Surviving Nature's Fury: Storms | Survival Science | FD Survive

Next, feel the wind. All right. On survival science, Nick Munt and Laura Shara. Okay. Face raging storms, hurricane force winds, torrential rain, bone-chilling blizzards, and even tornadoes. They find out how science and technology can help you survive the worst of nature's fury. Hey, everybody. Welcome to survival science. On this episode, Laura and I have something extra special planned. That's right, Nick. To be honest with you, I'm a little nervous about it because we've all heard stories about people who have battled the elements and have lived to tell the story. That's right. A lot of people get caught in the back country when nature unleashes its fury. They get caught in rain, sleet, snow, wind, even freezing temperatures. So today we're going to do a little science behind what happens to our bodies when they're exposed to extreme elements. That's right. We're going to simulate the storms that put people in danger. So you ready to get wet? Let's do it. I mean, I'm talking soaked. No. Okay, let's go. The stories are all too common. Outdoorsmen caught unprepared for sudden and extreme changes in weather. Nick and Laura have enlisted our Hollywood special effects team. To help us create our own killer storms. What we have here is our super powered wind machine. And this thing is driven by everybody's favorite, the Chevy 350, fuel injected, of course. And it runs right to this big old fan, right? That's right. It's basically a tornado in a can. And this fan has a seven foot wingspan and can blow wind up to 100 miles an hour. And on the front, we've got water hooked up to it. So when the fan turns on, it's basically like a hurricane. It blows water sideways and it'll just blow your skin off. Can't wait to see you stand in front of it. I know. Well, let's get this thing fired up and let's get to some tests. Shall we? For our first test, we'll be measuring wind chill. Nick will be the guinea pig facing off against the monster wind machine. All right. Well, Nick is wearing a thermometer that's going to show us what happens to his body temperature as the wind speed increases. Now we're going to start it out with a mild gusty wind, and then we're going to crank it up to hurricane level speed. Human performance expert David Sandler will help us gather the data. He's come armed with an amazing FLIR thermal camera that will clearly show changes in Nick's body temperature as wind chill kicks in. Right now, Nick, it kind of looks like it's a little cool around your heart. Is there a reason for that? Hey, cold heart, warm hands, you know? All right. Ready? Three, two, one. Crank it. The wind machine is working to perfection. The fan is kicking out over 100 mile per hour winds at the source. Down in the gully where Nick is standing, the wind speed is at level one hurricane force, about 75 miles per hour. As Nick's skin temperature drops, he's turning from orange to yellow. His exposed skin is an icy white. After just one minute in the windstorm, the readings are dramatic. Some power. Major. Your hair looks amazing right now. Major power. That was something else. Your hair is something else right now, I gotta tell you that. Yeah, I don't know what it does to my body temperature, but it sure messes up the comb over. How'd it feel? You can tell right off the bat. It just goes right through your clothes, and you can definitely feel the temperature drop. As that temperature keeps dropping, then your body starts hogging all of its heat into the center, right? So that the heart stays hot, the brain stays hot, but the rest of your periphery starts to get colder and colder. During the test, Nick's heart rate jumped 65 percent, while his breathing rate tripled. And incredibly, the wind chill dropped his skin temperature 24 percent in just one minute. Well, are you ready to try it? I guess I'm ready. I want to get you in front of it now. All right. During Laura's test, we'll be looking at the energy expended trying to brace against the force of the wind. Well, I'm gonna prepare my hair, so I'm gonna braid mine. This is not my first wind rodeo. There you go. All right. Here we go. And cue the wind. The hurricane winds are slamming Laura with about three Gs of force. She's expending energy rapidly, just trying to stay upright against the storm. Okay, well. Wow. That was something else. Yeah, looks like you were working pretty hard. I was working hard. Plus, I have a nice grit in my teeth now. It takes a lot out of you to do that. I was really having to lean into it. Counteracting the force of the wind has to obviously produce a force to do that, which is your muscles going to work, which increases your heart rate, your breathing rate, and of course, your calorie expenditure. It's like going to a workout, and that's just to hold yourself into position. So, if you had to do anything else, you know, get back to safety or whatever, you have that extra amount of work on top of whatever the task is ahead of you. Wow. I need to go warm up after that. Nice job. Up next, Laura and Nick go head on into the teeth of the storm. Nick and Laura have battled against hurricane force winds of about 75 miles per hour, but that was down in the gully. Now, we've put them directly in front of the 100 mile per hour monster. All right, are you guys ready? Within seconds, they realize it's almost impossible to even stand up against these kinds of winds. The wind pressure slamming against them is exceeding four and a half Gs. 100 miles an hour, you can't argue with that. Wind and cold can very quickly lead to hypothermia. That's when the body's core temperature drops below 95 degrees. What people need to know is when you start to become hypothermic, it's really hard to reverse the effects of hypothermia. I mean, there's just not much you can do, right? Well, the wind not only does it chill the body, but it also makes you work harder. So, now we've seen what wind does as far as, you know, dropping the temperature. What happens when you add the element of water? Well, water will decrease your body temperature 25 times faster, and so that itself becomes a, you know, major problem. Now, when it's raining, you may not have that quickly of a drop, but you've got the water accumulating on your skin, and the wind starts to cause like ice onto your skin, and that's the fastest way to frostbite. Awesome. Well, you ready to make it rain and get some frostbite? Yeah, let's try it. I'm ready to go. Is your face okay? It looks like it hurts. Well, yours is killing me, so let's just get out of here. Let's do it. Every year, there are nearly 1,300 deaths related to hypothermia and exposure. To add rain to the equation, we've brought in a 4,000-gallon water tanker used for Hollywood rain scenes as well as fighting wildfires. This thing really pumps out a lot of water. Is this good here? I think this is good. Everybody ready? Let it rip. Oh, boy. Oh, yeah. Get a little wet. Look at that. So, we can adjust this here. Oh, yeah. You're going to get wet, girl. Well, it looks like it works to me. Okay, well, just think of what this is going to be like when we add the wind to it. Wind and rain, not good. Nothing better. Yeah. All right, well, we saw where the most of our rain's going to come from, that massive truck over there, but we also need a little bit of driving rain. That's right. This is a pump that's going to run us, oh, probably about 15 gallons per minute. All right. So, in addition to our wildland fire truck, which is going to soak everything, we've got this water running up into this machine, and that's going to give us the force we need for the driving rain, Laura. Well, I'm happy I brought my rain gear. Seriously? Yeah, I brought my rain gear. We're not supposed to have rain gear. Well, who goes into the outdoors without rain gear? Well, this is a show about hypothermia. Well, I came prepared. Well, I think we're ready to conduct a wind and rain experiment on you guys. Awesome. I'm ready. I've got my rain gear on. It's waterproof. Yeah, she's going to do this one because she forgot to tell me to bring the rain gear. Oh, no, no, no. This is going to work great with both of you doing it because that way, we can contrast the difference, one wearing proper protective gear and one in normal clothes. I'm going to get out of here, so I keep drying. I can watch what's going on. Yeah, how come I'm going to be cold and wet? I'm just going to bundle up to make sure my hair stays dry. I'll be over here. Okay. All right, we'll see how these guys do. No! Yes! All right, cue the storm! You should always remember your rain gear! Oh, my gosh, that is freezing. You're such a good friend, Laura. Yeah, well, you know what, Nick? This is why you remember your rain gear when you go into the outdoors. Nice job, guys. You guys are wet. Yeah. Yes. How do you feel? Frozen. Wet. Frozen, wet. And that was like 30 seconds. It felt like 10 minutes in the rain, but that was a short time, I'm guessing. So one of the big things I notice is Nick is shaking like crazy, right? He's soaking wet, and you seem a little more... Just a little chilly. Yeah, chilly. Exactly. So you got a little bit wet, a little bit of wind, but nothing like what happened to Nick. She's having fun, and I'm miserable. Yeah, and she could probably... I was laughing the whole time, actually. No, it's not funny. I was laughing. But you could see how fast someone will start to deteriorate if they don't have protective gear on. Within seconds. Exactly, within seconds, literally. So the protective gear buys a little bit more time. All right. Lucky you. Yeah. You know what? There is a lot of water in my sleeve. There's no doubt. Oh, you're a horse fan. Your elbows are wet. I know. You should feel sorry for me. I know. You guys want to go maybe let him warm up? Yeah, let's look at the... Let's go get wrung out a little. Next up... This one's going to hurt, Nick. The deep freeze. Well, so far we've seen how wind and rain can have a deadly effect on the body. That's right, and one thing we haven't studied is the cold, and I mean extreme cold. Our friends here at North Hollywood Ice, they're in the cold business. That they are. They have a huge refrigerator warehouse space where they keep everything way below freezing. So we brought our wind and rain machine, and we're going to take it inside and make the cold even colder. That's perfect. I brought my cold leather gear. Seriously? Yeah, you don't have yours? No. You're killing me. Follow me. So we're here in this giant freezer warehouse at North Hollywood Ice. That's not too bad in here. Yeah, not too bad. I think it's about 14 degrees, right? Well, it's actually 13 degrees. 13 degrees. Well, as you can see, I'm in normal clothes. I'm in warm clothes. It's definitely getting cold. I'm feeling great. Tell us about the data. What do you see in there? Well, what I'm seeing right now is Laura looks really comfortable. Her heart rate, her breathing, just normal. Right. Your heart rate has already accelerated a little bit, about 10 beats. You're breathing a little faster. So now we're going to introduce another element. We're going to introduce some wind into this to see how your bodies react. I say blast us. Okay. Rip it. Get ready. This is going to hurt, Nick. For real. Holy. That is cold. How many seconds do you need to get the reading? Well, it takes a little bit. Holy. We want to watch Nick get a little colder. Your head is warm, believe it or not. Oh, my cheeks. What's it saying? I'm saying you guys are getting cold quick. Oh my gosh. This is really bad. Laura's doing much better than you are though. This is really bad. Okay. My cheeks really feel frozen. Okay, watch it. Go through these horrible experiments. That is freezing cold. That wind really makes it go a lot colder. It almost literally gives me vertigo. Like I get almost dizzy because of the cold blast on my head. Without the protection, you know, you're going to be in a lot of trouble. You're really toast. I have something for you, Nick. I mean, I know you didn't bring your outdoor winter gear with you, but you might need a Kleenex for your nose. Kind of looks like it was used. Now to make things more brutal, Laura adds water. Don't worry, it's fresh new lawn fertilizer. All right, following you. Nick, this is going to hurt. Are you feeling it yet? I can already tell that's going to be colder. Yeah. My legs are already- Frozen? Oh, yeah. Your jeans a little stiff? Yeah, they're going to be. I can already feel it. We don't even have the fan on yet. I know. Wait till this fan starts going. Sure, I can do this. Let's do it. All right, blast us. All right. Get it over with. Hang on. Oh, Lord. That is brutal. I'm saying it's brutal and I'm saying it's right. My hands are colder, it was wet. My thighs are freezing. You look like you're purple right now, Nick. How are you hanging in here right now? I'm actually- All right. You're done? All right, let's go. I'm out. Let's go. Man. That was cold. It was cold. There's a whole new meaning to the word brain freeze. Well, this was a great contrast of what it's like to be protected and unprotected as we added the elements. Usually going into a situation like that, I would have long underwear on. I'd have a bunch of different layers of wind protection. I'd have my neck covered. I'd have my face covered, my ears. I wouldn't have any skin that would be able to get frostbite on it. But when you feel the wind coming through is one thing. Now that my pants are wet and my sweater was wet, really a lot of danger in there. Next up- I'm Maverick, your goose. Inside a twister. Laura and I have been putting our lives on the line to see what it's like when weather comes in guns a blazing. Now it's time to have some fun. We're going to study the world's worst weather pattern, the tornado. Which brings us to iFly Indoor Skydiving here in Hollywood, California. That's right behind us is a wind tunnel. And this thing can create wind speeds strong enough to lift a human right off his feet. About 1,000 tornadoes strike in America every year. They come in all sizes and strengths and are ranked along what's called the Fujita scale, ranging from F0 to F5. Some devastating F5 tornadoes have been recorded with winds over 300 miles per hour. All right, guys, come on in. Have a seat right here for me. Flight instructor Afal demonstrates the proper body position in the wind tunnel. Any questions, comments, concerns, sacrifices? Yes, what happens if you shoot right to the top? You're definitely not going to shoot straight up. We have controlled wind power. Good question. But for him, could you get the power a little high? A little bit higher. Just to mess with him, I will. Then it's time for Nick and Laura to suit up. What happens to your cheeks at 100 miles an hour? They look very glamorous in the wind as they flap. Just like a dog with its head out the window. I'm Maverick, your goose. All right. Even though tornadoes are known to lift a 500,000 pound home off its foundation and throw a car over a mile away, it's hard to imagine what it would feel like to step into a tornado. With this wind tunnel, it'll definitely help us out. There'll be winds at over 120 miles an hour. And that speed is actually close to a small F1 tornado. So we're going to see what it feels like to step into the vortex. Why don't you tell us a little bit about the science behind the wind tunnel and how it really works? Absolutely. So we have two 400 horsepower fans that are circulating wind all around our facility and pushing out into a column of air. Our fans can generate winds up to 170 miles per hour and that's capable of lifting up to 300 pounds. That's awesome. I'm ready to get in. I'm ready too. Let's do it. That was amazing. It was like feeling that you didn't have any weight. You were just floating in the air. It was actually kind of hard to stay stabilized, but the feeling of weightlessness is unbelievable. The adrenaline rush that you have in just a few minutes of being in the air was unbelievable. It was so much fun. Well, Laura, I think all these tests have really shown us the power of nature's fury. And what can happen if you get caught with your pants down? That's why it's important to pack the right pants, Nick. And also the right gear if you're spending time in the outdoors. That's right. Well, that about does it for this episode. So join us next time as we put nature to the test on Survival Science. You ready to fly? I'm going again for sure. Me too. I'm first. Okay.