimp is one of the most creatively violent creatures on
Earth and I won't give it away. Need to go
check out the comic to see that. All right, here's
a little bit of listener mail from listener Sophia. Sophia says,
I recently found your excellent podcast and was immediately hooked,
starting with the episode about rats. I am in fact
(25:05):
listening to your podcast right now. I was catching up
and I came across the Mad Gasser and mass Hysteria episode, which,
in passing, talked about a phenomenon among school girls at
a boarding school. This phenomenon appeared after Christmas break and
manifested itself in cold like symptoms, fever, trouble walking, etcetera.
You explained how this was caused by the stress of
leaving their families after seeing them for only a short
(25:27):
period of time. I have in fact experienced this myself
last January, right after I had moved back to school
after spending time with my family at Christmas break, I
began experiencing a myriad of unsettling symptoms. I had a
loss of balance, a sensitivity to even weak sunlight to
the point that my pupils would virtually disappear when I
was outside, migrains, chills, and even feigning spells. This lasted
(25:47):
for about a month and a half and in interestingly
only abated when I found out that my mom was
going to visit for my graduation in May. Thank you
for clearing up any a paranoia about my symptoms, as
I was very con concerned about them for a while
and thought it might be some fearful or netherious disease
manifesting itself. Your show is amazing and very informative, and
(26:07):
I will be a listener for a very long time
to come listening faithfully, Sophia. Thanks Sophia, Um, we really
appreciate you sharing with us your own experience, which I
think really underscores that whole um body mind connection here
when it comes to empathy and to emotional contagion. Indeed,
I mean this is definitely one of those subjects that
(26:29):
we we are ultimately approaching as outsider. So anytime we
can get that insider perspective on a topic, we love
it all right. The next one is from Katie. She says,
I don't have a specific request. I just want to
say thanks for the great show. I love how often
gender and sex comes up. I could listen to you
to talk for hours about the amazing biodiversity of sex,
organ sexual reproduction, and sexual behavior and you always connected
(26:52):
so well with the human bias and baggage that comes
along with sex, sexuality and gender. On second thought, maybe
I do have a topic suggestion. Have you've done an
episode on sex changes, not specifically in humans, but in
animals in general. I feel like the subject comes up
but only tangentially in other subjects. It seems like you'd
have fun with the subject. Um. I agree, Yeah, that
(27:13):
sounds like a like an excellent topic to to jump into. Yeah, thanks, Hattie.
We actually have on the house stuff works dot com website,
we have an article called how gender reassignment works. And
we have an article called why some species change sex? So, um,
I certainly think we should put the latter on our
to do list. Indeed, indeed, all right, So there you
(27:36):
have it. If you listener mails to uh satisfy the
robot and uh and hopefully listeners as well, and uh Hey,
if you want to check out more of our podcast
episodes past and hey maybe even future. You want to
check out our videos or blog post links out to
our social media accounts, head on over to stuff to
Blow your Mind dot com. That is our central homepage
and that is where you will find all of our
(27:57):
things in the meantime, unders your thoughts, and you can
do that by emailing us at stuff to blow your mind.
At how stuff works dot com for more on this
and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff works
dot com.
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb, and I'm Julie Douglas. Julie,
have you ever outrun an explosion every single morning? Yeah? Yeah?
Ever been chased by a fireball? Yeah? Every afternoon? It
(00:25):
kind of seems like that way at times, right, I mean,
because we were just constantly hit over the head with
this image of people out running explosions, out running fires
and fireballs. It's I mean, as long as you are
consuming action films and action oriented TV shows, it's everywhere. Well,
even dramas have a bit of you know, fire spewing
(00:45):
forth from time to time, and well like, yeah, I
think you were mentioning even even Breaking Bad, right, which
is considered has been considered the pinnacle of television in
recent years. Yeah, Breaking Bad will dip into a couple
of the tropes that you see when it comes to fireballs. Um,
specifically I'm thinking about Walt and I hope this isn't
(01:06):
a spoiler. This is early on in the series. This
is when he kind of takes a turn down the road. Um,
this is right after he shaved his head and he
is dealing with a drug dealer named Tuco, and he
has brought to the drug dealer something called mercury fulminate
which is inexclusive. Now the drug dealer doesn't know this,
(01:26):
thinks is the back of meth. What does Walt do
when he feels threatened, He throws a little piece of
this ampleca boom like the you know, the windows are
blown out, there's a big fireball um and it's done
to great effect, right, because at that very moment you
love Walt even more because of his science smarts and
his ability to create this um, this sort of chemical
(01:51):
combustion that gets him out of a jam. In reality, though,
with this work, yeah yeah, I mean, you'd have to
have like a stick of dynamite along with the mercury
fulm in it, and it just wouldn't be nearly as interesting.
You have to sit there and wait for him to
like stick a dynamite, and yeah, it's not not very
cinematic um for me. One of the earliest examples comes
(02:14):
to mind. Uh. It's probably from Predator, where not only
does uh does Schwarzenegger out run the explosive device that
the defeated predator sets off on its risk. Uh, it's
like apparently a tactical nuke that goes off. Essentially, they're
in the jungle. In the jungle, which is also key
as well discussed, you know, roots and trees and everywhere,
(02:35):
he's able to outrun this this tremendous detonation. Uh. And
you know he's not in the sequel, but he's supposedly survived.
Now I'm taking this from TV trips dot Org. They
say a time bomb, super weapon, crash car, etcetera is
about to explode. The heroes run as fast as they
can and try to leap behind shelter just as it explodes.
Often features a cool shot of the heroes diving towards
(02:58):
the camera. And when I read that initially, I kind
of felt that sort of mirrorner on motion, Like, yes,
I know that I've seen that trope so many times
that I feel the motion of that sentence. Indeed, I
mean another one too, is, of course, the the badass
walking away from the explosion. Explosion sets off. Generally, you
(03:20):
know it's the the guy or gal in your action
film is so in control of the situation. Uh, they
know there's about to be a tremendous explosion. They know
that they're safe, or they just don't care. They're that
they're that awesome, uh that they just walk They're just
walking and it's exploding behind them and they don't even care.
Maybe they're even lighting a cigarette. Breaking bad has another
(03:41):
example of that. Yes, in fact, it's the Salamanca Terror twins.
Oh yes, those guys definitely badasses. And I believe that
they one of them is smoking a cigarette and then
they ignite a truck and they walk away. And in fact,
there's a YouTube video that features this clip of them,
and it's the title of it is cool guys look
at explosions. Indeed they were. They were pretty cool and collected.
(04:05):
And you know that you mentioned them mere neurons. And
I think that's you know, when we watch somebody that's
so bad and in control of this situation that they
can just walk away from the explosion. I mean, that's
who doesn't want that in their life, to have that
kind of control, that kind of detachment from from the
stresses and explosions, uh, literal and metaphorical in their life,
which is why you may want to break out a
(04:25):
little board game called Fireball Island. Ah. Yes, I fondly
remember this uh board game published by Milton Bradley, which
I had. I received it for Christmas, I think one
year and uh, you'll you'll have to check out the
commercial for this on include a link on the landing
page in this episode because it was this brilliant like
(04:47):
three D board. It's it's essentially an island, like a
volcanic island, and impossibly, even as a kid, I knew
this was just made no sense. Uh, but some ancient
civilization has built this like demon shaped temple thing on
top of the volcano, like you do. And then this
thing would turn and it would spit fireballs red marbles,
uh down these different pathways, and of course the people
(05:11):
playing the game are trying to move their little dudes
along the pathway and I think they were collecting treasure
and if the marble came down and hit you, it
would knock you all the way back down towards the beginning.
But but yeah, even then, I had a lot of questions,
like what is this fireball? We're out running? Is this
just is this lava? Is this is this flame? Is
it is it an explosion? What's going on here? What
(05:31):
am I trying to out run? Why in the commercial
is their actual flame coming from the ball and mine
is just a big marble no flames. Um. I was
looking at this on eBay. They are fetching up to
three hundred bucks ones that are intact with all the pieces. Wow,
that's that's pretty impressive. I wish I knew where mine was,
right all right, So we're going to discuss this and
(05:53):
today's episode. Now, we're not going to get into the
fancy magical fireball idea, but we're going to get into
sort of are equally magical and fanciful almost subconscious ideas
about explosions and fire. Most of us do not encounter
wildfires or explosions in our daily life. We encounter on TV.
We kind of get this idea about how they work,
(06:14):
and we take for granted the uh, the the reactions
that are taking place. So first we're gonna talk about wildfires,
then we're going to talk about explosions, and we're going
to talk about our ability or inability rather to outrun
either of these forces. Before we launch in, I want
to ask you, Robert, because this is a kid sort
of dinner party question. Uh, what is your relationship to fire?
(06:37):
My relationship to fire? Uh? Currently? Um, the lighting of
stoves with a little click click thing, um, the lighting
of candles when necessary. Uh, And that's pretty much pretty
much it, because I have these memories as a kid
and my my babysitter, who is um giant hippie, loved her,
(06:57):
but she would have us um put our hands through
the candle to see if we could exert some sort
of magic force on it and not burn ourselves. So
that's sort of my first memories of that and trying
to capture and harness fire. And I think it's one
of the reasons why when we see these tropes we
get sort of excited, not just because of the mirror neurons,
but because it calls back to something primal, like, yes,
(07:20):
here's this this element and could we in fact walk
away from it if it were to try to consume us. Yeah, yeah,
I mean I definitely. I remember being into like matches
and fireworks at some point when I was a kid,
and I mean like the fire. The flamethrower is another
example of something that like from a kid level, like
(07:41):
sci fi action movie level, like flamethrowers are awesome, but
then if you look at the reality of flamethrowers that
they are hillacious, awful devices, awful weapons. Um, So there's
always a divide between that. But we can't help. But
but but find something magical in the flickering flame. So
let's kick up with wildfire. Um and let's we're just
(08:02):
gonna throw it out there. Humans versus fire speed? How
does it? How does it pan out? Well? First, let's
look at a human. According to the National Council on
Strength and Fitness, the average human can run at a
speed of fifteen miles per hour kilometers per hour for
a short period of time. Okay, and as far as
records go, the world's fastest runner, Hussain Bolt, has clocked
(08:24):
nearly twenty eight miles per hour or forty kilometers per
hour in the hundred meters sprint. Okay. Meanwhile, our friend,
the wildfire travels its speeds up to fourteen miles an
hour or twenty three kilometers an hour, and it does
so by consuming everything in its path, for naturally occurring vegetation,
to homes or even human beings. So in a short
term race without any complicating factors, the average human probably
(08:48):
has a slight leg up, and more gifted runners can
probably smoke the fire completely. But it's those complications, uh
that are that are definitely worth taking into account when
trying to outrun a wildfire, right because these don't occur
in a vacuum as we know. So complicating factors would
include the fact that you're probably running through unfamiliar terrain,
(09:11):
right if you're out in the forest, you probably don't
know it like the back of your hand. Um, So
that can add to the confusion when you're trying to navigate.
In addition, a thick fog of smoke could be rolling
through the area, making it hard to determine the best
path forward, particularly when the wind shifts direction right and
(09:33):
there's the heat from the fire because it turns out
that many more people die from smoke inhalation and dehydration
than from actual burns. So all of these things are
making this this uh, this mays through a natural disaster
that much more difficult. Yeah, and there's just so many variables.
Like I can't help but think if you were if
(09:54):
you were trying to to map and program the movement
of a wildfire, and say a board game or computer game,
there there would just be so many barreals, so many
dice rolls would have to take place because because just
the slightest change in the wind, for instance, can alter
the course of the fire. Suddenly it's it's moving. Uh,
it's moving to your left, etter to your right, etcetera.
(10:16):
And then you have to take into account the fuel
that it's consuming. You have grasses that are that are
burning easily on dry, hot windy days, branches, twigs and
leaves that are serving as as as as a tremendous fuel,
creating more heat. And then you have dry tree bark
that can carry the flames up to the tree tops,
burning more material and causing the fire to break and spread.
(10:39):
So it's, uh, there's there's so much chaos in the system.
It's it's difficult to map, certainly difficult to map on
the ground dealing with all of these complications. And yeah,
you can try to be strategic about it. So if
you could figure out which way the fire is moving,
and you situated yourself parallel to it, this is called
(11:00):
the flank of the fire, then that puts you in
a much better position as opposed to say, in front
of the fire, which is kind of like a dot um.
Another thing you could do is you could look for
a path with little or no vegetation. So a rock,
gravel or dirt path would ensure that you're not surrounding
yourself with tinder. All of those dry branches and twigs leaves,
(11:23):
that would create a little bit more forced um tinder
there for you, and then you would want to move
downhill if you could. That's because the fire will burn
faster uphill, you know. That's because the flames can easily
reach more unburnt fuel in front of the fire, and
then radiant heat preheats the fuel in front of the fire,
making the fuel even more flammable. And that's not to
(11:45):
say that any of these strategies are a guarantee of safety.
In the house Stuff Works article Can You out Run
a Fire? By Alston Cooper, she points out that the
Yarnell Hill airs on a wildfire in June two thousand
killed nineteen members of the Granite Mountain hot Shots. And
the hot Shots, of course, are they have advanced strategies
(12:08):
and they are experts in maintaining um the fires and
extinguishing them. So what happened during this particular wildfire is
that the wildfire was aided by fifty mile per hour
or eighty kilometers per hour down drafting winds of an
approaching thunderstorm. We're talking about covering one d yards in
(12:29):
nineteen seconds. And the firefighters who were in a box
hand and were trapped when the fire essentially rushed into it.
They we're talking about a dangerous and at times unpredictable
force here. It's not not the fire in your heart,
it's not the fire on your barbecue. This is a
This is fire that is quite literally wild, consuming materials,
(12:51):
shifting around, and it's easy to get caught in the
wrong place at the wrong time. Indeed, all right, we're
going to take a quick break. When we get back,
we're going to look at what it would take to
outrun an explosion. All right, we're back out running an explosion. Possible, impossible.
(13:15):
I think you will find it is the latter of
those two options, despite again how often we see it
done in our TVs and movies. Let's start with just, uh,
just getting down to brass tacks here. What is an explosion?
What is an explosive? Even um, All explosives are little
more than elements that burn or decompose at an incredible speed.
(13:36):
Um and explosions occur when a large amount of energy
is released into a small volume of area in a
very short time. So it might be hydrothermal, uh, you know,
naturally occurring in the earth. It might be chemical arising
from say a man made explosion, or it might even
be nuclear. Now, the reaction produces a massive amount of
heat and gas in a very short period of time.
(13:58):
An explosive chemical action breaks down compounds into highly compressed
gases as well as heat resulting from compound molecules being
blasted apart. Then the gas expands rapidly and the heat
speeds up individual gas particles to increase expansion speed even more.
And this rapidly expanding gas is called a pressure wave,
(14:19):
and it's key to any explosives destructive power as the
pressure If the pressure wave is fast enough to break
the sound barrier, it also generates a powerful shock wave.
So anytime you have a land explosion, a real life
land explosion from hand garnades took a dynamite exploding car,
you name it, Uh, you're gonna have a situation where
(14:39):
the blast can just almost instantaneously burned skin, tear apart, limbs,
propel objects and shrapnel through the air. Um, it's a
it's it's a dangerous situation and and uh again, we
often sort of fall into a magical way of thinking
about the explosion as just this sort of blast, this
this big fiery thing that happens, and not this this
(15:02):
this really fast chemical reaction that just sends out this
pressure wave. Yeah. To illustrate that, let's look at a
C four explosive. Now, this is typical typically used by
the United States Armed Forces, and when it is detonated,
gases are released from the explosive at the rate of
twenty six thousand, four hundred ft per second or eight
(15:23):
thousand fifty per second. Yeah, which means that if you
are within twenty four thousand feet of it, your toast
within just one second. So that really I think that
shatters the illusion pretty quickly, unless you're watching the Flash
or Superman or something. It's it's putting it outside the
normal range. Now, some other explosives like a pipe bomb, well,
(15:43):
the U. S Department of Homeland Security says the minimal
safe distance from a five pound or two point two
kilogram bomb pipe bomb is twelve hundred feet or three
hundred sixty And then you'll see as the size of
the bomb goes up, so to just the since that
you should be away from it. So a fifty pound
(16:04):
briefcase bomb you should be about eighteen hundred and fifty
feet away or five hundred sixty four a tractor trailer
bomb that would be about nine thousand, three hundred feet
or two thousand, eight hundred that you would want to
be away from it. So again the question arises, could
you get from point A to point B this safe
(16:26):
zone in any of those scenarios, And it's just not likely.
Even if you are Usain Bolt, who could cover two
hundred meters in nineteen seconds um, which is about thirty
four ft per second, that's still not gonna get you
to where you need to be. Indeed, I mean pretty
much the only scenario that even works from any kind
(16:50):
of film or actions situation would be if there's a
timer and you're you're not out running the explosion itself,
but your your character is attempting to it to that
uh that that manium that minimum evacuation distance before it
goes off. But even then, the minimum evacuation distance is
just the range at which life threatening injury from the
(17:11):
blast or fragmentation hazards are unlikely. Uh So, a person
within the safe zone of uh surrounding this explosion. They
can still suffer injuries, they're not life threatening. You can
still get hit by shrapnel, you can still be knocked
down by the shock wave. Um, all of that is
still in play, which could significantly uh impact your badass
(17:35):
walk away from the explosion, right because the badass walk away.
You don't tend to see the hero or the anti
hero with pock marks of you know, damage done by
the shrack knowledge, hearing loss or anything. No, they're completely intact. Um.
So yeah, again, abbous, but this is not very realistic.
Even the countdowns and we see them depicted in TV
(17:59):
and film aren't being true to the actual time that's passing. Yeah.
And and it goes without saying a lot of times
when you have a really cool explosion in a film,
you end up kind of seeing it in slow motion anyway,
so you get this kind of false idea about what's happening.
You do see like this fireball expanding, and uh and
you know, we just we just don't. Most of us
do not have explosions occurring in our daily life and
(18:21):
have any kind of real, uh you know, real down
to earth understanding about what's happenings as far as the
chemical reaction goes well, and if you did, you probably
would have a pretty strong case of PTSD. Right. Um,
So this, this unfortunately is the reality for some people.
And we were talking about this earlier. Probably one of
the more realistic depictions of explosions is something like the
(18:45):
hurt Locker, where they do quite a bit of really
good camera work to try to bring some sort of
very similitude to what is happening on screen. Yeah, they
did a great job at also making you feel that
bombs and particular really the explosive devices that they were diffusing,
our nasty weapons, these are not these are not fun explosions.
(19:06):
And it gets into that flamethrower are discussing earlier. You know,
there's just there's this huge disconnect between the cool explosions,
the cool weapons that we encounter in our our our
fictional media, versus the generally hillacious reality of their use.
All Right, we are going to take a break. When
we get back, We're going to attend to some listener mail.
(19:35):
All right, we're back. Indeed, let us call over the
robot here and uh and catch up on a little
bit of listener mail we received so many great comments
from you guys and gals, and you know, sadly we
we don't always have time to h to read them
here on the podcast, but today we have changes. Indeed,
all right, we have an email and I'm not gonna
(19:57):
share her name because she did not say whether or
not we could share it, but she's said, hey, guys,
have you ever researched how second hand embarrassment works? Because
I suffer from it pretty bad and I can't find
a lot about it scientifically. And I thought that was
that's really interesting. We have an upcoming episode on our
to do list about shame. And it it also made me
(20:17):
think about empathy. And I know I've mentioned this before,
but there's a book called The Empathy Exams. It's really great.
It's a bunch of essays that deal with empathy and
how it frames our world and even how it affects
our bodies, our health. So guys check it out if
you'd like. All Right, I have another bit of listener
(20:38):
mail here. This one comes from an anonymous listener or
listener that wishes to remain anonymous. Says, Hi, Robert and
Julie stumbled upon your podcast by accident, and I'm glad
that I did. It's quite interesting, to say the least. Recently,
I've been catching up on some episodes and I just
finished listening to the one you did about the zen
of pain, and one thing came to mind. I have chronic,
almost constant pain right next to my right shoulder blade
(20:59):
as well as in my right at hand. It's not
something I enjoy by any means, far from it. However,
the things that seemed to help me with it are
certain exercises uh there. They were prescribed by a professional,
which also caused pain, quite a bit of pain, putting
a lot of pressure on my shoulder blade to the
point of almost crying out with pain. But this helps too.
For some strange reason, I also know a few other
(21:20):
people who feel the same way about some of the
pains they are having. From extremely unscientific observations, it would
seem as if physical pain not only helps us reach
a liberation for from our guilt and other bad feelings,
but also from physical pain. I just thought it was
interesting observation and wanted to share. Maybe you could do
an episode on that too in the future. Keepon podcasting
and have a wonderful day. An anonymous listener from Canada.
(21:44):
I don't know that we had talked about pain in
terms of transformation in a more positive way before, but
that's an interesting angle. Yeah. I mean I have noticed,
like in just doing stretches and stuff, and if I have,
you know, ultimately you know, minor sores going on with
my with my muscles. Like sometimes you end up going
into a position or a stretch that you're you are
(22:07):
causing a bit of tension there, but your the tension
is kind of combating another lingering pain. It's indeed, there's
a there's there's a there's a lot of complexity in
uh in in the the the pain pleasure system. That's
what I think is interesting about yoga. Um not so
much that sometimes you feel pain, and in fact, if
you feel too much pain, you should definitely back off.
(22:27):
But when you're in a pose and you're pushing yourself,
there's a level of discomfort that they yoga teacher will
often say, is your opportunity to dwell with that discomfort
and not keep pushing it away, but sort of meeting it.
And a lot of the discomfort in your in your
body can translate to the discomfort that you feel in
(22:49):
your mind and We've talked about how emotional pain and
physical pain overlap each other quite a bit, so it's
an interesting exercise in and of itself. A one and
to read this next email. This is from Emmily and
she says, Hello, Julian Robert. I wanted to say good
job on the Blue podcast. I listened to it while
I was coloring pages for a comic book. Part of
(23:12):
being a colorist means a lot of color theories, so
I thought you guys touched on the subject very well.
I thought I might add a couple of ideas if
you do a few other color related podcasts. There have
been studies I've seen saying how certain stores or fast
food restaurants will use color to make people hungry but
not wish to stay too long in the restaurant. Also,
don't remember if there's been a podcast on the Man
(23:33):
to Shrimp, But these guys are extraordinary little creatures of color.
Here's a comic I love, and she's talking about oat.
Mail says, and uh, I'd love to point people to
for a little bit of information on them. Also, it's
a fun read. And this is so great. A couple
of things about this one is we are planning a
podcast episode that has to do with sensory manipulation, and
(23:57):
restaurants certainly are within that. It's a really big, uh
tangled topic, so when we unravel a little bit, we
will definitely cart it out for you guys. I want
to let Emily know that we're working on that. The
second thing is the Manda shrimp is great. That the
Oatmeal comic takes this on and talks about how the
manta shrip has sixteen color sensitive receptor cones, which is amazing.
(24:22):
They're they're an entirely different sensory world into themselves. Yeah.
That that oat Mill comic in particular is great. And
if I remember correctly, I think that one followed on
the heels of a really really solid Radio Lab episode
where they talk about the Man of Shrimp. So that
was kind of like the those two elements came together
to really propel the Mantis shrip into its current Internet
(24:44):
celebrity status. Yeah, the Matthew and Mean, the creator of Oatmeal.
He also has this great bit about how the manta
shrimp is one of the most creatively violent creatures on
Earth and I won't give it away. Need to go
check out the comic to see that. All right, here's
a little bit of listener mail from listener Sophia. Sophia says,
I recently found your excellent podcast and was immediately hooked,
starting with the episode about rats. I am in fact
(25:05):
listening to your podcast right now. I was catching up
and I came across the Mad Gasser and mass Hysteria episode, which,
in passing, talked about a phenomenon among school girls at
a boarding school. This phenomenon appeared after Christmas break and
manifested itself in cold like symptoms, fever, trouble walking, etcetera.
You explained how this was caused by the stress of
leaving their families after seeing them for only a short
(25:27):
period of time. I have in fact experienced this myself
last January, right after I had moved back to school
after spending time with my family at Christmas break, I
began experiencing a myriad of unsettling symptoms. I had a
loss of balance, a sensitivity to even weak sunlight to
the point that my pupils would virtually disappear when I
was outside, migrains, chills, and even feigning spells. This lasted
(25:47):
for about a month and a half and in interestingly
only abated when I found out that my mom was
going to visit for my graduation in May. Thank you
for clearing up any a paranoia about my symptoms, as
I was very con concerned about them for a while
and thought it might be some fearful or netherious disease
manifesting itself. Your show is amazing and very informative, and
(26:07):
I will be a listener for a very long time
to come listening faithfully, Sophia. Thanks Sophia, Um, we really
appreciate you sharing with us your own experience, which I
think really underscores that whole um body mind connection here
when it comes to empathy and to emotional contagion. Indeed,
I mean this is definitely one of those subjects that
(26:29):
we we are ultimately approaching as outsider. So anytime we
can get that insider perspective on a topic, we love
it all right. The next one is from Katie. She says,
I don't have a specific request. I just want to
say thanks for the great show. I love how often
gender and sex comes up. I could listen to you
to talk for hours about the amazing biodiversity of sex,
organ sexual reproduction, and sexual behavior and you always connected
(26:52):
so well with the human bias and baggage that comes
along with sex, sexuality and gender. On second thought, maybe
I do have a topic suggestion. Have you've done an
episode on sex changes, not specifically in humans, but in
animals in general. I feel like the subject comes up
but only tangentially in other subjects. It seems like you'd
have fun with the subject. Um. I agree, Yeah, that
(27:13):
sounds like a like an excellent topic to to jump into. Yeah, thanks, Hattie.
We actually have on the house stuff works dot com website,
we have an article called how gender reassignment works. And
we have an article called why some species change sex? So, um,
I certainly think we should put the latter on our
to do list. Indeed, indeed, all right, So there you
(27:36):
have it. If you listener mails to uh satisfy the
robot and uh and hopefully listeners as well, and uh Hey,
if you want to check out more of our podcast
episodes past and hey maybe even future. You want to
check out our videos or blog post links out to
our social media accounts, head on over to stuff to
Blow your Mind dot com. That is our central homepage
and that is where you will find all of our
(27:57):
things in the meantime, unders your thoughts, and you can
do that by emailing us at stuff to blow your mind.
At how stuff works dot com for more on this
and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff works
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