July 16, 2013 • 35 mins
When you need to take down a 20-story building, a wrecking ball won't do. Instead, you'll need to turn to the handful of companies in the world that are capable of safely and successfully bringing down a building by blowing it up.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to you stuff you should know from house Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Josh Clark and there's Charles W. H. Bryant. That means
that this stuff we should know. We know. That's right. Really, yeah,
(00:21):
we are imploding this show today. I'm imploding. Josh is
imploding today. That should be interesting. That's better than exploding,
though I've been doing a little bit of that too. Yeah,
that's no good because that affects those around you. When
you implode, at least you contain the turmoil within. It's like, really,
(00:41):
the you know, don't be selfish, don't explode, we should
probably say, because I guarantee there's people out there who
are like, buildings don't actually implode. Um, you, we should
call this the how buildings how detonating buildings so that
they collapse in on themselves due to gravity. It's not
(01:02):
an actual implosion where everything is sucked in towards the center. Right,
that's a scientific thing that this is not. It's not
happening when the building implodes you. But if you're not
a jerk, then you just call them building implosions. Yeah,
that's the nomenclature. Yeah, that's what people say. I should say,
You're not a jerk if you are up in arms
(01:22):
about that kind of thing. But I challenge you to
email us and tell us what we should really call it,
what what words should stand in them for implosions, and
we will read it out on the later episode. So
considering that we're still around, then that's right. Um, Chuck, Yes,
are you familiar with the city of Detroit. Yes, we
(01:44):
love Detroit. We do love Detroit. Probably my favorite name
of all time. Yeah Detroit. Yeah, human being was named
yeah Detroit. Yeah. Um, I grew up in Toledo, been
to Detroit plenty of times. Love the Tigers, yeah, Um.
Sparky Anderson was a great man. I'm a Matt Stafford.
Place for the Lions. Oh yeah, that's another big Detroit link.
(02:06):
Christ loved the Red Wings when I was a kid,
the Pistons. When you hear me talk smack about Detroit,
I'm joking lighting up, like, I find it extraordinarily satisfying
when people write it was like you need off Detroit,
and it's like, well, you need to listen to all
the episodes of the podcast. I think it'd be funny.
I always thought if we ever went to Detroit, which
I think we should at some point for an event
(02:26):
that like people would be like awesome, we know you
guys love this, and then five percent when just they
would come and sit there with their arms crossed, like
you got a lot of make it up to do. Yeah,
what's ironic is that if you switch those ratios, you'd
have the number of people who live in houses with
roofs in Detroit and the number of people who don't.
(02:48):
So Also, one of my favorite things about Detroit is
a website called Forgotten Detroit dot com. Yeah, that's a
good one. I've mentioned it a few times. It bears repeating.
There is a website called Forgotten Detroit dot com. And
I get the impression that the guy was maybe German,
Austrian or Dutch, and he's obviously knows what he's talking
about with architecture, because it comes through when he's documenting
(03:10):
the building and talking about it. But he wandered around Detroit.
Whoever made this website wandered around Detroit and did a
lot of urban exploration of abandoned buildings, photo documented building
after building after building, went back and found original schematics,
wrote about the history, and just made this exhaustive web
website called forgotten Detroit dot com. And the reason why
(03:33):
it's so awesome, in addition to the fact that it's
just abandoned building photos, which are like the greatest thing
on the planet, uh, is that he documented buildings that
are not there any longer. A lot of them have
been torn down and some of them have been imploded
for lack of a better word, Yeah, just to make
(03:54):
room for something better and bigger. Yeah, to take care
of the blight to ye, just like, yeah, this is
been here for too long with broken windows, right, and
no one's been in it occupied it since, you know,
So let's get rid of this. Instead of a slow
demolition over the course of fifty years by vandals, let's
just take care of it now exactly. So that's how
(04:16):
that site ties to this episode. Very nice. Okay, that's good.
That's a good old fashioned intro. Thanks man. So, like
we said, it is, gravity is really what's going on here.
It's a pretty simple concept. What they're doing when you
implode a building or let's this is general demolition basically
up front, is they're removing the support structures at very
(04:38):
specific points to cause them to fall down one upon
the other from the top down. And actually, you know
you start at the bottom, but it will still fall
from the top down, you know what I'm saying. Yeah,
And um, this is usually for specific height buildings, like
if you've got a five story building, you're probably gonna
bring in a wrecking ball, some X excavators and a
(05:00):
guy with a little black lunch pail exactly who's gonna
sit on an ibam and eat it? Exactly? Uh? And
anything over maybe eight, you're gonna start to get into
the concept of of using demolition from the heights generally.
This article said, I don't know if there's a rule
of thumb height. Yeah, I guess what the key here? Safety?
(05:22):
You want to do it safely. So the key is
the buildings, Like where is it situated? Is it right
in the middle of an apartment complex? Then you may
want to implode because you don't want this thing falling
left or right. If you've got nothing around there but
empty parking lot. You're right, maybe a twenty story building
could be fine because it's just gonna fall in that
abandoned parking lot with graphs going through Italy and who
(05:44):
cares about that? Exactly? Uh? All right, So let's get
into this. The first thing that you have to do
is see if you can dig up the original blueprints
for this thing. They may exist, in which case you're
all set and you can you know, if you know
what you're looking at, you can see where their support
structures are and where you need to kind of start
your your journey here to implode this thing. Even better,
(06:05):
if you can find the architect, the principal architect on
that job, he or she may remember some things about
that job that are like didn't show up in the
bloodprints or little little foibles that the building HAPs. And
be gentle with them. They may have a tear in
their eye about this whole prospect. You know, don't just
bang on the door and say, hey, we're gonna tell
your building down, like where is it strong? You know,
(06:27):
your crowning achievement exactly the only building you ever made. Uh,
So that's just some personal advice. Be gentle with these people. Uh,
they're gonna um draw up their plan of attack based
on experience. And we should point out there's not a
lot of companies that do this. It's not there's not
five hundred demolition companies that implode tall buildings. There's like
(06:48):
a twenty or so no. And here's the reason why
it's very difficult for a young up and comer to
get into the demolition business with their own company because
it's so dangerous, yes, and risky not just to human life,
but to other surrounding buildings. Areas Like insurance companies are
(07:08):
all nervous watching this. That you build a track record
of carrying out building implosions, and you have, you're on
easy Street. That's what people hire you based on. Is
your your successful track record? Yeah, and trust me, we
know Josh and Chuck Implosions, LLC. Did not. We didn't
get any calls. It was a bad We wasted a
(07:29):
lot of a lot of money with that Kickstarter campaign. Well,
your mom called, but she was just trying to pump
us up exactly, Honey, you're good enough. You can empload
this this thing. So they draw on their experience. Um. Sometimes,
if they don't have the blueprints, or if it's a
little more complicated, they may even do three D computer
model and try it out ahead of time. Yeah. I
(07:51):
would guess that that's pretty standard these days. Yeah you
think so. Yeah. Um, I I read this awesome article
about people who I think it was maybe be wired
people who salvage huge huge like um ships that haven't
sunk yet, that are but are about to these people
like figure out how to keep them from sinking, and
(08:12):
um even in that case, like they'll have some some
guy fly with them and build a computer three D
model on the on the fly. I think everyone's just
get playing with three D models, right exactly, you know.
But so I'm sure if they're doing that to like
salvage tankers, they're doing it for like demolition too, you know,
if for no other reason than as children we all
(08:34):
love to build destroy models. I get to press in
her next. Um. So, like we said, we're cover implosions
in a second. If you don't have to implode, and
you can just knock this thing over in an empty
parking lot, you're gonna do it kind of like you
would a tree. You're gonna if it's you want it
to fall north, you're gonna weaken it and blasted on
the north side. And sometimes you might even have cables
(08:54):
pulling it that way, just like you would that oak
tree in your front yard. Pretty basic stuff. If there
is a bunch of junk around there that you have
to protect you need it to follow in its own footprint,
then you're gonna have to go the implosion route, right,
which is kind of cool. I think everyone likes watching
these videos. Oh yeah, that's a really fun way to
spend the day. Yeah, And there are enthusiast even as
(09:16):
we learned in this article, that get a little too
close sometimes to see these things in person. Like building
implosions are like the mic rib of the demolition world.
Like it's got groupies and like people go around the country.
Doesn't happen that often. You gotta take it while it's there. Um,
and it could kill you. Yeah, so um, if you're imploding.
(09:39):
They set these blasters and they look at the building
basically as a series of towers instead of a one building.
And what I gathered from this is that each tower
quote unquote is like a support structure. Is that is
that right? Yeah? Like, if you're looking at just like
a um rectangular building, yeah, I would guess you probably
(10:00):
break it up into four quadrants and then go after
the support structures in each quadrant, and then the aim
is to bring them all down towards the center. So,
like you said, if you wanted to bring a building
down to the north. You put some blasts, some charges
on the north side to weaken it. Well, if you
had four quadrants that you were trying to bring down
(10:21):
towards the center, you would weaken the side closest to
the quadrant and then have them all fall in towards
the center and then collapse the building downward, right. Or
another option is to actually weaken the center of the building,
and uh, that would cause everything to fall in word
as well. Yeah, but if you if you broke it
into quadrants and then collapse everything towards the center, you
(10:42):
would want to time it because you don't want everything
just collapsing towards the middle and just holding one another up.
You know that that's theays the blasters worst nightmare. Then
you have the Transamerica building, Oh yeah, exactly in that
triangular Yeah, at the in San Francisco. Yeah. Um, So
let's say, for example, you have a twenty story building.
(11:04):
You're not just gonna up set charges all on the
first floor and I hope that gravity does its work.
You're gonna set charges on the first floor and then
maybe like some on the twelfth floor, and then maybe
some on the six floor. Yeah, and typically like just
a couple or just blowing up the first and second
floor and then adding just a little bit of gravity. Uh, well,
(11:26):
that will demolish the whole building. But you're doing the
twelfth and say the fifteenth floor to to kind of
break up the material that's coming down the rubble, to
make clean up a little easier, right, because you know,
you watch the video on YouTube and it takes five
seconds and then you click on you know, guy gets
kicked in the groin or sports bloopers next, and then
(11:49):
you don't think about the fact that, yeah, guy's gotta
clean the stuff up, right exactly? You want small pieces,
is my long winded way of saying that. But in
the blasters like, hey, I put some charges on floor
twelve and fifteen, you can thank me later. In the
cleanup guts thanks and the I told you to thank
me later, he says kind of I'll trade you an
(12:09):
apple for that tuna sandwich. He's like, you're kidding me.
My wife's tuna. Give me the apple and bane and
that cookie. And then the third one comes up and
he's like, hey, you got the mots. Remember those ads?
Remember like a little little kid motsa apple sauce like
the little single served ones. There's a kid who looked
(12:30):
like his name should be Spike or something and be like, hey,
you got the mots. It was a really dumbad campaign.
A bully. Yeah, he looked like a bully, but I
don't think he was actually supposed to be a bully.
Weird casting decision. Yeah, man, I didn't realize. I was
walking around with that one, and I thought you were
about to say, and that kid grew up to be
(12:51):
shy la buff Okay, where were we? Okay? Was that
a Paul Harvey reference? No? No, So they've got their
plan in place, that the detonators, this blasting company has
the plan in place, and now they have to actually
prep the building. Yes, first step in prep is um
they wash it. Well, they don't watch it. They survey
(13:13):
the site, they walk through the building several times because
you don't want to just make a cursory glance. You
want to do your due diligence. Well, you need to
clean everything out of there. Even before that, like some
crew has come through and gotten all the drywall and
all that stuff out, Like everything you want to as
empty as possible, take out any non low bearing walls.
You want to make it easier to tumble this thing.
(13:34):
Sometimes I'll even uh cut into uh some of these
support structures to give it a bit of a head start,
hit it with sledgehammers. Yeah, release a little uh pin
up frustration, you know, exactly. So then the blasting crew
comes through, is making note of all this stuff. That's right,
because they've already looked at the blueprints. But blueprints are
(13:55):
those are just pictures for college boys. You want to
get in there and really see what's going on firsthand. Yeah, yeah, exactly,
because the blueprint, I mean, you know, there could be derivations.
You never know. Um So, then once you have everything
cleaned out, maybe weekend, some of the support columns with sledgehammers.
It's sort of it's not teetering, but mentally it's teetering.
(14:17):
It's beginning to think about teetering. The building knows like
a boy, time to come down. My my time is
limited here. I was accounting achievement once. Um So, then
the blasters come in. They start loading these columns with explosives,
um dynamite. If you're using concrete, it's a good way
to go. Um They drill these holes, they bore holes.
(14:38):
It's really kind of rudimentary and stuff explosives into them. Yeah,
and we should say also, um, it's not just a
guessing game. In most demolitions, from what we understand, they
will say I picked the support column, maybe probably up
on like the twentieth floor something like that, rather than
down low, and they will blast it. They'll attach some
(14:59):
explosive to and do like a test blast. Yeah. I
don't think they're trying to blow it up. They're just
trying to They're trying to do a small charge to
see how much damage that small charge does and then
they can predict how much a larger how much amount
of a larger charge they will need to use to
like blow the columns up right, or they might blow
a column, but they'll wrap it in like chain link
(15:21):
fence and a shield to kind of keep it in
place and so it doesn't go everywhere and you know
hurt people obviously. And um, what they want to do
is and this is covering to know. They want to
use the minimum amount of explosives that it takes to
bring this thing down. They don't just go in there
willy nilly and just say loaded up boys. You know,
(15:41):
they want to use the smallest amount to still get
the job done exactly, because if they use too much,
then you've got a bunch of chunks flying everywhere and
there's damage the surrounding buildings and people get hit in
the heads, bad news, lawsuits. Used too little, you've got
that building still kind of standing, and that's extremely dangerous
as well, because you have to bring in a crew
to knock it down like you would a lower, smaller building. Um,
(16:04):
but it's a tall building that's just kind of half standing,
and it's it's like a Jenga tower. Now, yeah, that's
no good. No, that's very dangerous. So you want to
use the minimum amount, put the right amount. Yeah, Well
that's one reason the World Trade Center was so dangerous afterward,
because it obviously it wasn't some controlled implosion, unless you're
(16:28):
Charlie Sheen and you you know, get on the internet
and say that it's a government conspiracy. Well he was
an uncontrolled implosion himself. Wasn't exactly. Uh, but you know,
nine level is so dangerous to clean up because it
wasn't done on purpose, so they didn't know what was
weak and what wasn't and it was pretty precarious getting
(16:48):
in there and trying to clean anything out, super dangerous work.
So uh stating obvious, Well we've got the test plast done. Yeah,
we've got them. Now they're going around and they're they're
drilling bore holes. Let's say we're doing a concrete building.
So you got your dynamite. Yeah, And what is dynamite
is just basically like a kind of a paper material
soaked in combustible, highly explosive liquid chemicals. Yep. That it
(17:15):
takes actually am an explosion to explode dynamite. So you
you might have a fuse. I think if you're demolishing
and building in N two, you've got a fuse going
to the stick of dynamite. But in between the fuse
and and the dynamite is a blasting cap. It's a
small charge of explosive material that's lit by a fuse.
That's right, it's a primary charge. And the point of
(17:37):
using dynamite and why you want to use it in
um concrete structure column um is that it expands, creates
a bunch of hot gas all of a sudden, really quickly,
and when it's doing that inside a concrete column, it
explodes the concrete column into rubble. Now that will work
(17:59):
for concrete. But you got yourself a steel structure, you're
gonna have to use something else called r d X.
That's right. And I'm not even gonna say the long name.
I'll try. I don't want to try it, all right,
you're ready cyclo, try methylene, trying naitramin. Damn, dude. I
stumbled a little bit in the middle, but I still
(18:19):
got it done. No, that was that was perfect. I
mean you look at it and it looks like the alphabet.
It's such a long word, you know. UM. But yeah,
r d X will call it r d X, and
that's what you want to use if you have steel
supports and UM. If dynamite explodes at a rate of
about six dred tons per square inch, r d x
um explodes at about twenty seven thousand ft per second.
(18:44):
That is like some serious stuff. And you're not exploding
steel because you can't explode steel. What they're actually doing
there is they are cutting through the steel, splitting it
in half thereby weakening it. Yeah, it's like um using
a lub or a scalpel. Yeah, exactly. Uh. To easy
(19:04):
to one of these, though, like you said, you need
a blasting cap. That primary charge the fuse, and the
fuse is just explosive junk inside of a chord, like
when you see like the old timey fuses, you know,
like a sparkler. That's explosive material just packed inside like
you know, a tight chord. Right, And the whole point
of the fuse is it's a delays the blast. So
(19:27):
depending on how you want to sequence your blast, UM,
you're gonna use varying links of fuses. Again, if it's
nineteen o two, that's right, Um, And that fuse eventually
will reach the point where it sets off the primary
charge and that's where the action happens. UM. These days,
they use electrical detonators mainly, UM, probably exclusively, don't you
think I would think so? And that is, you know,
(19:50):
sort of like a fuse, except it's just it's a
lead line made of electrical wire, or it is electrical wire. Um,
You've got your debtonator end where the wire surrounded by
this explosive material and then that's attached directly to the
primary charge and then the main explosives and they you know,
they have some sort of battery device heats up the
wire and eventually it'll get hot enough to set off
(20:12):
that junk on the detonator end sets off the primary
charge triggers the main show, right, Like you know the
old plunger that they use like in in Bugs Bunny
cartoons to blow up stuff. You mean when the when
the mocking bird lands on Italy behind coyotes back and
it slowly depresses. Um. Apparently that is an electrical um
(20:36):
detonator where you would have a charge going and then
you press the plunger and it would release that charge. Um.
That's the same thing, except we we don't use that
old timing box and plunger any longer. Um, But it's
still the same change. It's very gratifying. But yeah, I
would imagine. I think I wonder if they have fake ones,
just sort of like a ribbon cutting like that you
(20:59):
like connect your I phone. Well that actually works though,
well I'm sure this works to know, but if you
just have a fake when you like the owner of
the company is very old school. We have to set
this up for him so you can push it down. Yeah,
he loves giant scissors. Yeah, but no, I mean, like
maybe there's like the little uh, the little remote control
is in the box and when you press the plunge
on it pokes the button and the owner of the
(21:20):
company is like, yeah, exactly, do it again. Wow, that's funny.
I guess we're both three year olds a part um. Okay,
So they have to control this sequence sometimes, like maybe
they don't want the first floor in the twelfth floor
going off at the same time. Maybe there's a delay
so they can actually have a delay in the fuse
(21:41):
areas where the fuse burned slower than others, right, or
you just like I said, you use longer lengths of fuse,
you know, um, but yeah, you can put a a
little you can put say, uh, you could charge a
fuse and then add a little extra fuse between the
original fuse that you just delivered the charge too, and
(22:03):
like a delay fuse and the blasting cap and then yeah,
you can time it, and you want to time it again.
You don't want everything falling down on top of itself
and ending up supporting itself. You want like columns coming
down and then columns coming down all on top of
each other and they're pushing one another down. Remember in
(22:25):
the World Trade Center episode that we did it, it's
called pancaking. It's where the rubble on one floor hits
the rubble on another floor with enough force that that
floor comes down and it again and again and again. Yes,
and it picks up speed as well. That's right. And
you know once that happens, like there's there's no going back. Yeah,
(22:47):
and sadly, as we all saw a nine eleven. And
if you've ever watched the internet videos, it only takes
a few seconds and it's done. Yeah, it's very quick process.
Apparently people are surprised by how fast happens, Like who
people who have never watched these videos. It says in
the article that the people people, it's the one thing
they're surprised by most is how quickly a building collapse.
(23:11):
Show me these people. I love it when I think
when people write these articles like that, they just sort
of say I was surprised. So people are full Yeah
to do in journalism? Um, all right, So let's say
you're gonna take down a building in a neighborhood. You
might want to hire a consulting firm to come in.
And the idea I get is that they sort of
(23:31):
document the process, maybe work with the neighbors, um in
a little pr sense to assure them that everything's gonna
be okay, Yeah, they're gonna film it, of course, because
you can learn a lot from watching it. Yeah, not
only put it on YouTube, Yeah, you can put it
on YouTube, but also like that's also how one of
the ways you're going to figure out how to take
(23:51):
down the building you're working on now is going back
and looking at how you've taken down similar buildings. So
the owner would come in and say, hey, pull the
the bank in Houston from eight. That one was perfect
and it looks just like this one. Yeah. Um, so
you've called in your consulting firm, they've done all their
due diligence, they're working before things hit go time. You're gonna,
(24:14):
of course do a really thorough check to make sure
no one's in there. Um, you don't want to. Like
in Heathers, remember that movie, Hea, there's uh there's a
riveting Magnum p I episode where Magnum and Higgins are
in not only in a building it's about to be demolished,
trapped in an elevator in a building. That's about it.
It was almost unwatchable, it was so tense. I don't
(24:34):
remember that one. Yeah, and Heathers, I think the dad
was an implosion expert and like killed the mother that way, right.
I don't remember that because you said something about Christians
later since about yeah mom, I saw a mom in
the window or something, and oh yeah that's right. Yeah yeah,
I think the mom kill herself was the implication. Oh
by being in there. Yeah, I love my dead gay son.
(24:55):
Yeah that was man, that's a good movie. That's a
great line. Um, so they've calculated the perimeter obviously as well.
Not only going to check inside the building, you're also
gonna to make sure that you have a safety zone
around the thing allowed implosion enthusiasts like to sneak a
little closer, shaking his head in dismay. Right now, why
(25:18):
just do you have a computer? Do you have access
to the internet. I guess there's nothing like seeing it
in person, maybe you know, Oh yeah I can. I
can understand people who go around and like check that out,
but to get closer, to get within the blast zone,
which has been carefully calculated by the blasting company. And
then they have said this is a dangerous area. Yeah,
(25:42):
this is a safe area. You can see it from
the safe area, so just stay in the safe area.
Uh So what you want is a very controlled situation. Um,
you don't want, like we said, over over blasting. You
don't want underblasting. You want to do it just right. Um.
The impression I get is times out of a hundred,
(26:02):
it goes according to oil and it's just you know,
it works out great, No one gets hurt. You might
blast out a few windows of businesses around there to
be expected. Yeah, of course with this kind of stuff
if if you're close enough to it. So wait a minute. Now,
there's been a ten minutes siren, a five minutes siren. Yeah,
the air is totally still. It to crisp day. This
(26:24):
guy is blue, Maybe a bird flies by. You have
the higher up, Michael Buffer to do your ten eight countdown?
Who's that? He's the looks get ready to room d
D D D d D. Do you know which money
he gets paid for doing that? I imagine a lot.
So you get the one minute siren and then the countdown.
(26:45):
That's right. If you're using an electrical detonator, you your
guy has had his finger or her finger on the
charge button, and it's very much like charging a camera
to the camera flash. Yeah, you can't stop one after
the other. Just gotta build up that charge it's like
anybody's seen Um Silence to the Lambs at the end
when Jodie Foster is being approached by Buffalo Bill, one
(27:07):
of the greatest. Yeah, but remember that high pitched sound.
That's the camera flash charging again. That's what you're doing
with the electrical Debtonary's got the finger on the charge
and then they get to one and you press fire
and the electrical charge is released and the building goes kaboom.
That's right. Have you ever played the camera flash game? No,
(27:28):
I need to say this because it's really one of
the more fun things you can do, and I don't
think it can hurt you. I'm gonna look this up after.
I think it's very safe. Go. Uh. If you have
an old fashioned camera flash that you can charge and
pop off like that, get into a pitch black room
with your buddy, you know, find where your faces are,
so you're a couple of feet apart like we are,
and UM point the flash towards your own face, have
(27:52):
them looking at you, and you pop it off and
immediately you get this perfect black and white in you know,
it registers with your brain and you can see it.
It's like right in front of you and it's really
really cool and creepy. My brother and I used to
do it all the time. It's a lot of fun.
So you get a perfect image of the other person's face. Yeah,
(28:13):
Like they're pointing it like I would point it at
my face. You're looking at me when the complete dark. Uh,
And I popped the thing off and then you see
like this, weird It's almost like a lithograph of my face.
It's very very cool. Did you know that if you
if you write that, that ultimately damages your eyes permanently.
I don't think so. If you if you take a
flashlight and you look like you hold the flashlight up
(28:37):
to your face with the beam pointing away from you,
and you look right over the top of it, like
right over your knuckles, and just basically down the beam
and just shine it around on the ground, you can
see spider's eyes. I'm not sure what that means. You
can see the eyes of little spiders that you could
never see in the dark, but you can see their
eyes reflecting back at you. It's really neat and unnerving,
(28:59):
but there you you get you all of a sudden
start to grasp just how many spiders there are around
you at all times, so just like on your kitchen floor, yeah,
or outside better wow? Yeah, I mean you just just
take a take a flashlight and hold it up to
your face and just look down the barrel of the
flashlight under the ground between that and just shining a
flashlight on the angle of reflection. It doesn't work. You
(29:23):
have to look right, and I'm not This isn't like
an old listen snipe hunting or anything I've done to myself.
Like you, you just look down the barrel of the
flash lighting and check out the little spider's eyes looking back.
It's terrifying. It is. It's surprising it for it's not
like that, but it's it goes from like not seeing
anything all of a sudden you're like you realize, okay,
(29:44):
there's a spider and look there's another spider. And I
didn't even realize that I could do this. And they're
green and tiny to all the ones I've ever seen
with little green eyes. Totally trying that tonight. And if
I'm telling you it doesn't work, don't be like Josh
got me, Like, just keep trying and just the angle
or something. You'll you'll see it. Okay, boy, that was
(30:05):
along us sorry about that. Um, so we've we've detonated,
you've detonated. The building has imploded. It's gonna send a
huge dust cloud up, as you've seen on uh YouTube,
as we've said two thousand times, and uh it may
be a bit of a pain for the neighbors. But um,
they will argue, the blaster guys will argue that it
(30:25):
beats like a month of slow demolition, like this cloud
will dissipate pretty soon and then it's gone forever. Apparently,
if you have allergies in the area, they say, just
go away for the day and when you come back
it'll probably be fine. So, Josh, I want to be
a blaster? Can I go to Blast University? Yes, it's
(30:45):
uh Blasters, right, it's an adjunct of Brown University. Um,
and uh, you just go and roll there. They'll let
anybody in. It's free and you'll be a blaster the
day you get out after two weeks of training. Bamn.
Not there is no such program at all, no organized school. Um.
The best way to get involved in this business is
(31:06):
to get a job. Um, probably sweeping up I would imagine,
at first for one of these companies, and work your
way to the top. And um, like we said, there's
only about twenty well established ones in the world or
in the United States, probably in the world. And uh,
you know, work your way up if you're into it,
and maybe one day you can start Josh and Chuck
(31:28):
Demolition LLC. Maybe, but yeah, you probably do better to
try and warm your way through the company. Plus you
will also owe it's royalties if you name your company
Josh and Chuck Demolition, LLC. That's right. Okay, well, I
guess it's implotions, right, I got nothing else. We nailed
that one, didn't we, I think so. I hope you
(31:49):
guys didn't skip this. Obviously you didn't if you're hearing
me say this right now, and if not, then they
never knew. But good for you for for getting into it,
because it's pretty neat stuff. Uh. If you want to
learn more about building implosions, you can type building implosions
in the search part how stuff works dot com. Uh.
And that means, of course it's time for message break
(32:15):
listener mail please listen to mail time. Okay, I'm gonna
call this, um. Leeching still happens real. Yeah, So this
is from Annie. His husband leeches. He works for the
Mayo Clinic. So this is legit. Well, what does he
(32:36):
do for the movie? He sneaks leeches into people's beds. Hey, guys,
just listen to the E c T podcast. At the end,
you guess what would be the next archaic medical procedure
to make a comeback, and you specifically mentioned leeching. News
for you, leeching is still totally happening. Don't call her comeback.
My husband isn't. Uh, boy? What is he in? Otor
(32:59):
oh Oto laryng Jola jollagist Oto laryngologist. Never heard of that.
He does a surgery on patients that need facial tumors removed.
I would call myself a facial tumor remover LLC. That's right, uh.
And they take tissue from other places on the body
(33:20):
to repair the site. And if the flap doesn't have
good circulation after the repair, they will stick leeches on
it to get the blood flowing and um. The medical
grade leeches are huge and greenish and they fall off
when they're full, so the nurses have to keep an
eye on them in the hospital. Isn't that crazy? I
had no idea that that went on, honestly, So that's
(33:42):
still going on, and she ends by saying, so gross
leeches and more love Annie, that was a great listener mail. Yeah,
short and sweet and who knew good one? Annie. Uh,
if we have mentioned something that's sweet, thought was done
but is still going on, we want to hear about that.
(34:04):
We want to know what's going on basically, So tweet
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You would direct that email to Stuff podcast at Discovery
(34:25):
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(34:50):
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up now.
Welcome to you stuff you should know from house Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Josh Clark and there's Charles W. H. Bryant. That means
that this stuff we should know. We know. That's right. Really, yeah,
(00:21):
we are imploding this show today. I'm imploding. Josh is
imploding today. That should be interesting. That's better than exploding,
though I've been doing a little bit of that too. Yeah,
that's no good because that affects those around you. When
you implode, at least you contain the turmoil within. It's like, really,
(00:41):
the you know, don't be selfish, don't explode, we should
probably say, because I guarantee there's people out there who
are like, buildings don't actually implode. Um, you, we should
call this the how buildings how detonating buildings so that
they collapse in on themselves due to gravity. It's not
(01:02):
an actual implosion where everything is sucked in towards the center. Right,
that's a scientific thing that this is not. It's not
happening when the building implodes you. But if you're not
a jerk, then you just call them building implosions. Yeah,
that's the nomenclature. Yeah, that's what people say. I should say,
You're not a jerk if you are up in arms
(01:22):
about that kind of thing. But I challenge you to
email us and tell us what we should really call it,
what what words should stand in them for implosions, and
we will read it out on the later episode. So
considering that we're still around, then that's right. Um, Chuck, Yes,
are you familiar with the city of Detroit. Yes, we
(01:44):
love Detroit. We do love Detroit. Probably my favorite name
of all time. Yeah Detroit. Yeah, human being was named
yeah Detroit. Yeah. Um, I grew up in Toledo, been
to Detroit plenty of times. Love the Tigers, yeah, Um.
Sparky Anderson was a great man. I'm a Matt Stafford.
Place for the Lions. Oh yeah, that's another big Detroit link.
(02:06):
Christ loved the Red Wings when I was a kid,
the Pistons. When you hear me talk smack about Detroit,
I'm joking lighting up, like, I find it extraordinarily satisfying
when people write it was like you need off Detroit,
and it's like, well, you need to listen to all
the episodes of the podcast. I think it'd be funny.
I always thought if we ever went to Detroit, which
I think we should at some point for an event
(02:26):
that like people would be like awesome, we know you
guys love this, and then five percent when just they
would come and sit there with their arms crossed, like
you got a lot of make it up to do. Yeah,
what's ironic is that if you switch those ratios, you'd
have the number of people who live in houses with
roofs in Detroit and the number of people who don't.
(02:48):
So Also, one of my favorite things about Detroit is
a website called Forgotten Detroit dot com. Yeah, that's a
good one. I've mentioned it a few times. It bears repeating.
There is a website called Forgotten Detroit dot com. And
I get the impression that the guy was maybe German,
Austrian or Dutch, and he's obviously knows what he's talking
about with architecture, because it comes through when he's documenting
(03:10):
the building and talking about it. But he wandered around Detroit.
Whoever made this website wandered around Detroit and did a
lot of urban exploration of abandoned buildings, photo documented building
after building after building, went back and found original schematics,
wrote about the history, and just made this exhaustive web
website called forgotten Detroit dot com. And the reason why
(03:33):
it's so awesome, in addition to the fact that it's
just abandoned building photos, which are like the greatest thing
on the planet, uh, is that he documented buildings that
are not there any longer. A lot of them have
been torn down and some of them have been imploded
for lack of a better word, Yeah, just to make
(03:54):
room for something better and bigger. Yeah, to take care
of the blight to ye, just like, yeah, this is
been here for too long with broken windows, right, and
no one's been in it occupied it since, you know,
So let's get rid of this. Instead of a slow
demolition over the course of fifty years by vandals, let's
just take care of it now exactly. So that's how
(04:16):
that site ties to this episode. Very nice. Okay, that's good.
That's a good old fashioned intro. Thanks man. So, like
we said, it is, gravity is really what's going on here.
It's a pretty simple concept. What they're doing when you
implode a building or let's this is general demolition basically
up front, is they're removing the support structures at very
(04:38):
specific points to cause them to fall down one upon
the other from the top down. And actually, you know
you start at the bottom, but it will still fall
from the top down, you know what I'm saying. Yeah,
And um, this is usually for specific height buildings, like
if you've got a five story building, you're probably gonna
bring in a wrecking ball, some X excavators and a
(05:00):
guy with a little black lunch pail exactly who's gonna
sit on an ibam and eat it? Exactly? Uh? And
anything over maybe eight, you're gonna start to get into
the concept of of using demolition from the heights generally.
This article said, I don't know if there's a rule
of thumb height. Yeah, I guess what the key here? Safety?
(05:22):
You want to do it safely. So the key is
the buildings, Like where is it situated? Is it right
in the middle of an apartment complex? Then you may
want to implode because you don't want this thing falling
left or right. If you've got nothing around there but
empty parking lot. You're right, maybe a twenty story building
could be fine because it's just gonna fall in that
abandoned parking lot with graphs going through Italy and who
(05:44):
cares about that? Exactly? Uh? All right, So let's get
into this. The first thing that you have to do
is see if you can dig up the original blueprints
for this thing. They may exist, in which case you're
all set and you can you know, if you know
what you're looking at, you can see where their support
structures are and where you need to kind of start
your your journey here to implode this thing. Even better,
(06:05):
if you can find the architect, the principal architect on
that job, he or she may remember some things about
that job that are like didn't show up in the
bloodprints or little little foibles that the building HAPs. And
be gentle with them. They may have a tear in
their eye about this whole prospect. You know, don't just
bang on the door and say, hey, we're gonna tell
your building down, like where is it strong? You know,
(06:27):
your crowning achievement exactly the only building you ever made. Uh,
So that's just some personal advice. Be gentle with these people. Uh,
they're gonna um draw up their plan of attack based
on experience. And we should point out there's not a
lot of companies that do this. It's not there's not
five hundred demolition companies that implode tall buildings. There's like
(06:48):
a twenty or so no. And here's the reason why
it's very difficult for a young up and comer to
get into the demolition business with their own company because
it's so dangerous, yes, and risky not just to human life,
but to other surrounding buildings. Areas Like insurance companies are
(07:08):
all nervous watching this. That you build a track record
of carrying out building implosions, and you have, you're on
easy Street. That's what people hire you based on. Is
your your successful track record? Yeah, and trust me, we
know Josh and Chuck Implosions, LLC. Did not. We didn't
get any calls. It was a bad We wasted a
(07:29):
lot of a lot of money with that Kickstarter campaign. Well,
your mom called, but she was just trying to pump
us up exactly, Honey, you're good enough. You can empload
this this thing. So they draw on their experience. Um. Sometimes,
if they don't have the blueprints, or if it's a
little more complicated, they may even do three D computer
model and try it out ahead of time. Yeah. I
(07:51):
would guess that that's pretty standard these days. Yeah you
think so. Yeah. Um, I I read this awesome article
about people who I think it was maybe be wired
people who salvage huge huge like um ships that haven't
sunk yet, that are but are about to these people
like figure out how to keep them from sinking, and
(08:12):
um even in that case, like they'll have some some
guy fly with them and build a computer three D
model on the on the fly. I think everyone's just
get playing with three D models, right exactly, you know.
But so I'm sure if they're doing that to like
salvage tankers, they're doing it for like demolition too, you know,
if for no other reason than as children we all
(08:34):
love to build destroy models. I get to press in
her next. Um. So, like we said, we're cover implosions
in a second. If you don't have to implode, and
you can just knock this thing over in an empty
parking lot, you're gonna do it kind of like you
would a tree. You're gonna if it's you want it
to fall north, you're gonna weaken it and blasted on
the north side. And sometimes you might even have cables
(08:54):
pulling it that way, just like you would that oak
tree in your front yard. Pretty basic stuff. If there
is a bunch of junk around there that you have
to protect you need it to follow in its own footprint,
then you're gonna have to go the implosion route, right,
which is kind of cool. I think everyone likes watching
these videos. Oh yeah, that's a really fun way to
spend the day. Yeah, And there are enthusiast even as
(09:16):
we learned in this article, that get a little too
close sometimes to see these things in person. Like building
implosions are like the mic rib of the demolition world.
Like it's got groupies and like people go around the country.
Doesn't happen that often. You gotta take it while it's there. Um,
and it could kill you. Yeah, so um, if you're imploding.
(09:39):
They set these blasters and they look at the building
basically as a series of towers instead of a one building.
And what I gathered from this is that each tower
quote unquote is like a support structure. Is that is
that right? Yeah? Like, if you're looking at just like
a um rectangular building, yeah, I would guess you probably
(10:00):
break it up into four quadrants and then go after
the support structures in each quadrant, and then the aim
is to bring them all down towards the center. So,
like you said, if you wanted to bring a building
down to the north. You put some blasts, some charges
on the north side to weaken it. Well, if you
had four quadrants that you were trying to bring down
(10:21):
towards the center, you would weaken the side closest to
the quadrant and then have them all fall in towards
the center and then collapse the building downward, right. Or
another option is to actually weaken the center of the building,
and uh, that would cause everything to fall in word
as well. Yeah, but if you if you broke it
into quadrants and then collapse everything towards the center, you
(10:42):
would want to time it because you don't want everything
just collapsing towards the middle and just holding one another up.
You know that that's theays the blasters worst nightmare. Then
you have the Transamerica building, Oh yeah, exactly in that
triangular Yeah, at the in San Francisco. Yeah. Um, So
let's say, for example, you have a twenty story building.
(11:04):
You're not just gonna up set charges all on the
first floor and I hope that gravity does its work.
You're gonna set charges on the first floor and then
maybe like some on the twelfth floor, and then maybe
some on the six floor. Yeah, and typically like just
a couple or just blowing up the first and second
floor and then adding just a little bit of gravity. Uh, well,
(11:26):
that will demolish the whole building. But you're doing the
twelfth and say the fifteenth floor to to kind of
break up the material that's coming down the rubble, to
make clean up a little easier, right, because you know,
you watch the video on YouTube and it takes five
seconds and then you click on you know, guy gets
kicked in the groin or sports bloopers next, and then
(11:49):
you don't think about the fact that, yeah, guy's gotta
clean the stuff up, right exactly? You want small pieces,
is my long winded way of saying that. But in
the blasters like, hey, I put some charges on floor
twelve and fifteen, you can thank me later. In the
cleanup guts thanks and the I told you to thank
me later, he says kind of I'll trade you an
(12:09):
apple for that tuna sandwich. He's like, you're kidding me.
My wife's tuna. Give me the apple and bane and
that cookie. And then the third one comes up and
he's like, hey, you got the mots. Remember those ads?
Remember like a little little kid motsa apple sauce like
the little single served ones. There's a kid who looked
(12:30):
like his name should be Spike or something and be like, hey,
you got the mots. It was a really dumbad campaign.
A bully. Yeah, he looked like a bully, but I
don't think he was actually supposed to be a bully.
Weird casting decision. Yeah, man, I didn't realize. I was
walking around with that one, and I thought you were
about to say, and that kid grew up to be
(12:51):
shy la buff Okay, where were we? Okay? Was that
a Paul Harvey reference? No? No, So they've got their
plan in place, that the detonators, this blasting company has
the plan in place, and now they have to actually
prep the building. Yes, first step in prep is um
they wash it. Well, they don't watch it. They survey
(13:13):
the site, they walk through the building several times because
you don't want to just make a cursory glance. You
want to do your due diligence. Well, you need to
clean everything out of there. Even before that, like some
crew has come through and gotten all the drywall and
all that stuff out, Like everything you want to as
empty as possible, take out any non low bearing walls.
You want to make it easier to tumble this thing.
(13:34):
Sometimes I'll even uh cut into uh some of these
support structures to give it a bit of a head start,
hit it with sledgehammers. Yeah, release a little uh pin
up frustration, you know, exactly. So then the blasting crew
comes through, is making note of all this stuff. That's right,
because they've already looked at the blueprints. But blueprints are
(13:55):
those are just pictures for college boys. You want to
get in there and really see what's going on firsthand. Yeah, yeah, exactly,
because the blueprint, I mean, you know, there could be derivations.
You never know. Um So, then once you have everything
cleaned out, maybe weekend, some of the support columns with sledgehammers.
It's sort of it's not teetering, but mentally it's teetering.
(14:17):
It's beginning to think about teetering. The building knows like
a boy, time to come down. My my time is
limited here. I was accounting achievement once. Um So, then
the blasters come in. They start loading these columns with explosives,
um dynamite. If you're using concrete, it's a good way
to go. Um They drill these holes, they bore holes.
(14:38):
It's really kind of rudimentary and stuff explosives into them. Yeah,
and we should say also, um, it's not just a
guessing game. In most demolitions, from what we understand, they
will say I picked the support column, maybe probably up
on like the twentieth floor something like that, rather than
down low, and they will blast it. They'll attach some
(14:59):
explosive to and do like a test blast. Yeah. I
don't think they're trying to blow it up. They're just
trying to They're trying to do a small charge to
see how much damage that small charge does and then
they can predict how much a larger how much amount
of a larger charge they will need to use to
like blow the columns up right, or they might blow
a column, but they'll wrap it in like chain link
(15:21):
fence and a shield to kind of keep it in
place and so it doesn't go everywhere and you know
hurt people obviously. And um, what they want to do
is and this is covering to know. They want to
use the minimum amount of explosives that it takes to
bring this thing down. They don't just go in there
willy nilly and just say loaded up boys. You know,
(15:41):
they want to use the smallest amount to still get
the job done exactly, because if they use too much,
then you've got a bunch of chunks flying everywhere and
there's damage the surrounding buildings and people get hit in
the heads, bad news, lawsuits. Used too little, you've got
that building still kind of standing, and that's extremely dangerous
as well, because you have to bring in a crew
to knock it down like you would a lower, smaller building. Um,
(16:04):
but it's a tall building that's just kind of half standing,
and it's it's like a Jenga tower. Now, yeah, that's
no good. No, that's very dangerous. So you want to
use the minimum amount, put the right amount. Yeah, Well
that's one reason the World Trade Center was so dangerous afterward,
because it obviously it wasn't some controlled implosion, unless you're
(16:28):
Charlie Sheen and you you know, get on the internet
and say that it's a government conspiracy. Well he was
an uncontrolled implosion himself. Wasn't exactly. Uh, but you know,
nine level is so dangerous to clean up because it
wasn't done on purpose, so they didn't know what was
weak and what wasn't and it was pretty precarious getting
(16:48):
in there and trying to clean anything out, super dangerous work.
So uh stating obvious, Well we've got the test plast done. Yeah,
we've got them. Now they're going around and they're they're
drilling bore holes. Let's say we're doing a concrete building.
So you got your dynamite. Yeah, And what is dynamite
is just basically like a kind of a paper material
soaked in combustible, highly explosive liquid chemicals. Yep. That it
(17:15):
takes actually am an explosion to explode dynamite. So you
you might have a fuse. I think if you're demolishing
and building in N two, you've got a fuse going
to the stick of dynamite. But in between the fuse
and and the dynamite is a blasting cap. It's a
small charge of explosive material that's lit by a fuse.
That's right, it's a primary charge. And the point of
(17:37):
using dynamite and why you want to use it in
um concrete structure column um is that it expands, creates
a bunch of hot gas all of a sudden, really quickly,
and when it's doing that inside a concrete column, it
explodes the concrete column into rubble. Now that will work
(17:59):
for concrete. But you got yourself a steel structure, you're
gonna have to use something else called r d X.
That's right. And I'm not even gonna say the long name.
I'll try. I don't want to try it, all right,
you're ready cyclo, try methylene, trying naitramin. Damn, dude. I
stumbled a little bit in the middle, but I still
(18:19):
got it done. No, that was that was perfect. I
mean you look at it and it looks like the alphabet.
It's such a long word, you know. UM. But yeah,
r d X will call it r d X, and
that's what you want to use if you have steel
supports and UM. If dynamite explodes at a rate of
about six dred tons per square inch, r d x
um explodes at about twenty seven thousand ft per second.
(18:44):
That is like some serious stuff. And you're not exploding
steel because you can't explode steel. What they're actually doing
there is they are cutting through the steel, splitting it
in half thereby weakening it. Yeah, it's like um using
a lub or a scalpel. Yeah, exactly. Uh. To easy
(19:04):
to one of these, though, like you said, you need
a blasting cap. That primary charge the fuse, and the
fuse is just explosive junk inside of a chord, like
when you see like the old timey fuses, you know,
like a sparkler. That's explosive material just packed inside like
you know, a tight chord. Right, And the whole point
of the fuse is it's a delays the blast. So
(19:27):
depending on how you want to sequence your blast, UM,
you're gonna use varying links of fuses. Again, if it's
nineteen o two, that's right, Um, And that fuse eventually
will reach the point where it sets off the primary
charge and that's where the action happens. UM. These days,
they use electrical detonators mainly, UM, probably exclusively, don't you
think I would think so? And that is, you know,
(19:50):
sort of like a fuse, except it's just it's a
lead line made of electrical wire, or it is electrical wire. Um,
You've got your debtonator end where the wire surrounded by
this explosive material and then that's attached directly to the
primary charge and then the main explosives and they you know,
they have some sort of battery device heats up the
wire and eventually it'll get hot enough to set off
(20:12):
that junk on the detonator end sets off the primary
charge triggers the main show, right, Like you know the
old plunger that they use like in in Bugs Bunny
cartoons to blow up stuff. You mean when the when
the mocking bird lands on Italy behind coyotes back and
it slowly depresses. Um. Apparently that is an electrical um
(20:36):
detonator where you would have a charge going and then
you press the plunger and it would release that charge. Um.
That's the same thing, except we we don't use that
old timing box and plunger any longer. Um, But it's
still the same change. It's very gratifying. But yeah, I
would imagine. I think I wonder if they have fake ones,
just sort of like a ribbon cutting like that you
(20:59):
like connect your I phone. Well that actually works though,
well I'm sure this works to know, but if you
just have a fake when you like the owner of
the company is very old school. We have to set
this up for him so you can push it down. Yeah,
he loves giant scissors. Yeah, but no, I mean, like
maybe there's like the little uh, the little remote control
is in the box and when you press the plunge
on it pokes the button and the owner of the
(21:20):
company is like, yeah, exactly, do it again. Wow, that's funny.
I guess we're both three year olds a part um. Okay,
So they have to control this sequence sometimes, like maybe
they don't want the first floor in the twelfth floor
going off at the same time. Maybe there's a delay
so they can actually have a delay in the fuse
(21:41):
areas where the fuse burned slower than others, right, or
you just like I said, you use longer lengths of fuse,
you know, um, but yeah, you can put a a
little you can put say, uh, you could charge a
fuse and then add a little extra fuse between the
original fuse that you just delivered the charge too, and
(22:03):
like a delay fuse and the blasting cap and then yeah,
you can time it, and you want to time it again.
You don't want everything falling down on top of itself
and ending up supporting itself. You want like columns coming
down and then columns coming down all on top of
each other and they're pushing one another down. Remember in
(22:25):
the World Trade Center episode that we did it, it's
called pancaking. It's where the rubble on one floor hits
the rubble on another floor with enough force that that
floor comes down and it again and again and again. Yes,
and it picks up speed as well. That's right. And
you know once that happens, like there's there's no going back. Yeah,
(22:47):
and sadly, as we all saw a nine eleven. And
if you've ever watched the internet videos, it only takes
a few seconds and it's done. Yeah, it's very quick process.
Apparently people are surprised by how fast happens, Like who
people who have never watched these videos. It says in
the article that the people people, it's the one thing
they're surprised by most is how quickly a building collapse.
(23:11):
Show me these people. I love it when I think
when people write these articles like that, they just sort
of say I was surprised. So people are full Yeah
to do in journalism? Um, all right, So let's say
you're gonna take down a building in a neighborhood. You
might want to hire a consulting firm to come in.
And the idea I get is that they sort of
(23:31):
document the process, maybe work with the neighbors, um in
a little pr sense to assure them that everything's gonna
be okay, Yeah, they're gonna film it, of course, because
you can learn a lot from watching it. Yeah, not
only put it on YouTube, Yeah, you can put it
on YouTube, but also like that's also how one of
the ways you're going to figure out how to take
(23:51):
down the building you're working on now is going back
and looking at how you've taken down similar buildings. So
the owner would come in and say, hey, pull the
the bank in Houston from eight. That one was perfect
and it looks just like this one. Yeah. Um, so
you've called in your consulting firm, they've done all their
due diligence, they're working before things hit go time. You're gonna,
(24:14):
of course do a really thorough check to make sure
no one's in there. Um, you don't want to. Like
in Heathers, remember that movie, Hea, there's uh there's a
riveting Magnum p I episode where Magnum and Higgins are
in not only in a building it's about to be demolished,
trapped in an elevator in a building. That's about it.
It was almost unwatchable, it was so tense. I don't
(24:34):
remember that one. Yeah, and Heathers, I think the dad
was an implosion expert and like killed the mother that way, right.
I don't remember that because you said something about Christians
later since about yeah mom, I saw a mom in
the window or something, and oh yeah that's right. Yeah yeah,
I think the mom kill herself was the implication. Oh
by being in there. Yeah, I love my dead gay son.
(24:55):
Yeah that was man, that's a good movie. That's a
great line. Um, so they've calculated the perimeter obviously as well.
Not only going to check inside the building, you're also
gonna to make sure that you have a safety zone
around the thing allowed implosion enthusiasts like to sneak a
little closer, shaking his head in dismay. Right now, why
(25:18):
just do you have a computer? Do you have access
to the internet. I guess there's nothing like seeing it
in person, maybe you know, Oh yeah I can. I
can understand people who go around and like check that out,
but to get closer, to get within the blast zone,
which has been carefully calculated by the blasting company. And
then they have said this is a dangerous area. Yeah,
(25:42):
this is a safe area. You can see it from
the safe area, so just stay in the safe area.
Uh So what you want is a very controlled situation. Um,
you don't want, like we said, over over blasting. You
don't want underblasting. You want to do it just right. Um.
The impression I get is times out of a hundred,
(26:02):
it goes according to oil and it's just you know,
it works out great, No one gets hurt. You might
blast out a few windows of businesses around there to
be expected. Yeah, of course with this kind of stuff
if if you're close enough to it. So wait a minute. Now,
there's been a ten minutes siren, a five minutes siren. Yeah,
the air is totally still. It to crisp day. This
(26:24):
guy is blue, Maybe a bird flies by. You have
the higher up, Michael Buffer to do your ten eight countdown?
Who's that? He's the looks get ready to room d
D D D d D. Do you know which money
he gets paid for doing that? I imagine a lot.
So you get the one minute siren and then the countdown.
(26:45):
That's right. If you're using an electrical detonator, you your
guy has had his finger or her finger on the
charge button, and it's very much like charging a camera
to the camera flash. Yeah, you can't stop one after
the other. Just gotta build up that charge it's like
anybody's seen Um Silence to the Lambs at the end
when Jodie Foster is being approached by Buffalo Bill, one
(27:07):
of the greatest. Yeah, but remember that high pitched sound.
That's the camera flash charging again. That's what you're doing
with the electrical Debtonary's got the finger on the charge
and then they get to one and you press fire
and the electrical charge is released and the building goes kaboom.
That's right. Have you ever played the camera flash game? No,
(27:28):
I need to say this because it's really one of
the more fun things you can do, and I don't
think it can hurt you. I'm gonna look this up after.
I think it's very safe. Go. Uh. If you have
an old fashioned camera flash that you can charge and
pop off like that, get into a pitch black room
with your buddy, you know, find where your faces are,
so you're a couple of feet apart like we are,
and UM point the flash towards your own face, have
(27:52):
them looking at you, and you pop it off and
immediately you get this perfect black and white in you know,
it registers with your brain and you can see it.
It's like right in front of you and it's really
really cool and creepy. My brother and I used to
do it all the time. It's a lot of fun.
So you get a perfect image of the other person's face. Yeah,
(28:13):
Like they're pointing it like I would point it at
my face. You're looking at me when the complete dark. Uh,
And I popped the thing off and then you see
like this, weird It's almost like a lithograph of my face.
It's very very cool. Did you know that if you
if you write that, that ultimately damages your eyes permanently.
I don't think so. If you if you take a
flashlight and you look like you hold the flashlight up
(28:37):
to your face with the beam pointing away from you,
and you look right over the top of it, like
right over your knuckles, and just basically down the beam
and just shine it around on the ground, you can
see spider's eyes. I'm not sure what that means. You
can see the eyes of little spiders that you could
never see in the dark, but you can see their
eyes reflecting back at you. It's really neat and unnerving,
(28:59):
but there you you get you all of a sudden
start to grasp just how many spiders there are around
you at all times, so just like on your kitchen floor, yeah,
or outside better wow? Yeah, I mean you just just
take a take a flashlight and hold it up to
your face and just look down the barrel of the
flashlight under the ground between that and just shining a
flashlight on the angle of reflection. It doesn't work. You
(29:23):
have to look right, and I'm not This isn't like
an old listen snipe hunting or anything I've done to myself.
Like you, you just look down the barrel of the
flash lighting and check out the little spider's eyes looking back.
It's terrifying. It is. It's surprising it for it's not
like that, but it's it goes from like not seeing
anything all of a sudden you're like you realize, okay,
(29:44):
there's a spider and look there's another spider. And I
didn't even realize that I could do this. And they're
green and tiny to all the ones I've ever seen
with little green eyes. Totally trying that tonight. And if
I'm telling you it doesn't work, don't be like Josh
got me, Like, just keep trying and just the angle
or something. You'll you'll see it. Okay, boy, that was
(30:05):
along us sorry about that. Um, so we've we've detonated,
you've detonated. The building has imploded. It's gonna send a
huge dust cloud up, as you've seen on uh YouTube,
as we've said two thousand times, and uh it may
be a bit of a pain for the neighbors. But um,
they will argue, the blaster guys will argue that it
(30:25):
beats like a month of slow demolition, like this cloud
will dissipate pretty soon and then it's gone forever. Apparently,
if you have allergies in the area, they say, just
go away for the day and when you come back
it'll probably be fine. So, Josh, I want to be
a blaster? Can I go to Blast University? Yes, it's
(30:45):
uh Blasters, right, it's an adjunct of Brown University. Um,
and uh, you just go and roll there. They'll let
anybody in. It's free and you'll be a blaster the
day you get out after two weeks of training. Bamn.
Not there is no such program at all, no organized school. Um.
The best way to get involved in this business is
(31:06):
to get a job. Um, probably sweeping up I would imagine,
at first for one of these companies, and work your
way to the top. And um, like we said, there's
only about twenty well established ones in the world or
in the United States, probably in the world. And uh,
you know, work your way up if you're into it,
and maybe one day you can start Josh and Chuck
(31:28):
Demolition LLC. Maybe, but yeah, you probably do better to
try and warm your way through the company. Plus you
will also owe it's royalties if you name your company
Josh and Chuck Demolition, LLC. That's right. Okay, well, I
guess it's implotions, right, I got nothing else. We nailed
that one, didn't we, I think so. I hope you
(31:49):
guys didn't skip this. Obviously you didn't if you're hearing
me say this right now, and if not, then they
never knew. But good for you for for getting into it,
because it's pretty neat stuff. Uh. If you want to
learn more about building implosions, you can type building implosions
in the search part how stuff works dot com. Uh.
And that means, of course it's time for message break
(32:15):
listener mail please listen to mail time. Okay, I'm gonna
call this, um. Leeching still happens real. Yeah, So this
is from Annie. His husband leeches. He works for the
Mayo Clinic. So this is legit. Well, what does he
(32:36):
do for the movie? He sneaks leeches into people's beds. Hey, guys,
just listen to the E c T podcast. At the end,
you guess what would be the next archaic medical procedure
to make a comeback, and you specifically mentioned leeching. News
for you, leeching is still totally happening. Don't call her comeback.
My husband isn't. Uh, boy? What is he in? Otor
(32:59):
oh Oto laryng Jola jollagist Oto laryngologist. Never heard of that.
He does a surgery on patients that need facial tumors removed.
I would call myself a facial tumor remover LLC. That's right, uh.
And they take tissue from other places on the body
(33:20):
to repair the site. And if the flap doesn't have
good circulation after the repair, they will stick leeches on
it to get the blood flowing and um. The medical
grade leeches are huge and greenish and they fall off
when they're full, so the nurses have to keep an
eye on them in the hospital. Isn't that crazy? I
had no idea that that went on, honestly, So that's
(33:42):
still going on, and she ends by saying, so gross
leeches and more love Annie, that was a great listener mail. Yeah,
short and sweet and who knew good one? Annie. Uh,
if we have mentioned something that's sweet, thought was done
but is still going on, we want to hear about that.
(34:04):
We want to know what's going on basically, So tweet
to us at s Y s K podcast or go
on to Facebook dot com slash stuff you Should Know
and tell us what's going on, or send us an
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with the question mark because I'd be asking us what's
going on and we want to know what's going on.
You would direct that email to Stuff podcast at Discovery
(34:25):
dot com. Or you can find out what's going on
at Stuff you Should Know dot com for more on
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(34:50):
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Josh Clark
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