(helicopter flying)
(alarm systems beeping)
- [Instructor] Ditching, ditching, ditching.
(water rushing)
- So, I'm alive.
(laughs)
All right, here's the deal.
My last mission as a U.S. government civil servant
was in a helicopter off the coast of Hawaii.
We'll learn about that in a future episode,
but this video's different.
This is not like Destin's going to go explore a thing
and make an internet video about it,
this is an actual training scenario
that I was assigned, and I had to go through
in order to get certified to accomplish my mission.
Let's think about an airplane crash in water.
When an airplane lands on the water,
you got these two long wings on the side
that kind of serve as pontoons,
and they keep the airplane upright.
Up is up, down is down.
You usually see on the news
where people are walking out over the wings
and they're waiting on boats to pick them up,
and stuff like that.
Helicopters are different, in a helicopter
you've got these heavy engines up top,
and no matter what, if you land that engine weight
is going to cause the helicopter to flip over
and you're going to start to sink.
The point of this training is to survive that scenario,
and marines go through it all the time.
People at off-shore oil rigs, this is an important
piece of training that will save lives.
This is my instructor, Corey Catlett.
He's trained helicopter pilots for years
supporting oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico,
but today he's training me along with
a class of young U.S. marines.
Training started off dead serious right out of the gate.
They show us a fatal helicopter crash
and explain the environment that the people
inside the helicopter are going through.
After that, Corey explained the techniques
and equipment that you would use
to get out of a situation like this.
For example, he explained this thing
called the "rodeo grip" and how you
have to anchor yourself to the seat.
He explained how it's important to exhale
all the way to the surface of the water
so that your lungs don't explode
when you're rising up and you've got Boyle's law going on.
It's a very serious environment,
and you have to use science, and knowledge,
and understanding to get out of it safely.
We took an exam to make sure we understood
everything he was talking about,
and then the next day at sunrise we headed off to the pool.
Are you guys nervous?
- Oh, no we're good.
(marines laughing)
- [Destin] You're good?
- Yeah.
- [Destin] I feel like everybody's acting like
you're not nervous but you're all nervous.
- My philosophy is that you all gotta die some time or later
and I guess this is the time to do it.
(laughing)
- I can't swim.
- [Destin] You can't swim at all?
Can I get a show of hands of who can't swim?
- We got somebody that can't swim?
(Destin laughing)
You can't swim?
- Not really.
- [Destin] So you guys are not allowed to be buddies, right?
Because one of you, that's awesome.
So are you scared?
- Eh, terrified.
- Okay, so I'm gonna get to get in that.
Which is a little intimidating if I'm honest.
Well before they strap you into a helicopter
you first have to learn how to be upside down underwater,
and let water flood your sinuses.
When you first get in this tipping device
the tasks are pretty simple.
The first thing you do is grab the seat
between your legs in what's called the rodeo grip,
and then you find the exit, grab it,
unbuckle your seatbelt, and then pull yourself out.
After you get good with that, they make it
a little bit more difficult by adding a hatch
that you had to break free of,
and then eventually they add the full regulator,
so you're breathing before you exit.
- I didn't know we were gonna do this,
I thought we were actually going to get right in.
- I didn't either.
- I'm kinda glad they're actually taking steps
to actually show us how to do all these little things
before we actually go to the helicopter.
- Yeah it's like crawl, walk, run isn't it?
I've got to be honest about this part.
I have an Advanced Open Water Scuba Certification,
so I'm used to breathing off a regulator.
So, while the marines were over there
learning how to breathe off a regulator for the first time,
I thought I was just gonna walk up and flip upside down,
and breathe naturally, and it wasn't gonna be a problem.
I was very wrong.
Every time I've ever been scuba diving
I've had this type of mask on that covers your nose.
The problem is when you don't have that mask on,
and you flip upside down,
water floods into your nose and fills your sinuses,
and the last thing your body wants to do
in that moment in time is take a breath.
He was holding me down there and encouraging me to breathe,
which was challenging because I had to overcome
my mental fear of inhaling water,
while at the same time clearing a regulator
and taking a life-giving breath.
This was the hardest part of the training for me.
(Destin coughing up water)
- It sucks getting all the water up the nose, right?
(Destin laughing)
- It's worse than I thought.
It's the nose thing isn't it.
- It is, and that's what gets people to
push that panic button.
- [Destin] This is the simulator.
It contains every escape hatch that's common
on Marine Corps aircraft, and it's super intimidating.
Everybody here's trying to be tough and all,
but it's a helicopter going underwater.
It's pretty intimidating.
- Ditching, ditching, ditching.
(machine whirring)
(water splashing)
- Holy cow.
The first dunk is the craziest.
Because everybody's freaking out just a little bit.
For example, you can see this marine
right here has lost his bearings.
He's out of his seat, he's turned around,
he's no longer got his reference point.
Everything gets so chaotic that the safety diver
ditches my camera to swim in and start saving people.
- Yeah only one passed on that one.
They lost reference points.
They ended up releasing their seat belts first
and then trying to get their flack off,
and it's just like a loose sock in the dryer.
If you don't put your butt in the seat what happens?
- You get lost, and I got lost.
- Yeah, you get lost.
Think about walking through your house
with everything upside down,
you're not gonna know where the doorways are,
you're not gonna know where anything is.
- By the way, think about what these instructors
are going through on every run.
They have to look and be aware of everything that's going on
in the midst of this crazy environment,
find out the person that's in trouble,
figure out how to help them, and do it quickly.
And if they don't do that somebody
could be injured or even die.
This is a serious job for these instructors.
(Marines cheering)
- Calm yourselves and focus on what we're doing here.
We're trying to keep you alive
if you crash at sea, right?
So focus on that.
- It's a pretty serious job you have here.
- Well, it's high-risk training.
There's a chance of death, huh?
In high risk training.
Hey the diver's are ready!
- [Instructor] Ditching, ditching, ditching.
- [Yellow shirt instructor] Ditch-ing!
(machines whirring)
- Because you're just watching this on video
it's really hard to explain
how completely disorienting this is.
Everything that was sinking now seems like it's floating.
Your bubbles are going the wrong direction.
Your feet are coming up over the top of you.
For example, watch this simulator reset
and watch what the seat buckles do in the water.
Your reference frame is rotating, okay.
So if you watch this you can understand it.
But imagine trying to understand that
while your blind, doing a coordinate transformation
in your head while at the same time you're getting a swirly
and your sinuses are filled with water.
So if you can do that, you're gonna be great.
(laughing)
- You unbuckle, your body will right itself to the surface.
Your lungs are full of air.
And when you do that in an upside down aircraft,
oh no now everything's upside down.
It's hard to imagine on how to get out of that thing.
It's better to stay inverted with it.
When you go under water, your vision drops to 2200,
or worse, muddy waters, it's dark,
it's late at night, you can't see anything.
So sitting in a seat you know where you are.
If you're sitting in a seat you know exactly where you are.
And then we tell them, "Hey don't just pop loose
and pull yourself along,
stay in the seat, slide in the seat."
Because the aircrafts are all set up with seats
with their backs to the wall where the exits are, right?
So if you're in a seat you kind of know where you're at.
You know of know which way, "Oh it's to my right."
Even though it's muddy, I can go to my right
about five seats down and I should be able
to feel on the wall and find my exit, right?
If you leave the seat, you'll go right side up.
And then it's like, "Oh no."
Now their chairs are hanging from the ceiling.
It's disorienting.
- [Destin] Once you lose that frame of reference
it's hard to get it back.
- It's not impossible to find your way out
if that happens, but it's harder.
- [Destin] On the second dunk people tend to be
a little bit more serious about not dying.
If the first dunk is about panic,
the second dunk is about staying calm
and learning to take your time and think.
- [Instructor] Okay guys, now that you've got air
it gives you a little bit of time to get out, stay calm.
I want to see at least two breaths
of air before you start trying to get out.
Ditching, ditching, ditching!
- [Destin] The next few runs they give you
a bottle, which seems like it would solve
all your problems, but it doesn't.
I know it's hard to remember,
but your face is filled with water up to your sinuses.
This marine that you're seeing,
he's having a hard time getting that first breath
because his sinuses are full so he does the symbol
asking the instructors to help pull him out.
He puts his hands on his head and the instructors
stop what they're doing and pull him out of the simulator.
If you have that problem again pinch your nose
while you're still in your seatbelt,
take a deep breath, and once you let go of your nose
that epiglottis will be shut,
and then use your hands to get out of that helicopter.
By the third run people are starting to understand
what's going on, the trick is to keep your reference points,
think with your brain and make it out alive.
You can see here it's way more
efficient looking than the earlier runs.
When you have a situation that goes bad pretty quick,
and stuff literally hits the fan,
like the rotors start hitting the water,
and life turns upside down,
and you feel like you're sinking,
you're in over your head, and it's a situation
you don't know how to deal with.
Some of these guys didn't know how to swim.
If you freak out in that moment,
you're gonna stay in that dark place.
That's literally suicide, you cannot do that.
What you have to do is stay anchored to the truth,
stay anchored to the things that you know.
Keep your reference frame.
For me in my life, personally, I have things
that I stay anchored to that keep me aligned to truth.
So, in that situation you do that,
and then you start thinking towards the safe exit
from the situation.
If you don't react correctly, and you don't
slow down and think, things can go very bad in a hurry.
It's very, very important not to freak out in the chaos.
Take one decision after another,
slowly thinking it through,
that gets you closer and closer to the light.
And eventually, once you do that, in a series
you will make it out and you will see the light again.
I hope you enjoyed this video.
It was exciting training.
I felt like I learned a lot both for
my work in helicopters and for life in general.
I'm Destin, you're getting Smarter Every Day.
Have a good one, bye.
(laughing)
(water loudly splashing)
- Help!
(laughing)
- [Destin] Good job dude.
- Thanks!
- [Destin] Yeah!
- All right note to self, swimming lessons.
(laughing)
To do!
(laughing)
- [Destin] You did good, man.
- Thank you.
- That was way better.
- You gotta make it out of the helicopter for this one.
- Hey, in the real thing...