Short Stuff: Smoke Signals

Were smoke signals real or a Hollywood invention? Turns out, they were indeed a thing and invented by the Chinese, even. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. Everybody pipe down.
We've got to get started. There's Chuck, I'm Josh, Cherry, etcetera.
Let's go, let's go stop laughing. Boy, that that's never
gonna get old, is it? Not? To me? Probably to
other people, but not me. We're going to start getting
emails where people are like, I like short stuff, but
I always feel so anxious. Right, yeah, well join the club. Pal. So.

(00:28):
I wrote this article on smoke signals many many years ago.
I know it's a good one, you think, sure, al right,
it's a I mean, it's a fairly short topic. Like
even when you go research elsewhere outside of your brilliant article,
there's not that much more to it. You know, it's
like pretty straightforward stuff. But I think the thing the
first thing to kind of cover with smoke signals is

(00:50):
that they actually were real. It's not something that like
Hollywood invented from like Cowboy and Indian movies or something
like yeah, which that seems like it could have been
the case. The one thing that got me in reviewing
this again and then originally when I was doing it
years ago as an article, was just like, how brilliant
this is? It really is. It is also, Chuck. The

(01:11):
one thing that struck me when researching, it's just how
stressful it would be because if you screw it up,
it's not like there's a signal for wait, let me
start over. Well, maybe there was. I hope there was
for for people like me, for neurotic Native Americans. Yeah,
I guess so. All right, so we're talking about smoke signals, which, um,
like you said, they were real, and they are still real.

(01:34):
It's not like, you know, they're still smoke and they're
still wet blankets, right exactly. But Native Americans and not
just Native Americans, as we learn we'll learn here in
a second, but Chinese soldiers along the Great Wall of China.
You know, they couldn't communicate long distances. But if you
have a big fire with white smoke, you can see

(01:55):
that for you know, a thousand miles maybe let's just
say a million miles Chuck, Yeah, a million miles. And
and they were so smart they figured out, hey, this
is a great way to send a kind of rudimentary
message right over a long distance. Yeah. And that's a
really important point too, is you're not sending like, hey,

(02:16):
how's it going, what's up with Alexander, how's his foot
doing right now? I'll wait for your reply Alexander the
Apache yeah exactly, or the Chinese soldier what are the two? Yeah? Um,
this is just strictly like like everything's okay, um, or
I am here, or please please God send help. Something

(02:39):
really horrible is going down, like really broad stroke communications
that you would need to send over long distances. Yeah,
but it could be, I mean, depending on the tribe
and what they are arranged. Because kind of the beauty
of smoke signals is it's just puffs of smoke, so
you can have it mean whatever you want to mean
as long as you I'll talk about it beforehand. Get

(03:02):
everyone on the same page. Although they didn't have pages,
they had smoke so that that you couldn't use that.
Turn back. Then get on the same puff. Get everyone
in the same puff. I'm gonna start using that. Um.
As long as you had everyone together, you could send
more complex messages. It's not just like hey, someone's invading.

(03:23):
It could be like, hey, we're really uh sick over
here and could use some help, right or hungry or whatever. Yeah,
And because everyone could see it, you had to kind
of have like an previously agreed upon um message or
meaning to each of the messages between you and who
you're sending it to, so that you it was encoded

(03:45):
in a way, I guess you could say, yeah, and
as far as China on the Great Wall of China,
and that's kind of a perfect scenario, best case scenario
for sending a smoke signal, because it's sort of wide
open um, and you know, you can see it for many,
many miles, and they had watch towers so you could
convey from you know, you could string along from one

(04:05):
watch tower to the next, and all of a sudden
you're sending messages over a few hours, you know. Three. Yeah,
I saw that the earliest accounts of smoke signals being
used is with the Chinese along the Great Wall of China. Well,
I think interesting about the whole idea of smoke signals
is that it's just such a such a great idea

(04:29):
that it evolved independently in different parts of the world,
like with Native Americans. As far as we know, they
never had any contact with the Chinese the book fourteen
twenty one notwithstanding. But the Native Americans in the Southwest
and in the plains, we're using smoke signals at the
same time that the Chinese were, you know, half a

(04:49):
world away, just because it's just such a basically good idea,
but they were using virtually the same the same yeah
and and technique, you know, yeah, the depending on you know,
we're going to talk about the best stuff to burn.
But in China they burned apparently saltpeter, sulfur, and wolf
dung to create really dense smoke. And I can't imagine

(05:13):
what that must have smelled like. I'll bet it smell
a lot like poop and saltpeter and salt would Yeah, sulfur, dude,
that's that's the that's the icing on the case that
the kicker, Yeah, just throwing a little eggy smell on
top exactly. It's like, did you now it's the fire?
That guy's always saying it's the fire, not the fire.

(05:34):
He's always blaming it on his dog or the fire. Oh, Alexander, Uh, well,
should we take a break and then talk about how
to do this? I guess so all right, let's do it.

(06:04):
K Okay, Chuck, we're back. And before we we really
get to the nuts and bolt of ale as, I
want to say I also saw a lot of mention
of how tribes in North America used mirrors too to

(06:25):
sick and I was like, did they have mirrors? And
though it's like polished mica, but they they used those
over long distances as well. And body positions too, like
you could see how somebody was like standing or sitting
or crouching, and that, um indicated something to other other
people in their tribe who were say like also going

(06:45):
through the woods with them, that they had seen something
or who they had seen, or that there was a
bear or whatever, um, which is pretty ingenious. Yeah. I
wonder if they got respect from And by the way,
I'm going to stop using the word settlers. Did you
see that email? Did I don't recall us using the
word settlers, did we Well, I mean I've said the
word settlers a lot of the years, I'm sure, um yeah,

(07:08):
But I mean have we said it recently, I don't know.
But it was just a very nice email, one of those.
It was like, oh, you know, I never really thought
about it. It was already settled. They weren't settlers. They
were you know, conquerors, invaders, invaders, interlopers. Yeah, So I
just wondered if the invaders from Europe. Uh, if they
saw these things, I know they were always like, you know,

(07:30):
these rudimentary savages. I wonder if they ever saw the
genius and some of these things, hopefully, you know, I
mean surely, yeah, I'm sure that there were people who
adopted smoke signals after they learned how to do it,
like white Europeans who figured it out from from watching them,
maybe even from being taught. They're like smoke signals, we
use pigeons far more advanced. Get with the times, all right,

(07:53):
So this is still relevant today. The Boy Scouts of
America still teaches smoke signaling, and it sounds still to
think about. But if you are ever in the woods
and you were hurt or injured or lost and alone
or you know, can't get help, this is just lonely
need a friend. This is still away that you can
send a message. Uh. And wilderness people understand if they

(08:17):
see three, like clear wilderness people, if they see three
distinct puffs of smoke, then that's a signal that says, hey,
somebody needs help, get me out of here. Pretty much. Yeah,
that's that's the that's a universal one. You can also
do that with your gun if you're lost to the woods,
you can shoot three times in the air. It's the

(08:37):
same in car horn, car horn YEP. The one thing
you don't want to use like that old joke is, um,
you don't want to shoot your bow and arrow three
times in the year. It doesn't really do anything. When
I'm sitting at a traffic light behind someone on their
cell phone and it turns green, I go huh huh huh,
and they always go, what do you need? What do
you need? All right? Are you lost in the woods?

(08:59):
That's how that is down. Yeah, So, um to to
do this for first, you have to start with the fire, obviously,
but you have to start with a pretty good fire.
You have to let your fire get going to start
sending smoke signals because you're going to do your best
to smother that fire from time to time repeatedly. Um.

(09:19):
So you want to get a really good raging fire
going that won't easily go out right, that's step one. Yeah,
and part of the being able to see if you
want that good thick, dense white smoke. If you've ever
been camping, you know, if you throw greenery on a
fire or something that's even a little bit wet it's
gonna turn really really white and thick, and that is

(09:40):
sort of theft. After you get your fire going really good,
that's when you put on um, the more green timber
and leaves and stuff like that, or if you're glamping
you have someone do that for you exactly. So that's
another reason you want a really good fire going, because
you don't want it to be so weak that the
grass or the green um sticks or whatever, don't you know,

(10:00):
put the fire out. So you're creating this nice, white,
dense smoke and you get the thing going pretty well,
maybe you've got somebody's attention. They're like, you don't see
that kind of smoke every day? What's going on over there?
You want to you want to have a blanket with you.
It's actually it's vital that you do have some sort
of blanket or some sleeping roll or something like that.

(10:22):
Um that you can wet. That's another thing too, because
I was thinking, like in the American Southwest, like that was,
you know, kind of an investment of your water to
wet a whole blanket enough to send a smoke signal.
But you want to take a wet blanket and you
throw it over your fire and hold it there until
there's no smoke coming out. Right, And we don't mean

(10:43):
Alexander who was a total wet blanket. We mean a
real wet blanket, right, like the the literal wet blanket,
as the hipsters would say. Yeah, So, I mean, I
imagine you could do it with it's something dry, as
long as it's you're sending like one quick signal. Um,
but obviously something dry you run the escope catching it
on fire. So if if you have no access to
any water, you could probably still get by, but you

(11:05):
definitely want a wet something. It's gonna make it a
stressful form of communication even more stressful. So um, you
hold it on there long enough to for smoke to cease, uh,
and then you pull the blanket off, or I guess
you kind of flap it off is probably the better
way to do it. And while you have that wet
blanket over the fire, smoke was still building up. So

(11:28):
when you pull the blanket off, a big puff of
smoke comes up, and there's your first signal. And if
you if you just stop right there, what you've just
told the world is, Hey, how's it going, I'm here. Well,
it could these that our research were specifically Apache UM,
and a single plume basically is yeah, sort of an

(11:50):
attention getter. Um, maybe something's going on, but like you
don't need to send in reinforcements or anything, but maybe
just keep an eye on the sky as things play out.
It could also mean something like I've arrived. Like somebody's
watching for your signal and you're saying like I made
it across the valley or over the mountain or across
the desert. Whatever. It's just basically a generic signal, just saying,

(12:14):
so this person is still alive. Um. If you are
really good, you can do too in a row. And
that's saying what chuck. If you're an Apache, well, uh,
if you wren Apache, that meant everything's fine. Um. You
may have seen my one puff signal that meant to
you know, we're not so sure about things, but now
my two puff signal means everything's good. We've established our camp.

(12:38):
We're all safe. Um. You just stay where you are
unless you hear something else or see something else rather uh.
And this was important because they would, you know, they
would travel around that you know, they had some more
permanent encampments, but they also went where the food was
depending on the season and where you could hunt better
and get you know, more resources, right exactly, And yeah,

(12:59):
you're right. I'm sorry I confused the boy Scout technique
with the Apache technique. There the boy Scouts, one puff
is just here, I am, whereas with the Apache it
was like something weird was going on. Yeah exactly. And then,
like you said, already, three puffs in any language, a
boy Scout or Apache means there's something bad going on. Yeah,

(13:22):
like come and help us. We need you know, whether
or not we have all been befallen with an illness,
or there's an invader, or we have no food. We
definitely need some help. And I saw also, I mean
almost across the board it was just puffs. Basically was
was the way that um smoke signals are communicated. But
I did see reference to one tribe from Texas called

(13:45):
the Carrakawa, I believe, and they could get super fancy.
They could do spirals and zigzags and stuff like that,
which is pretty pretty impressive. I'd be stressed out with
just the puff system, let alone having to make a
spiral or a z zag. It would be kind of
cool to know how to do that, though, and then
of course the Snoop Dog tribe used the puff Puff

(14:06):
pass exactly. That meant come on over exactly, the doors open.
Well that's it for this episode of short Stuff on
Smoke Signals. Hope you enjoyed it. Until next time, So
long Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeart
Radios How Stuff Works. For more podcasts for my Heart Radio,

(14:28):
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