Short Stuff: Parachute Emergency!

Your parachute won’t open – now what?! Listen up to Josh and Chuck and you may make it out of this in one piece.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, and welcome to the short Stuff. I'm Josh, and
there's Chuck and Dave's here in spirit, so it's short stuff.
Let's get it started. I know we've talked about whether
or not you have skied, divn doved, dived, Yes, all
of them, and I think that you have right. Didn't
you do a tandem? John? I did one time, and uh,

(00:24):
it was I think I said before, and I'll say
it again, I blacked out at first, like second or
two out of just yes, I've never blacked out from
terror before, but I did that time. Uh. And overall,
you did it and you were okay with it? Or
were you When you got to the bottom you were
like that was actually all oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yes absolutely,
But I wouldn't do it again. There was a period

(00:45):
where I would have and then you was like, no,
I've done it too. We've both done it. Let's just
leave it at that and not breasts our luck. Yeah.
I still have not, and I was thinking about it
today and I'm not scared too or anything. I don't
have a problem with heights. I think it could be fun.
But I'm also just kind of like, now if I
bother there's a lot at stake. Now, well, yeah, that's yeah,

(01:08):
that's one of those like early twentysomething thing that's when
it's best to do. But then there's plenty of people
who are like, I'm a middle aged guy, I'd ever
been doing it forever. The key is to never jump
one thousand times. You just need to jump nine times
and just stop right there. Apparently, yeah, because if you
ask Ron Bell, who is a certified usp A United

(01:34):
States Parachute Association member, I guess I don't know what
they're called. Dude, Uh, do your jumper. He's made thirteen
thousand jumps and had fourteen mouth functions, and he said
that's about on target, about one in a thousand jumps.
Something could go wrong. But part of the reason for
this episode is that doesn't mean certain death just because

(01:56):
there is a malfunction. No, there's a lot of ways
that your parent shoot malfunction um, and it basically has
everything to do with your shoot not deploying correctly, which
the appropriate, appropriate thing to say when your shoot doesn't
come out is shoot, oh shoot, you know, terrible, thanks.

(02:18):
But the problem, so you're going about a hundred and
twenty miles an hour just to put this into perspective.
By the way, it's terminal velocity after falling for twelve seconds.
A human being won't travel faster than that, no matter
how far they're falling. Charlie Cheen taught us all that
totally did back in the nineties. So you imagine how
much cocaine he was on when he was filming that movie.

(02:39):
It must have been like literally mind boggling. So you're
traveling a hundred twenty miles an hour straight towards the
Earth and your shoot doesn't go out as it should,
and there's a lot of different things that can happen
with a what's called a partial mauthfunction, and a partial
malfunction means the shoot tries to deploy, but something happens

(03:00):
to keep it from deploying correctly. Absolutely so, Um, there's
typically like something like your line getting messed up, where
the shoot comes out okay, but the two sets of
lines on either side of the shoot, UM might get
kind of wound up. Kind of like how when you
were a kid and you spun around on a swing
set that chained would would twist up ahead of you

(03:23):
above you. That same thing frequently can happen when you're parachuting. Um. Fortunately,
it's kind of easy to do. You just kind of
twist the other way and it'll untwist, just like with
the the swing set. The key though, is to not
go out of your mind with fear and forget how

(03:43):
to turn one way or the other. Yeah, I think
don't panic is the number one role of all of
the stuff. Was that a hitchhiker's guide reference, I mean, yeah,
plus general life. As long as it was in there somewhere,
it's good. Yes, that's called the line twist. The other
partial malfunction is known as a line over, which means

(04:06):
that your shoot tries to deploy, it maybe does deploy,
but one of the lines has crossed over where the
shoot is, and so the shoot is sort of you know,
if you can imagine a parachute with one of the
lines kind of running through it instead of where it
should be, which is dangling down from it, then you've
got a parachute that's sort of working but not like

(04:26):
it should now. And that can be a real problem
when your main shoot doesn't open. But luckily people who
jumped out of planes plenty of times have figured out
that it might help if you have a second shoot
and we're gonna talk all about that second shoot and
how it probably will save your life after this message.
Wit you think it sounds great, Well, now we're on
the road, driving in your truck. Want to learn a

(04:48):
thing or two from Josh can Chuck. It's stuff you
should know, all right, Okay, Charles? So, Um, your main

(05:13):
shoot is deployed and not functioning. Either you've got a
line cross that won't undo, you've got a line over,
or in some cases, your shoot just hasn't deployed at all.
What do you do, big shot? What do you do? Well,
that's called a total malfunction. If your shoot just doesn't
come out or doesn't open at all, it's a complete failure. Uh,

(05:36):
you have a reserve shoot. You've always got another one
in there. And the good news is that any old
well I don't know any old because I'm sure they
make sure the most experienced parachuters pack that main shoot
wherever you're going. But you do not have to be
a certified f a A operator to pack that main shoot.
You do have to be that to pack that reserve

(05:59):
shoot though, right, which is like an extra level of
protection because those people are very sober, they know what
they're doing no nonsense. Crew cuts, every last one of them,
and they they will pack your reserve shoot very very well.
The thing is, if your reserve shoot doesn't open, this
article points it out pretty plainly. God wanted you dead.

(06:19):
Your number was Yeah, I mean, reserves are not supposed
to fail because they are the redundancy. But um, it
can be a manufacturing mistake. Um. Whereas the chances of
the reality is when your other, your main shoot fails,
it could just be that it was packed wrong, or

(06:41):
that you came out of the plane funny in your
body is at a weird angle, and it sounds kind
of funny to say, but if you are going to
have a parachute malfunction rather than a line over a
lying cross, you are actually better off if your main
shoot doesn't deploy at all, because that cuts down on
the chance of your reserve shoot getting tangled with your
main and shoot. So if you're gonna have to use

(07:02):
your reserve shoot, it's better if the main shoot isn't deployed.
But if you're worried or whatever and your main shoot
is not working, don't hesitate to deploy that reserve shoot.
Just go ahead and use it. That's what it's there for.
That's right. In this house stuff Works article, Bell is
quoted as saying, when in doubt, whip it out. That
is so Bell. That is so Bell, So ted nugent too.

(07:24):
We Um. We had a guy put in floors at
our house once and he was a naked skuy diver.
And he said, and he said one time he got
blown off course. And this guy was not There was
nothing that about him that made you say, like, yeah,
you know, I bet you were a pretty handsome naked
guy diver like he was. Whatever. The point is. The

(07:47):
point is, um, he was blown off course once and
he had to hitch a ride back naked except for
his parachute. What's the point. I don't I don't get
the naked sky up. He said, it was very Um,
it was a very freeing sensation. You can imagine. I mean,
that's what they say about being naked doing anything right.
This is like wind whipping past your gentalia. Your gentalia. Yeah,

(08:10):
it's like s'mores. It's a contraction. Uh So. The other
good thing about um the fail safe these days is
that if you, let's say, you go out of like
you blacked out Let's say you didn't regain consciousness and
you weren't doing a tandem jump, and all of a sudden,
Josh Clark is just hurtling to the ground passed out. UM,

(08:33):
you will probably still be okay because these days they
have UM these modern devices called automatic activation devices a
A d S, and they use computerized sensors that basically say, hey,
if you're falling below one thousand feet and you're going
at least seventy eight miles per hour, then something's wrong
and we're gonna we're gonna automatically deploy the backup parachute,

(08:56):
this little computerized thing. So it's like you said, there,
there's like, it's not a death sentence. If your shoot
doesn't open. There's a lot of ways that you can
resolve this. But there are some instances where your shoot
just doesn't open. UM. What's crazy is is that people
die from those very infrequently, UM or I should say,

(09:17):
taking into account all jumps, there are very few people
who die parachuting. UM. I think in two thousand, UM
thirty two people died out of two point seven million
skydive jumps, and then in just eleven out of two
point eight million died, and that's not taking into account

(09:40):
people who actually have survived these things where the their
parachutes just didn't deploy and they hit the ground and
they actually live, which does happen from time to time. Yeah,
And I guess just some back of the envelope math
which I'll probably get wrong if Bell is correct, and
that about one in a thousand have some sort of
partial malfunction at least, that would mean out of those

(10:01):
two point eight million total jumps, there were about hundred
mouth functions and only eleven deaths. Still, Yeah, so if
you had, if you had, I think you're right, you
know me and math too, So that's that was impressive.
Now that one's pretty straightforward, I think. So out of
there ish malfunctions, there were only eleven death so your

(10:24):
chances of surviving a malfunction are still really really great. Yeah.
So there were a couple of people um that kind
of famously survived. There was a woman named Victoria's Sillers
whose nefarious evil husband tampered with her parachute to kill her,
and she survived a drop from four thousand feet. A
few years what happened to him? He went to prison.

(10:46):
A guy named Michael Holmes jumped to two miles three
point two kilometers. That's how far he dropped to the
earth without his shote deploying. But he happened to land
in some BlackBerry bushes and he lived. Um, are you
do feel bad for the BlackBerry bushes? No? I thought
that was a very sweet nice And I'm just picturing

(11:06):
this person landing and reaching over and picking a BlackBerry.
And for some reason that all sounded like you were sympathizing,
like what the BlackBerry bushes? Do you deserve that? And now,
of course this guy is probably listening. He's like, yeah,
ad a BlackBerry with my stomach collapse. Right. But then
the queen of all this chuck, the Queen Champion, was

(11:27):
a woman named Vesna Vulovich, who in nineteen seventy two
was a flight attendant on board the Yugoslav air flight
that they suspect had a bomb. At any case, it
came apart at thirty three thousand feet and she kept
in the tail pinned between the wall or the back
of the tail or the back of the plane and

(11:48):
a service cart, dropped thirty three thousand feet out of
the air and survived. Wow, isn't that crazy. Wow, that
is Yeah, that's startling. Can you imagine like her just shakily,
like putting a cigarette in her mouth and like walking
away from the landing. Because this was Yugoslavi in n

(12:11):
there's a hundred and ten percent chance that she smoked cigarettes. Yes,
of course, unfiltered. You've got anything else, man, I got
nothing else to pull that shoot, whip it out and
when it doesn't work for sure to say shoot, well
that's it for short stuff every pay we're out. Stuff

(12:32):
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