How Search and Rescue Works

There are thankfully about as many ways to look for someone as there are ways to get lost. And the people who dedicate themselves to saving the lives of people who are missing take their job seriously. Learn about this fascinating world in this episode.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello, Atlanta and Georgia and surrounding states and heck the world.
We are doing our first ever live Christmas show, yeah,
in our hometown this December, Ring Ring Ring, Ring, Ring Ring.
It is stuff you should know. So what can people expect,
so Chuck, they can expect all the glorious nous of

(00:21):
all of our Christmas specials that we do every year,
but live on stage and with spiked eggnog. Yeah, we're
just gonna sit up on stage and play all those
shows on a tape requarter like great, this one was great.
Do you guys remember this? It'll be ten times better
than that because it's gonna actually be an all new
show with us live on stage, one night only in Atlanta.

(00:42):
G A. Yeah, it's gonna be pretty cool everyone. And
it is December eight at the wonderful Center Stage Theater
here in Atlanta, where I have seen various shows over
the years, and we're gonna be there now. Yeah, we're
going to be there. It's very intimate, cool little theater.
So we're looking forward to it. We're looking forward to
seeing you. Go to s Y s K Live for

(01:02):
information and tickets, and uh, let's get into Christmas spirit. Oh,
and and on Thursday, August nine, starting at ten am
Eastern Time, there will be a password protected pre sale.
You use the code Hippie Rob and you will get
your tickets that day, a day before they go on
sale to the general public, which is Friday. So either

(01:26):
get him Thursday, get him Friday. Either way, come see
us in Atlanta for our one time only Christmas special.
That's right, they go and sale this Friday, so don't
snooze or you will lose. Welcome to stuff you should
know from house stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome

(01:49):
to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, There's Charles w Chuck Bryant,
and wait for it, there is first time ever guest
producer Dylan First on first time. I confirmed it with him.
He's nodding. He said, we're the only show here that
he hasn't guested as a producer on. So the band
has been lifted finally. I don't know if it was

(02:12):
it was his band. They finally warmed down. But you know,
he's the regular producer on Afro Punk Solution Sessions, Yes,
which is pretty awesome podcast hosted by our pals Eve
Jeff Cote and I didn't pronounce the s on Eves
but it's Eaves and verified this and bridget Todd from
stuff Mom never told you bridgets Todd. But they do um.

(02:38):
They kind of present like you know, afro punk, like
the tour, the Musical Tour, the Awesome Musical Tour. Um.
They have like a side thing called Solution Sessions and
it's kind of like um Ted Talks, but for um
so first for significant things that get overlooked generally, so

(02:58):
like race centric stuff, reproductive rights or things like that.
It's pretty awesome. It's good and you can get it anywhere.
Yeah yeah, look at that. Well we gotta pay him somehow.
I was just gonna slide him my half warm sparkling
water as payment. No, I've got a cold one here.
Oh yeah yeah, how do you get those out of

(03:20):
the fridge? So chuck um before we get started again.
A couple other things. There are two episodes in here
that I want to do separately. Okay, h a bit,
I can guess them Civil Air Patrol, know what? Sure,
But that wasn't one of them. Well that was one
of mine. Okay, so there's three and this is a

(03:41):
media episode. What's the other one? Then? I don't know oh,
you know it scuba or we already did Scuba Cat?
We did? I forgot about him. Did you interview the
guy who who made Scuba Cat swim around? Yeah? And
it's funny. We often mentioned Jackhammers is our worst show ever.
I forgot it's Scuba Cat? Is it? You go back
and listen. No, but it's got to be the worst, right,

(04:04):
we'll have to have like a listening party. That was
like not even a thing. We'll listen to Jack Hammerson
Scuba Cat. It was, well, it was the thing. It
was that one cat. Yeah, and I guess we can
just come out and say now that Discovery Channel made
us do that. That's like kind of one of the
only times we were steamrolled. That's funny. Otherwise we have autonomy.
I don't know if that was being steamrolled as much
as Rick rolled. Well, now, I don't even know what

(04:27):
you're gonna pick it in, all right, I'll tell you then,
No more suspense for you, um Coast Guard. No, I
don't feel like you know me at all anymore. I
don't search and rescue dogs. Oh they're like, dude, I
looked at the article. It's at least as big as
this one all right, robust, and they don't have a
lot of overlap. It's not like doing recycling twice or

(04:49):
anything like that. And the other one is getting lost.
Oh well, that's esoteric, right right. I didn't expect you
to guess the loss time. I thought you'd get searching
rescue dogs. But there's a whole psychology getting lost, and
this is about finding people. I want to talk about
getting lost. Sometimes it's just too much to put onto
this one. So it's going to be its own episode, okay,

(05:10):
and all your mark Civil Air Patrol because fellow network
host colleague John Roderick of omnibus is or was a
member of the Civil Air Patrol? Is he mary yet? No, no, no,
because that'd be something like the flying Mayor of Seattle.
You'd love to be the flying but even still, remember

(05:32):
the Civil Air Patrol. It's pretty interesting. So he flies?
Uh did? I don't know if he's current, but Roderick is.
He has a very interesting pass. I'd be well, it's
an interesting It would be kind of fun to do
Civil Air Patrol and pick his brain. Okay, let's do
his weird brain, alright, flying brain. So we have our
two organic show plugs in. Yeah, so we're talking today

(05:55):
about s search and rescue. I forgot I wrote this.
You did write it back in like a million years ago. Yeah,
that's when I was. Um. I was so excited to
be the adventure writer. You wrote a bunch of adventure stuff,
and I was named adventure writer. Here's the funny part
of this story. I was named adventure writer. I was

(06:15):
really excited. Then, after a while of doing this stuff
before the podcast, I went into an unnamed boss I
know this story and said like, hey, man, I really
think that, Like I'm kind of wondering about the future
here and where where I could go and if I
could work my way up somehow to do things. And
he he very politely, was like, I think this is

(06:38):
kind of the deal, and like there is not much
of the future here beyond writing these articles. And then
that same dude would change my life tossing a podcast
our way. That funny how things work out, It is hilarious.
No future here, right. I think he even put a
cigarette out in front of you. On my hand. It

(06:58):
was really painful. So but a reminder. Still, but you
wrote some good stuff. The survival stuff is is good.
We have more to to dig through. I appreciate it.
I was nervous going into when I saw this was
my article from back then. I was like, oh man,
this is gonna steak. But it was actually a decent article.
It was It was an expansive article too. There's a

(07:20):
lot of stuff to it because there's a lot of
stuff to search and rescue. There's a lot of different
kinds of search and rescue, right, I mean, you know,
now I feel like the sham is up because you
already know all this stuff, so I can't tell you anything.
I guess I'll tell you guys who are listening to
the podcast. But there's a lot of different types of
search and rescue. Right. There's urban search and rescue, which

(07:40):
happens after say like like nine eleven. Yep. I've also
seen it us and are really yeah, it's a little
it is um. There's like marine or water rescue, which
is usually the one that kind of comes to mind
when I think of like military rescue. But then there's
like combat rescue, like the Scotto anything which will touch

(08:01):
on UM. And then there's like the normal search and
rescue I think a lot of people think of, which
is somebody getting lost in the woods or their desert
or something, and a bunch of sheriff's deputies kind of
spread out and start looking for you deputies and just people. Yes,
did you know that before you research this article, that
people like dedicate themselves to spend their own money to

(08:22):
up on training and equipment and things. Yeah. The reason
I know that is because, um my dad had a
touch of this um when he owned a jeep years ago,
and I told stories about him going out on snowy
days and using his toe innch to pull people out
of ditches. So that was I was just aware of
their being a general like thing with certain outdoors people

(08:46):
where there they had like they like to get in
in there and volunteer, and if they hear someone's trapped
in the woods near their house, they're out there. Like
I knew they existed, but there's like an actual pro
sess you can go through and become a registered like searcher. Yeah,
And I think some of these people are just do

(09:06):
gooders and some of them maybe we're like man, I
never was able to become the uh, the wilderness firefighter
that I wanted to be or the paramedic maybe, And
so I'm going to get the state to force them
to hang out with me while we like this is
how can live out that unfulfilled? Uh I was about
to say fantasy, but that means it unfulfilled, you know,

(09:30):
desire dream, all of them. And then there's the last
group of people who are like, I want to see
a dead body in the woods. They start joining star Man.
Don't get teamed up with that guy. It doesn't always
and that always the way, though it doesn't always work out,
is the thing. Sometimes search and rescue becomes searching recovery. Yeah,
but uh, I mean most of this applies to it

(09:52):
as well, because search and rescue typically starts out as
or searching recovery starts out as search and rescue. Right,
there's always it's kind of neat, like, if you think
about it, there's really no better quick sketch of humanity
than a group of people who have never met some
the person they're looking for, take their time and effort

(10:13):
and put themselves in peril to go try to find
somebody who's missing and starts out on the hopes that
they're still alive. Yeah, and that a lot of times
what we were talking about there is like the um
someone was hiking and got lost, and these people kind
of regularly go out and do this. Uh. But then
the stuff that really gets me is like the Missing Child,

(10:35):
where entire communities come together to form you know, quarter
mile long lines walking through a field or the forest together.
That's the stuff. This is like, Man, I can't even
take it. Yeah, you know, way to bring it down, Chuck, Hey,
that's what I'm here. So uh so okay, so let's

(10:56):
start at the start. So, if you if you wanted
to be a I don't. I guess there's a it's professional, right,
If you're in the Coastguard or in the military, and
you're trained for this, you're a professional search and rescue person, right.
It's not like you have your regular duty and then
on the side you get called out for star stuff. Well.
I don't know about that. I mean I think I

(11:19):
don't think that's necessarily the case. I think the Coast Guard, well,
we'll have to find that out. Actually it's I don't
think they're sitting around waiting on a rescue. Yeah. The
thing is is I saw that the Coastguard rescues in
average of a hundred and fourteen people a day, So
they're always just rescuing so I wonder if they have
like they're just yeah, that's what they do, is some

(11:39):
there's their search and rescue. People are searching and rescuing
all day every day. I don't know. I'm stimmied right
out of the gate. Sorry, man, But we'll we'll start
with the Coast Guard because they're actually the heart of
search and rescue. They've been doing this for at least
fifty years now. Yeah. I mean, there's a school in Yorktown,
Virginia called the National Star School, and it's operated by

(12:01):
the Air Force and the Coast Guard. And their motto
is really great, always ready comma that others may live.
And I believe a couple of years ago they celebrated
their fiftieth anniversary. Is a school, yeah, because when I
wrote this, I believe it was the anniversary. Yea, the
most recent. This thing is so old. You were talking

(12:23):
about a change that Noel was undertaking in two thousand nine.
In future tents like nine comes around. If it does,
the gray beard hairs are really showing. Uh. So they
have three simultaneous classes of students going on at this
our school at all times, and their goal is a

(12:44):
program is uh to say at least of people and
of property that's at risk. Pretty good goal. Yeah, And
to be ready to be there and ready, I believe
within two hours total response time and to be like
ready to go within a half hour. Right, so like
the moment they're activated to the moment they show up

(13:04):
on seeing two hours tops pretty good. Yeah, that's great.
And then imagine like rescuing. Let's split the difference. At
first it was and they're like that's shooting a little
high exactly, but nineties not enough? Yeah, and being uh,
you know, going through the test and the physical and

(13:26):
mental testing for this is tough. Yeah. So when I
was researching this initially, I was thinking like, oh, this
is cool or whatever, but I've actually come to admire
anybody who does this, not just because they're out doing this,
but there's a lot of things that they're doing that
I can't. And now we've really entered that thicket, which
is like, um, the rescue swimmers test. And so so

(13:50):
the whole thing starts out with pull ups, which right there,
I'm done. I'll give you three tops, maybe fifteen chin ups?
Aren't they the same thing? There? Do you put like
the chin on the bar and a chin up it's different.
Chin ups are knuckles facing you pull ups or knuckles
facing out, So chin up pull up pull ups are harder.

(14:14):
Yeah either way, maybe three tops because chin ups you
can you know, kick and swing yourself up. But a
pull up, especially if you do the Studley arms apart
pull up like that number. Yeah, No, mine are like
right under my face. Yeah. So, um, you got twenty
five of those, followed by a hundred yard obstacle course.

(14:35):
I'm assuming it's a pretty rough obstacle course. I haven't
seen pictures of it. Yeah, and this is while you're
carrying two fifty pound dumbbells. Again, have you ever picked
up a fifty pound dumbell? Just once? It's not comfortable,
Never do it again, and you especially don't want to
do it while you're doing it obstacle course that's the
size of a football field, right. Uh So then you're

(14:55):
timed while you march one mile and you think big deal.
This is after you've already done these other things though,
and you're carrying a forty pound rescued letter, which is
it's called the Stokes basket too. It's a it's that
caged stretcher that you see so often on the news
and in the Perfect Storm. I like that movie. It's

(15:17):
a great movie. I don't know about great, but it's
a good movie. That's good enough. You convinced me. Uh.
And then it's still not over because then you get
into your rescue harness. You put on your fins and
your snorkel, and you swim a third of a mile
pulling a victim in one of these rescue letters. You

(15:38):
swim a third of a mile to the victim, and
then another third of a mile. You gotta do all
that in twenty seven minutes. And I think this is
after you know, it's not like they're like, all right,
we'll go rest a few hours and then you'll do
this next part. Plus they make they make you chug
a cup of pancake batter at every stop. And so
that's just the swimming art. Uh. There's also the inland training,

(16:03):
which you gotta learn to climb rocks, you gotta learn
to repel. Uh. There's a hundred and eighty pound dummy
that they like tangle up in a tree fifty six
ft in the air to get it. Yeah, you gotta
figure that out. Sometimes they have combo scenarios like this
dude's in the tree. This dude's in the water, Like,
go figure it out and don't use rocks to get
the one out of the tree. No, it doesn't count never. So, Um,

(16:27):
that's pretty that's the Coastguard, and I think the Air Force,
um go in for that same academy, or maybe all
members of the military go to the Coastguard one. I
believe yes, so that if you're a military search and
rescue person, you train at the Coastguard academy for it, right, right,
if you're just a normal everyday person and you want
to do it. There are our schools around the country,

(16:49):
but they're all private. There's no accreditation. Um. I think
it's probably buy or beware in some of those cases,
but I also got the impression that there's actual legitimate
like s our schools. It's not just somebody who's like
thanks for the money, chump, buy or beware as opposed
to full guaranteed or your money back, right you will

(17:10):
find your first person or all your your tuition is
is reimbursed. Uh. And then some of these folks ride horses.
It's called mounted star and horses. Even though it's an
age old way of getting around or really valuable um
in search and rescue for quite a few reasons. Yeah. Like,

(17:31):
first of all, their horses, so I can go farther
than your dumb human meat body. Sure. Plus they're nice
to have around as well. They're nice to have around,
and they can get you to places where you could
kind of walk, but you probably shouldn't be walking. A
horse might be a little more sure footed or a donkey.
Uh yeah, and um yeah, I like how you said,

(17:52):
if you've been sitting in the lab analyzing stuff for
the last few years, you might benefit from riding a
horse out to a search of riscue you location. Yeah,
I mean that's a movie seen waiting to happen, if
it hasn't already. It is. Um Wayne Night just griping
all mad that he's being dragged out into the woods, right,
but then they put him on the horse. He's backwards

(18:13):
on the horse. Somebody stop this thing. Uh. The other
thing you can do, obviously, the horse is a lot
stronger than a person. So if you need a rescue
leader towed up the side or you know, pulled up
the side of a cliff, you can attach it to
a horse and then then you're gonna tell him about
the radio thing. I never thought of this. It's good.
Go ahead. So you can station horses in position along

(18:35):
a route when you get further and further into the woods.
And if you keep a radio transmitter on each one,
it acts as like a radio relay network. Just install
a bluetooth into a horse's ear, tin horses ears and
you've got coms. Not bad, It isn't bad at all.
I feel like we should take a break. All right,

(18:56):
let's do that and we'll talk about urban SAR right
after this. All right, ma'am. So we're talking about you

(19:24):
sare or US and R yes, depending on who you're
talking to. This is um. This is a whole different
type of fish settle of fish um. When you're talking
about urban starro is not woods. It's not like cliffs,
it's not the ocean. It is enormous skyscrapers that have

(19:44):
crumbled in on themselves and there you're sure that there
are people trapped inside and you have to figure out
how to get into these this rubble and get them
out without getting killed yourself. Yeah, and this is a
division of FEMA. UM probably should come no surprise and
believe in n is when they set this up. The

(20:05):
National Response plan for disasters and they have twenty five
national use AR task forces and in the case of
a flood or earthquake, what else hurricane, plane crash, has met, spills, tornadoes,
any natural disaster, a terrorist attack. Um, I think they

(20:26):
they They were all called out for the Oklahoma City bombing. UM,
definitely nine eleven, UM, Katrina. They were integral and UM
some of the bigger ones that you can list off.
Basically every single one of these task forces was called
in to the to to assist. Yeah, and assist is

(20:46):
the key word there, because they are supporting UH local
and state emergency systems who generally take the lead in
these cases. Thirty one people I think per team for
a US OUR task force. And how many did they deployed?
Twenty of these on nine eleven, like right out of

(21:07):
the gate. Yeah, I think all of them except for
Virginia was activated in Virginia's was at the Pentagon instead,
but like the rest of them were in New York
for nine eleven. It was just I was reading a
in firsthand account from a Star Team member at nine
eleven and they were just like it was this utter chaos,

(21:27):
Like the people who were in charge were all dead
when the second tower collapsed. Um, there was just like
he said, there was just a total leadership vacuum that
got filled pretty quickly. But I've never seen anything like
this before. It was nuts. But the just the way
that they had to improvise was pretty pretty astounding. Oh yeah,
And there's all sort of secondary dangers you know, after

(21:49):
a building like that collapses, the well, I mean, I
guess we can talk about a little bit, but I
mean everything from hazardous materials leaking to you know, electricity
down to electricity that could you know shock and kill
you too, water mains bursting and you know, filling up
spaces and drowning people. It's like there every single front

(22:11):
you can imagine they're attacking. So one of the first
things they do. UM. Again, every every UM search and
rescue situation or every disaster is actually operated initially by
the local cops. That's who runs search and rescue, and
like you said, femas there to assist, and usually the
state agencies are there to assist too. But UM, one

(22:33):
of the first things that happens when femas UM you
saw our teams come on the scene is they have
like structural engineers who are licensed professional engineers who have
experience in construction or inspection or something like that, who
come in and say they look at this. So once
this was a nice, tidy structure. Now it's a different
kind of structure and it's not tidy at all, and

(22:56):
there's a lot of hidden dangers. But their job is
to come in and assess the the structure of the
rubble and figure out how to create safe passage into
this thing. And they it's pretty amazing that they can
do it at all. Yeah, and yeah, you mentioned the dogs,
so we won't get too heavy into that, but um,
I believe that the largest deployment of dogs in history

(23:18):
was for nine eleven. Yeah, I think at least, Yeah,
search and rescue dogs. It worked twelve hours at a time.
All right, that's enough about search and rescue dogs and
I value them, Can I say that? Sure? That's that's
no big news, No, take it back. So, um, one
of the ways you want to talk about what they

(23:38):
do when they come into these structures and figure out
what to do. Sure, I didn't know this, I guess
I had never thought about what they would do. But
there there are kevlar bags that you can put underneath
up the seventy ton pieces of like concrete or metal
or whatever and inflate them and it will actually lift

(23:59):
them up to like almost two feet off of the ground.
It's pretty amazing. And then once you have that, you
start to shore it up. You put in steel beams
and then or would depending on how heavy whatever you're
lifting is, and you actually start to create basically like
an old timey like Minor forty nine or mine shaft
into this place, just shoring up and lifting and shoring

(24:22):
up and along the way to to stabilize the structure.
And then once you have entry into this place, then
you start sending in different kinds of rescuers. So you've
got like the medics who go in. You have people
who are sending cameras or listening devices um to to
try to find survivors. You've got the people who are

(24:44):
testing the air quality to make sure that the air
conditions are the conditions of the air aren't like deadly. Yeah,
I mean, can you imagine this is all like you're
you're on the clock too, so like you have to
make sure it's safe to go in there, so you're
just not killing people that are going in to rescue
and but at the same time you're trying to get

(25:06):
people out of there. You're not just like, let me
go investigate the scene and what's going on down there.
It's like you're on a timer, but you have to
make sure it's done safely too. It's just like, I
can't imagine how overwhelming that must be, rescue effort leader. Yeah,
because there are people who are running this whole show,
doing their logistics people. There are people who are overseeing
everybody and making sure that this whole chaotic scene is

(25:28):
running smoothly. I can't imagine a more stressful job, especially
having that clock taking on lives, just just draining away,
just hanging over your head. That's just nuts. And people
do this. Yeah, and you, like you said, you've got
has Matt specialists there. You might have to suit up
yourself before you go in. You might have heard on

(25:49):
your listening device or from a camera that some people
are trapped like hundred feet into a place you can't
even get so you send them like breathing tubes, or
you might send a rescue letter down there and say,
if you can get in this thing and strap yourself in,
we may be able to pull you out because we
can't get in, do you write? But at the same time,
you have like heavy equipment operators running like cranes and

(26:12):
bulldozers trying to like pick off the pieces that the
structural engineers and said like you can get ready to
that one. Get and they'll they'll like lift them up
and move them and try to remove as much stuff
as they can. But yeah, all again, all this the
clock is ticking. Do you remember the I think it
was the Bay Bridge collapse in San Francisco during the
World Series and I think the earthquake, Yeah, it just

(26:35):
so happened. San Francisco is playing Oakland in the World
Series and that that earthquake happened, And do you remember,
like the whole the top deck just fell down onto
the other deck on top of people in their cars,
and like some people survived. It's amazing that there are
people out there that, like I would just start crying
in place and huddle in a corner, but there are

(26:57):
people out there that can stay calm enough and are
experienced enough to just be like, all right, well this
is what we do starting right now. Man. Yeah, those
are the people who slap people like you and me
and tell us to snap out of it. Share shares.
One of those people, and maybe some of those people think,
can you imagine sitting there and talking about our job,

(27:18):
right and uh, explaining what we do? How perilous that
is for these two. That's right. I got a paper
cut earlier. I wasn't gonna say anything about it. It
was rough. Help prove your point. We should shout out
the Civil Air Patrol though, even though I do want
to do a show on that. Um, they are a
nonprofit with more than I don't know what the numbers

(27:39):
are now, but when I wrote this, there were more
than fifty five thousand civilian pilots and cadets, and they
since have supplemented our own military's aviation. Uh. It's pretty
neat and like Roderick was a he was pretty young
when he did this too. I guess he was a cadet.
I got you that you my guess. I'll bet you

(28:01):
have the most polished shoes you've ever seen. I'll have
to ask him about it, because I've never I've never
actually spoken with him at length about it. Yeah, I
think it was a it's civilians, right, okay, And it
was originally supposed to be like we're the liaison between
the Air Force and and the rest of civilian America.
But then they said, hey, we think there's some Nazi

(28:22):
submarines off the coast of Maine. Can you start dropping
bombs too? And they said, getty up. Oh, I'm sure
they were delighted. They started dropping bombs in depth charges
in World War Two and things were never the same
after that. Yeah, so Civil Air Patrol, your day is coming. Okay, sorry,
I just gave a little more information if you want
to go back and edit that out. So we talked

(28:44):
a little bit about some of the equipments are um,
you saw I should say carries with them, but it's impressive.
And again, if you were a mayor and your local
sheriff for your local police chief for the police commission
called you and said, um, we had a building collapse
and we need some help. You call the governor and
the governor says, ah, well, we'll see what we can do,

(29:06):
but we think this is a federal thing. They call
the president and the President says, FEMA, good on there,
and FEMA comes free of charge with trade tractor trailers
full of supplies. From what I saw, it's about one
point just one Task Forces equipment is like a one

(29:26):
point four million dollar package of sixteen thousand, four hundred
pieces of equipment, everything from like medical supplies, the generators,
to the bulldozers to everything. And they just show up
and say, how can we help. You're in charge, how
can we help? Yeah, And it's almost like, uh, all
the mundane things of assembling. It's like assembling a film

(29:47):
shoot or something. You're like, well, these people have to eat,
they have to go to the bathroom. Like yeah, they
need to sleep, they need to rest. Uh, so you
have to set up like a little a village, like
in the case of a nine eleven or any major
disaster like that. Um. Yeah, I mean it's pretty astounding,
like the one. I imagine this list grows daily, uh,

(30:09):
because the one thing you don't want to ever happen
is to be on the scene of was something of
a natural disaster and be like give me the the thing.
They're like, oh, we didn't back that thing. Why not? Well,
I like it's a nice round number. But like you said,
everything from like chainsaws and jackammers to like bolt cutters

(30:29):
and porta potties, which we did an episode on. We'll
probably do on on bolt cutters. One day twenty years
from now, we did one on jackammers. Did uh should
we talk about a SAR yeah, um eron c Yeah.
So this is where the the extraordinarily trained rescue swimmers

(30:51):
and divers come into play. Yeah, this is amazing. I
think it's the STATU got in here. Was it has
a fift dropout rate. Yeah, look to go to the school.
There's there's like higher you know, spending in the ear No.
I mean there's there's other military schools that have higher
wash out rates, but not many. Yeah, it's mostly special forces.

(31:12):
I think the Ranger school typically has about the same
wash out rate as the uh, the rescue diver school,
re excuse swimmer school. It's it's substantial. Like you there's
a really good chance you're not gonna make it, actually
a fifty percent chance you're not gonna make it. The
Coast Guard says that, And this is pretty interesting. Of
all sea rescues are less than twenty miles from shore,

(31:35):
and nine of these are only rescue. Um. Thankfully, because
of all of our distress beacons that we're armed with
these days, like you can usually well nine of the time,
you can find these people pretty quickly. At least. Yeah,
and the Coast Guard, and I don't remember exactly when
it was, but they updated the um distress system that

(31:58):
they had since the seventy s where you called in
on a radio frequency and said made a made a
and tried to give your position. Maybe you had a
beacon that was operating on that frequency that they could
try to track. They updated all that with something called
Rescue twenty one is in the century. That's way more
sophisticated than it was before. And so now they still

(32:19):
monitor that channel for for voice may days. But if
you press your beacon, it's it enters this vast computer
and communications network that the Coast Guard maintains in at
least a twenty mile area outside of all of America's shores,
and um it's you're gonna get their attention pretty quick. Yeah,

(32:41):
and uh, these beacons now they operate at four and
six mega hurts. That's the newer standard. Oh no, they
will as of two thousand nine one day. Um Man,
I was a young man when I wrote this. Jeez,
just a little pup, just a little pup. These things
are manually activated a lot of times, but they can

(33:02):
also be automatically activated. So like if it hits water,
like not if you spill water on it, but that's
that's submerged in water, like the boat is sinking, it'll
automatically activate. Or and this is cool, it's if it
goes above a certain g force, then that means bad
things have happened. Don't take it on a roller coaster.
One thing I saw about that Rescue twenty one is

(33:24):
one of the updates that they made too. It was
it has geo locating now, so they can tell where
a distressed call is actually coming from. Yeah, like it's
satellite been pointed right. Um, But that actually does away
with the prank calls of yesteryear. People would actually prank
called distress calls into the Coastguard. That's so expensive, and

(33:46):
now they can be like, we can see you're calling
from Nevada. You're not out on the Pacific Ocean right now.
You jerk in that terrible Can you imagine leading the
Coastguard in a wild goose chase? What kind of jerk
would you have to be? Are you like some sort
of of unstable search and rescue guys, Like, let's get
out there. It's like the arsonists who are also firefighters.

(34:08):
Very interesting, I thought so too. And then one more
thing about the distressed beacons. There's a new so the
weather satellites that Noah operates, NASA has onboard instrumentation that
they have an a star office themselves. NASA does, and
their whole thing is basically tracking human beings through their beacons.

(34:29):
Hopefully just through their beacons and not through like I
don't know, their cell phones. But now if you press
your beacon, it immediately goes up and immediately gets shot
out to the rest of the um. There's actually a
global search and rescue network, so wherever you are in
the world, that distress signal will be spread out. And
then in the meantime, as they're getting their resources together,

(34:51):
they can start to try to find where you are.
But they get their attention almost instantanea instantaneously now thanks
to NASA. Yeah, and then eventually the beacons will will
be that instantaneous and also give out your coordinates down
to something like a hundred hundred meters. I thought you're
gonna say, eventually it will predict your disaster. No, eventually,

(35:15):
it'll just shoot a tractor beam down onto you, pill
you up to the satellite, and it'll it'll land you
at Edwards Air Force Base and serve you a nice
hot meal and send you on your way. That's the future,
all right. So combats are is next? And uh, I
don't know. I just I don't think about this stuff
a lot because I generally just think of the military

(35:38):
is like, well, they just do everything. I thought that
Gene Hackman assembled like ragtag groups of people that go
in behind enemy lines. Like ten years later, I thought,
that's how we did it. What was that? Uncommon? Valid?
Maybe one of the best post Vietnam movies of all time?
I don't know about that. Have you seen it lately?

(35:58):
I saw it within the last probably five of yours. Really, Yeah, dude,
it's good A right that I'm not a gun guy,
but when that guy um gives Gene Hackman the menu
of the like heavy artillery, it's still pretty cool when
you see it, Like I would take that one and
that one. It's so funny, Like I think, I don't know,

(36:22):
we're not gun guys at all, yet the notion of
a gun menu just lights us up. What is that
all about? There's some part of our brain just brainwashing
from movies. Yeah, probably, I guess, you know, sure, that's
my guess. Alright, So c sar they're there. They're basically
kind of the first people to arrive behind enemy lines
and in the course of battle, and the U. S.

(36:45):
Air Force takes lead in this situation. So anytime there's
like a Scott O Grady situation where someone has let's say,
ejected from their jet behind enemy lines, dude on fire. Yeah,
that's the worst case scenario probably, Um, that is when
c s are really uh earns their metal. Yeah, you know,

(37:08):
and you, I mean, the story of Scotto Grady kind
of says it all right, Um, it's their metal test,
their metal to eventually earn a metal. What I meant, yea,
I think you got it all together. So, Um, I
think the Air Force still is tasked with combat search
and rescue, but they're starting to do it jointly with

(37:31):
the army I think as well. But they have um,
what it called expeditionary rescue squadrons. That is the name
of the people that you want coming after you. Yeah, Um,
and they go in, like you said, behind enemy lines, Um,
under a tremendous amount of danger. There's usually two helicopters. Um.

(37:52):
One goes in and actually airlifts the person out. The
other helicopter is there to like shot shoot at people, yeah,
and be like stay back, stay back, um, because this
is the like again, it's behind enemy lines, one of
your pilots has been shot down. When you guys have
gotten lost or captured or something, these are the people
who go in and get them. Yeah. They have planes
to long range search planes like the h C one

(38:15):
thirty which can actually refuel these helicopters to h H sixties,
which U they said, the hell the planes are when
there was like not much of a threat then I
think the helicopters they use up to a medium threat.
But like you said, they have you know, ground support
going on too. Yeah, and there was like a real
push to update their um their helicopter that they used

(38:37):
to one that's specifically designed for c SAR. But I
think the plug got pulled on it, so there's still
I think working with the is that the h H
sixties obey they call him double H six zeros that's
even longer. Okay, Uh. This is kind of the cool
part for me for c SAR is you don't really

(38:58):
think about this, but if someone has been shot down
and they do have radio comms ability and they can
get in touch with you. You you need to be
able to authenticate this signal, whether it's a beacon or
a real human voice on the other end, because they
could be compromised. They could be sitting there with a collision,
a cough to their head and uh being forced to

(39:22):
like you know, lure someone into a trap of a
foreign enemy. Right, So you have to be able to
authenticate these calls. And they do that by never giving
their full uh details over the radio, like as it stands.
They'll say, it's like add numbers or subtract or multiplied digits,
and you're like call signs and your rank and your

(39:46):
unit numbers and stuff like that, right, and then they
verify who you are. And they once they verify who
you are, they'll come get you. But there are more
Some conditions are more ideal than others. And when Scott
O'Grady very famously went down um in Bosnia during the
Balkan War, I think they he they received his distress

(40:07):
signal finally, I think six days on he'd been surviving
by like drinking the sweat out of his own socks
and eating bugs and spending the whole time evading UM
getting captured did of just an amazing job of staying
alive and staying uncaptured. UM. But he sent out his
beacon or they received his beacon or distress signal like

(40:30):
a couple hours before dawn, and they're like, this guy
has already been missing for six days. We found him.
We can't let him just stay for another six days
because the ideal conditions are after dark. They couldn't do that.
So two hours after that, UM, they went in after
him like in broad daylight, I guess, And w wasn't
it marines had actually got him out? And what was

(40:50):
wasn't it like twenty minutes or something ridiculous too? Oh,
two minutes from the time they arrived to the extraction
to the time they were gone again. Yeah, I'm sure
he wasn't lollygag And I'm sure and he was like,
let's go. He's like, oh wait, I forgot my basket
I was making with reads. I got to go back

(41:11):
and get it. Uh, pretty amazing. So I saw about
his story, I looked up what happened with him. He
released a book called Return with Honor, and you know,
they made that movie Behind Enemy Lines with Owen Wilson
and Gene Gene Hackman. Again, he was like the guy
who was trying to get Owen Wilson out. I never

(41:32):
saw that movie. He sued Fox, twenty Century Fox, and
then eventually Discovery Channel. He sued um No. He sued
for basically appropriating his life story. Uh. And the problem
that he publicly said he had with it was that
Owen Wilson used foul language, was portrayed as a hot
dog pilot, and disobeyed orders, and that Scott O Grady

(41:56):
was none of those. Now was he actually scott O
Grady in the movie or debate? Thinly disguise? It thinly disguise,
which meant they didn't need to pay him any royalties, right,
and it also probably many lost his lawsuit. Imagine, right,
I don't know. I didn't see that. I just saw
like a two thousand one Entertainment Weekly article on it,

(42:16):
the definitive source. It's good journalism, man. All right, well,
let's take a break and we'll talk about some search
techniques and other fun stuff right after this. All right, now,

(42:49):
this feels like a no brainer, but it's actually a
little more interesting than you would think. Establishing your search area. Yeah,
so let's say, where do you look now we've moved
on to somebody, say like lost in its is a
really good example of this, right, happens a lot, And
there's like, if you're a sheriff's deputy, you may or
may not have any star training. If you're the sheriff,

(43:11):
you may or may not have any star training. That's
probably unlikely these days, but it's a possibility. But even
if you're the only one in your department, you've got
a whole department who you need to explain what to do.
And the first thing you have to do is start
looking for uh answers to your questions. But you need
to know what questions you have to ask first. So
if you're looking for any kind of evidence specifically of

(43:34):
where the last place the person was seen was, that's
the first thing you want to find. Yeah, last scene
uh or I think last sing can also be last uh.
Well if that's not true, because last known position is different.
So if someone was last seen leading a trailhead um

(43:56):
for their for their hike, let's say they were last
seeing at noon starting at this trailhead. That means that
another human being who's now talking to you as an
eyewitness said, I saw this person. Yeah, like maybe they
either saw someone on the trail or they checked into
a ranger station and got their back country permit or something.
They're like, I'm off so long, suckers. Uh. That is

(44:17):
different though, than last known position. So if someone is
missing their last known uh last scene place, maybe the trailhead,
but three miles in, if they find that person's baseball cap,
then that is they're all of a sudden their last
known position. If you compare that to where they started,
you might be able to reasonably come up with maybe

(44:38):
they're headed in this direction and they might be somewhere
in this area by now. That would be an enormous
break because if you can figure out when they were
last seen, like you're saying, and then when this thing
was found, you know the direction and roughly the speed
that there they're going. Yeah, and this is there are
a lot of assumptions involved here, um, but hopefully you're

(44:59):
you know, hopefully one wasn't like they dropped their baseball
hat and then decided to go in a completely different
direction they did. They close your eyes and twirled around
and just headed out. Yeah, so that's the that's how
that works, Um, But generally it's a it's a circle
unless you starting from the last the place they were
last laid eyes on, right, Yeah, because they could theoretically

(45:21):
be going in any position in any direction. Um, unless
you come up with something called the choke point, which
is kind of interesting. Uh. That is where you have
either a man made feature or some sort of geological
natural feature that cuts off an area, like like I
think definitely, yeah, couldn't have climbed that three ft cliffs,
So now we can go in this direction across that

(45:43):
crazy river. Yeah, and the say, if it's a river,
if it's a cliff, you can just position somebody at
that cliff and be like, stay here in case you
see them. If it's a river, you can say, well
they would have if they wanted to cross, they'd have
to go to this bridge to stay here on this
bridge in case they come this way. That's one thing
to do when you have a choke point, right. Yeah.

(46:03):
So if you have a searcher named Cliff and to
searcher name river, yes, to avoid confusion. And if Jeff
Bridges is searching as well or Bow Bridges either one, well,
I think we know that Jeff would be doing the searching, right,
I don't know. I think would just be telling him
how to do it. Maybe he is the boss, the
older brother. Man, those guys are the best, Like they're there.

(46:26):
Have you met bo I've never met either one of them,
but I've just heard interviews with both and they're like,
they're like brothers should be. Oh you've heard interviews with
them together, no separately talking about each other. It is
very sweet. They're like best buds. That's cool and very
big brother little brother. Yeah, it's kind of neat. I

(46:47):
wonder what the quaids are like. Man, I'm curious about
that because Randy is you know, yeah, I know he's
developed into something else. So oh oh, So if you
were searching from the last position, no, not the last
known position, last place scene, yes, the last place scene.

(47:11):
So that's where you start. If you're searching from that
and you start heading out and you find that baseball cap,
that is a huge clue, like I said, and probably
the people who found it are what are called the
hasty search team, because right when you establish a last
place scene, you send some people out who are usually
like very experienced, very well trained star people, and they

(47:33):
start scrambling out in every direction in that circle lightfoot
looking for Yeah, that's a part of it. They probably
climb a tree like nothing, um looking going to the
places where it would be most likely that somebody like
this would would go to. Yeah, and that's uh. When
they think, like, you know, this person is in danger,
there's a storm coming in or night is falling and

(47:54):
it's going to get really cold, you deploy these hasty
search teams that they're not out there coming the ground
for clues. No, but I think it is a matter
of course that the first thing you do is deploy
the hasty team. Then you follow up with the deliberate people. Yeah,
the the clue team, that's what we'll call them, Colonel Mustard.
They get a little slower and they are and I

(48:18):
think this, I mean, well, I guess it kind of depends.
It could be for someone just trapped in the woods,
but definitely they use these for those community searches when
like a kid is missing or something. These are the
things you see on the news and people are walking
very slowly through the woods because a clue could be
a a cigarette butt on the ground, you know, and
you have people say space twenty ft apart, and each

(48:41):
one is responsible for everything ahead of them, and ten
ft to the side and ten ft to the other side,
and then that way, if everybody is doing what they're
supposed to be doing, every square inch of this this
search area is covered eventually by this these searchers, the
second group of searchers. Yeah, they'll also use track traps sometime,

(49:03):
so they'll like maybe go to a trail, uh, a
place on a trail or any place really, and they
will put like sand on the ground and then they
can go back and check that sand if there were footprints,
they know that it wasn't wasn't their footprints, So that
might have be a last known position perhaps, So Chuck,
if you get lost and they find you and they say, hey,

(49:28):
come back with us, you might say, uh, no, I'll
find my own way back. I'll crawl back myself, even
though my leg's broken. Why would a human being do that? Well, Uh,
because you might get a bill at the end of
the day or a week or month, depending on what
state you get lost in. Yeah, this is a bit
of a This is a lightning rod in the outdoor

(49:51):
community because there's a lot of facets to this um.
One facet is, Hey, if you did something dumb and
you went somewhere where you weren't supposed to go, and
you weren't equipped to do this or experience enough to
do this, why should a taxpayer have to fit foot
your sixty dollar bill of rescue. It's a legitimate point.

(50:14):
It's a legitimate point. So they say, pass laws in
some states to deter people from doing something stupid. On
the other hand, on them, the other side says, search
and rescue is a pure public service, just like you
don't get a bill from the fire department. If you
do this kind of thing, then people will think twice

(50:35):
about calling for help. If they don't have the money
and they know they're going to get a sixty bill,
they might actually just put it off too long, and
then by the time they say, okay, fine, I need
some help, it's too late and they're going to die
out there. You don't want anybody thinking about money during
a search and rescue operation. Yeah, I mean, it's it's
sort of a weird balance you're trying to strike between

(50:57):
encouraging people to get out and explore the wilderness, but
only wanting people that are to go in certain places,
and that have a certain experience level to do so,
and certainly not like like the worst case scenario like
you were talking about, is I'm in trouble, but I'm
not gonna send out my beacon. So apparently the Colorado

(51:19):
Search and Rescue Board actually put together fifteen cases This
is according to Outside Magazine, of people who actually delayed
calling for help to Yeah, because they um, they knew
that they would be charged or there was a chance
that they would be charged like they So it actually happens.
It's not hypothetical like it. It happens in real life.

(51:41):
So there are some states like New Hampshire apparently is
the the last place you want to um have a
search undertaken for you, because they actually do bill. They've
done something like seventy dollars in billing for like sixty
rescues since two thousand eight. Are pretty low cost rescues. Yeah,
it's surprising like this one guy in this article is

(52:03):
search and rescue a public service? Not exactly is the
name of the article. And there was a man named
Ed Beacon who had an artificial hip, went hiking by
himself on a bad weather day, tried to jump onto
a ledge and dislocated that artificial hip and took it
all the way to the state Supreme Court when he
didn't want to pay his nine thousand bill, and the

(52:24):
state Supreme Court said, sorry, yeah, because New Hampshire has
in their law it says you can be billed if
you were shown to have been negligent. And the state
Supreme Court are agreed with the case against him that
said he had a replacement hip, so a faulty hip,
and he knew that there was a large possibility of
bad weather. They said, stay home, old man, basically, and hey, yeah,

(52:48):
but he fought it up to the Supreme Court and
loss and after that you got yeah, you got no recourse. Yeah,
and there's uh, there are quite a few states that
have laws like this on the books that range from
very specific to very broad. And uh, just because your
state has this on the books a lot of times
is to dissuade people from being dumb. Um. It doesn't

(53:08):
mean you're gonna get hit with a bill. Even if
they have the law on the books. It's up to
them whether or not they want to pursue that. And
then a lot of states have programs um that you
can pay anywhere from three bucks to twenty five dollars
to basically say, if you've paid this money, that means
that you don't get charged for rescue. Right. It's like
a communal pot that everybody pays into with the chances

(53:32):
of them actually needing it very slim, but they do
need it, then they've got it. Yeah, which I think
is a great idea. Not bad. I think any outdoor
enthusiasts that regularly does this with they're three dollars, you know,
for a year per year. Yeah, that's not bad at all. Yeah,
And the federal government apparently does not um, although they

(53:55):
could always change, you never know, but they don't get reimbursed,
but they have a policy of not charging. Yeah. Um.
Last thing I saw there was an app. You know,
I'm crazy for apps like Gluco for diabetes. There's also
an app called Drones SAR and it basically takes over
your drone and and flies your drone in a search

(54:16):
pattern for a search and rescue mission. So this is
if you're a drone pilot who has lost no, if
you have one of those rotor multi rotor drones that
you like to fly around and buzze your neighbor's roof
with so your drone pilot, if you show up to
a UM search and rescue mission, I got a drone
you want to use it, It's got a video camera

(54:37):
on it. They say, sure, download drone Star and you
drone Star app will take over your your drone and
fly it as part of this search. It's pretty cool. Yeah.
Shout out to my buddy Lowell, my sister in law's
boyfriend is a drone pilot. A couple of shout it's

(55:00):
for Lowell. He's a drone pilot and a good one.
I've seen. I've seen him in action, and you know,
it's not the easiest thing the world to do. He
doesn't he doesn't crash these things. Although it's kind of
funny to see drone fails on YouTube UM because it's
always going great until like there was one I saw
today where there was a some sort of ape or

(55:23):
monkey preserve and they were flying all around. It's like, man,
this is gorgeous. Look at all these apes and monkeys
doing their thing. And then it flies up close to
one and this monkey just fully takes a stick and
goes whack. And then the next thing you know, you
see it falling on the ground and then you know,
all these monkeys start descending upon it and like poking
and stuff. It's pretty neat. So shout out to Lowell

(55:44):
for that. And I meant to say a few weeks ago,
I finally vaped with Lowell. What gave it a try?
I was like, you know what, he's a vapor. We
got a lot of flak for dissing vapors. Uh uh.
And I was like, all right, let me try it.
And it was one of those you know, flavored things

(56:06):
with no nicotine. No, it had nicotine. Okay, at least
at least you're smoking nicotine. Yeah, And it was I
will say this, it was interesting. So are you hooked
on vaping now, are you? No? No, no, no, no,
I'm not. I never did it again. I took a
couple of puffs. It's like, well, that's interesting. It tastes
it was like banana, okay, And I was like, I
didn't have quite how to wrap my head around still

(56:29):
like the pleasure of inhaling vapi banana like. But the
funny thing is I can't stop thinking about it. It
was weird. I was like, I mean, it wasn't like,
oh this is disgusting, but I didn't want to do
it again either. That's good, Charles. I think that is
the lesson here. I just thought i'd give it a shot.
So well, good for you for trying new things. Don't

(56:50):
ever do that again, yea lulls leading me? Done it bad? Ah?
You got anything else? Nope, So we got a whole
sweet coming. Just wait, everybody, I can't wait. Uh. And
in the meantime, you can look up Chuck's awesome articles
Star Search and Rescue on how stuff works in the
search bar. Since I said search bar's time for listener mail,

(57:12):
I'm gonna call this golf pro. Golf pro, Hey, guys.
Like many in the golf business, my first job included
time as a picker as a teenager, and of course
I soon became acquainted with the multiple bangs and clangs
of titlists ricocheting off every side of the cage. Remember
we talked about taking aim on the driving range at
those folks going and beatles. A few years later, when

(57:33):
I was a beginning my career as an assistant pro,
I found myself supervising these kids, one of whom relished
his time on the range and especially the chance to
engage in good natured trash talk whenever his card came
within reach. On one such occasion, after a friend and
I had missed him on several point blank attempts, he
turned the card away from us to make another pass
on the far into the range, confident that our aim

(57:54):
would certainly not be better. As he moved further away,
traveling in a direct line away from me, he had
reached a distance about a hundred and fifty yards when
my laser beam three iron shot took flight on a
low trajectory and never left its target. It came as
a surprise to him and to me when, instead of
the usual clang followed by laughter, we heard a dull
thud and a low groan. It turned out our range picker,

(58:18):
which is the car, included a narrow gap of about
two and a half inches where the back of the
cage met the top of the seat in the rear
of the cart. Despite my countless hours in that old machine,
I never noticed that. Neither had he. Thankfully, his likable
demeanor had led him to be well tipped by the membership,
and the wallet in his back pocket, thick with dozens
of dollar bills, took the brunt of the below Uh,

(58:40):
I don't see how that would have happened. But if
he was sitting on his wallet, had to hit him
in the butt. Maybe it's a tiny maybe he has
a big but I don't know. I don't know either.
I would love this guy, So Brian says, as I
have never made a hole in one, this still stands
as my best shot I've ever had. And one might
argue that, uh, it's even more difficulty. And that is Brian.

(59:02):
He is a golf bro. Thanks Brian, and Northern Cali.
And he said to both of us, if we're ever
out in Carmel and we want to a play golf,
alright with a golf bro, we could do that. Or
if we want to actually drive the picker, he would
let us do that. I just rather play golf. I
want to do both. Okay, well, shoot, let's do it.

(59:24):
Let's do it. Thanks a lot, Brian. That was also
an excellent, well written email. If you if you ask me,
it's great. Brian Sleeman. He's the head pro at the
Preserve Golf Club. Is it basically John Cheever short story?
Maybe uptick? I don't know one of the two. Uh,
if you want to get in touch with me, and
chuck and offer us something awesome like Brian did. You

(59:46):
can go onto our website Stuff you Should Know dot com,
find all the links to our social meds and catch
our attention that way. Or you can just go straight
to the horse's mouth and send us an email to
stuff podcast how stuff Works dot com for more on
thiss and thousands of other topics. Is it how Stuff

(01:00:08):
Work stopp