NARRATOR: Beware, you may
have just seconds to live. Some of the world's most
dangerous encounters are closer than you think. Danger lurks in a
long-slumbering volcano, near a major American
city, and in the vortex of a massive funnel
cloud at your doorstep. It has highly toxic fangs,
and can even paralyze you with one nasty
helmet-to-helmet hit, and don't forget
to pull your chute. Now, "Most Dangerous,"
on "Modern Marvels." [theme music] The climactic eruption of the
Philippine's Mount Pinatubo on June 15, 1991 is
a jolting reminder that the world is riddled
with dangerous volcanoes. The blast propelled
volcanic ash 22-miles high. It killed more than 700
people, many when wet ash collapsed roofs. Massive mud flows took,
still, more lives. It also triggered memories of
far more devastating eruptions in the past, like Tambora
in 1815, Krakatoa in 1883, and Mount Pele in 1902. But Pinatubo is far from
the most dangerous volcano in the world today. Many volcanologists say
it's Italy's Mount Vesuvius. Its last devastating
eruption was in AD 79, which obliterated
the cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum. Today, Naples and its
surrounding communities, population 3 million, sit
on Vesuvius's front porch. Geologic evidence suggests
it's primed for a repeat. But what is the most dangerous
volcano in the United States? You might think it's
the most active, that's Kilauea on
Hawaii's big island. It's been erupting continuously
for more than two decades. But it's large lava flows, which
have sporadically threatened small communities, move
slowly, leaving plenty of time to evacuate. So Kilauea is not
the most dangerous. Scientists agree the
most dangerous US volcano is within the North American
edge of the so-called Ring of Fire. Stretching from
northern California to northern Washington,
13 volcanoes are considered highly
dangerous, one of them unleashed a blast forever burned
in the American consciousness. TODD CULLINGS: In March
of 1980, Mount St. Helens collapsed in the
largest landslide in recorded human history. A huge wall of rock came
rushing down off the volcano, slammed into Joshnston
Ridge, bounced off it, and traveled 14 miles down
the Toutle River Valley, filling it to an average
depth of 150 feet. And if we had been
standing right here watching this explosion, we
would have had 43 seconds to live. MAN: Get off the bridge! Get out of there! NARRATOR: The eruption
killed 57 people and devastated hundreds of
square miles of forest land. Mount St. Helens is
still an active volcano, but it's not the most dangerous. America's most dangerous
volcano is a mere 50 miles to the north. It's Mount Rainier, a
14,400-foot peak looming over Seattle and Tacoma, the most
densely populated region in the Pacific Northwest. The volcano hasn't
erupted in over 150 years, but its frequent
tremors serve notice that it's geologically
alive and kicking. JODY WOODCOCK: It's an active
volcano, that's the first thing I want to stress. Many people believe it isn't. But it is indeed a
very active volcano. NARRATOR: Surprisingly, it's
not an eruption of searing lava and ash that
scientists fear most, but a terrifying phenomenon
that an eruption could trigger. In the 1950s, geologist Rocky
Crandell found the evidence in fossilized mud deposits along
Rainier's watershed valleys. It's called lahar, an Indonesian
word meaning volcanic mudflow. This was the devastating
phenomenon that occurred when Mount St. Helens
erupted in 1980, and it last happened on
Rainier just 500 years ago. Rainier's past lahars swiftly
buried many square miles in up to 30 feet of mud. This same region today is home
to approximately 100,000 people in communities neighboring
Seattle and Tacoma. The potential for
another massive lahar is lurking in
Rainier's snowy cap. The volcano contains
approximately one cubic mile of glacial ice,
as much as exists on the other 12 Cascade's
volcanoes combined. An earthquake, heavy rainfall,
or even gravity's pull could trigger a
lahar, but most begin when hot rocks from an
eruption melt snow and ice. The melt water
picks up loose rock and creates a slurry
of mud and boulders, reaching speeds of up
to 70 miles per hour. It could be just an unheralded
collapse where the mountain just gives way. Weak mountain, lots of
soil, starts washing down the Puyallup River Valley,
picks up more and more trees, gets bigger and bigger as
it goes, lots of liquid. And it's probably moving
60, 70 miles per hour in the upper valley here. NARRATOR: Just 30 miles
from Mount Rainier, the most endangered
are the 5,500 residents of the city of Orting. They would have
less than 40 minutes before the deluge is upon them. And it takes close
to that amount of time to get all the kids out of their
school and out of the valley. CYNTHIS GARDNER: I think it
would be difficult, actually, to get everyone out of there. I mean, certainly the
hope is that we could. NARRATOR: Fleeing motorists
would clog the few exit roads out of the valley,
causing gridlock. Lahar drills teach residents to
run immediately for high ground to escape the unrelenting flow. The brutal scenario's
long-term impacts are sobering. JODY WOODCOCK: A Mount
Rainier event would not just be a Pierce County event. It would be truly a regional
event, a statewide event. NARRATOR: Potentially, thousands
dead, major shipping ports in Tacoma and
Seattle, paralyzed. Transportation routes
and airports shut down. A large lahar could dwarf
the human and economic toll of Hurricane Katrina. So we're not just looking
at a temporary displacement. It could be a complete
relocation effort. And economically, it's
going to have a huge impact. NARRATOR: Some
Washington residents doubt this grim scenario
will ever happen. But their reality check lies
in the tragedy triggered by Columbia's Nevado Del
Ruiz volcano in 1985, which, like Rainier, has
a large ice cap. Several hours after
a small eruption, a lahar charged down and
slammed into the city of Armero with several feet of mud
similar to wet concrete. More than 23,000
people perished. JODY WOODCOCK:
And it's estimated that if those people in Armero
had any type of early warning, they could have comfortably
walked to safety. It was a matter of
getting to high ground. That was our learning moment. NARRATOR: In the late 1990s,
US Geological Survey scientists built a lahar early
warning and detection system for Mount Rainier. The system depends on 10
remotely located Acoustic Flow Monitors, or AFMs, basically,
electronic ears listening for signs of a lahar. This AFM site
sit up higher here. It's designed to stay
intact for a mudflow. It's got a radio inside of it. Every nine minutes,
it transmits, and we receive that at a
computer down at our base station. It's got the antenna there,
and the solar panels, batteries inside of it, so it's
totally self-contained. NARRATOR: When it
detects a lahar, the station will increase
transmissions to every three minutes to emergency
responders and 9-1-1 centers. The chances that an AFM
will cry wolf are nil. The challenge
was a lot of lahars are generated during
eruptions of volcanoes, so there's earthquakes,
there's explosions, tremor. So we had to have a
very focused sensor, one that was sensitive to lahars,
but not to all the other goings on. NARRATOR: Each AFM owes
its keen sensitivity to an acoustic geophone buried
five feet below the ground. The geophone is fine tuned to
ignore low-amplitude signatures from tremors. It only responds to the distinct
high-amplitude signature of a lahar and triggers
the warning signal. Three of the ten
AFM stations are designed as failsafe alarms. They were intentionally placed
low in the valley directly in the path of a future lahar. So what we've got here is
what we call one of our dead man sites. This log here is designed
to get washed away if there is a big
mudflow or a lahar, and kind of hence the term that
the site's going to go dead. NARRATOR: The log is hard
wired to the AFM transmitter. If the log washes away,
the signal goes dead, and emergency responders
know what's headed their way. Scientists estimate
that in our lifetime, there's about a
one in seven chance that a massive lahar
sweeps this log up in a torrent that devastates
the communities surrounding Rainier. But if that one
chance plays out, the magnitude of the
disaster will no doubt increase as more communities
sprout in the lahar's projected path. While Rainier ranks as the
most dangerous volcano today, the ultimate big blow could
occur some 500 miles east, hundreds of thousands
of years from now. The pristine wilderness and
bubbling geysers of Yellowstone National Park offers subtle
proof of what slumbers below, an immense, 1,300-square-mile
supervolcano with a magma load estimated at 4,000 cubic miles. Geologic evidence dating back
more than two million years proves the giant has erupted at
least three times with almost incomprehensible force. CYNTHIS GARDNER: It's just on
a scale that's really difficult to get your head around because
you're talking a thousand times more than 1980 St. Helens. It's going to
devastate areas that are going to be tens to
hundreds of kilometers around the volcano. NARRATOR: If Yellowstone
delivers a super-sized encore, the final death toll
could be in the millions. While some people play the
odds, building their dream homes in the shadows of
hell's own vents, others gleefully pull on a
pair of high boots and chaps to catch America's
most dangerous snake. This is the most dangerous
snake in the United States, the western diamondback
rattlesnake, but that doesn't
stop Jack Allen. He hunts the western diamondback
in the hard-bitten lands of West Texas. It's venom toxicity is moderate,
but it's quick to anger and inhabits vast areas of
the western United States, meaning more human
encounters and more bites. They won't chase
you or nothing, but if you go up and try to mess
with them, they will bite you. And they won't always rattle. They won't rattle before
they bite all the time. NARRATOR: As dangerous as
the western diamondback is, the world is full of
even more lethal snakes. Take the king cobra, it's the
world's longest venomous snake, and it can deliver
a huge dose of venom that's highly toxic,
enough to kill an elephant in a single bite. Fortunately, it rarely bites
humans, nor does Australia's inland taipan, but it
has the most toxic venom of any snake on Earth, a single
drop could kill you in minutes. Still, it's not
the most dangerous because it's a shy, reclusive
snake that humans rarely encounter in the wild. The world's most dangerous
snake, the saw-scaled viper. It's aggressive and inhabits
heavily-populated areas in Asia and North Africa
and kills some 10,000 people every year. The statistics aren't nearly as
shocking in the United States. All the same, rattlesnakes
bite approximately 6,000 people in the United States
each year, about six die. The primary victims--
teenagers who harass or try to catch the snakes. A seasoned hunter like Jack is
well aware of the risks, that's why he uses the best
tools for the job. JACK ALLEN: There are a
set of tongs, snake tongs, we call them. This is a hook to hook them. I have on extra double-lined
leather boots that come up to my knees. These are a set of chaps. They're snake chaps. They protect my legs. You might step off
of a ledge sometimes, and there will be one under
it that you don't see. And it's to protect
me from getting bit. We found a rattlesnake
in a hill here, western diamondback rattlesnake. We tried to pull him
out of this hole. They swell up sometimes, and you
can't get them out very easy. We try to be safe,
not hurt the animal. They can swing around
and bite you at any time. NARRATOR: Most rattlesnake
venom is hemotoxic, that means it contains proteins
and enzymes that damage tissue and organs while
causing great pain. If you want to know what
a snake bite feels like, hit your finger with a
five-pound sledgehammer. There's internal
hemorrhage, swelling, and it's just very painful. If it's a bad enough
bite, sometimes the swelling can be so bad that the skin,
they'll have to split your skin because it'll start
swelling so much it'll actually start
destroying the muscle tissue. Let's go ahead and
somebody mix the CroFab and start to give it. NARRATOR: These scenes
from an emergency room demonstrate some
extreme side effects, like respiratory failure,
involuntary muscle contractions, or anaphylaxis,
a rare, whole-body allergic reaction that can restrict
breathing and cause abdominal cramps, vomiting,
and extreme swelling. MAN: I can't believe
that little guy did that. DAVID SAGER: Nobody dies
from a rattlesnake bite, but a lot of people go into
shock from a rattlesnake bite and die from it. NARRATOR: The western's long,
deadly fangs are folded back against the roof of the mouth. When the mouth opens up
to nearly 180 degrees, the fangs swing forward. Glands in the back of
the head pump venom through the hollow
fangs into the prey. If it's your lucky
day, you could be the recipient of a dry bite. In about one in
four cases, rattlers do not inject any venom. For an up-close encounter with
America's most dangerous snake, thousands head for the
Sweetwater Texas Rattlesnake Roundup, an annual, three-day
rattler convention that's over 50 years old. Many come to Sweetwater
to meet, and even eat, the western diamondback. Number one and eight! NARRATOR: That's
right, no Roundup would be complete without a
rattlesnake eating contest. In the demonstration pit,
you can watch the coronation of the year's biggest snake. Looks like this
snake is 69 inches. NARRATOR: Or shake hands with
this year's Ms. Snake Charmer, a Texas version of
Beauty and the Beast. But there's no disputing
that the most popular star of the show is also
the most dangerous. What I have here is
a western diamondback. You can tell the westerns
because of the black and white area in front of his rattle. We call that a coon tail. NARRATOR: There's also lots
to learn at the Rattlesnake Roundup. If confronted, your best
bet is to move very slowly. Rattlesnakes typically
strike a moving target, in this case, a balloon. [pop] MAN: Whoa! DEMONSTRATOR: Just like that. NARRATOR: Although the venom
of these lightning-fast snakes can kill, it can also cure. At the Natural Toxins Research
Center at Texas A&M University in Kingsville, scientists
can't get enough of the stuff. Their dangerous job is to
extract a river of snake venom that could one day
produce medical miracles. JOHN C. PEREZ: We work
with investigators all over the world in
trying to discover molecules in snake venom that are
useful in strokes, and heart attacks, and cancer, and
other medical problems. Venom is a very complex
mixture of thousands of different molecules. NARRATOR: Extracting the venom
from each of the 400 snakes is not for the cowardly,
it requires scheduled hand milkings, a job you definitely
shouldn't try at home. The dangerous work
demands so much focus that the center's rules
limit the milkings to a maximum of 20 snakes per day. JOHN C. PEREZ: OK,
this is a Mohave. It's one of the
most toxic venoms that we have in
the United States. NARRATOR: This
uncooperative inmate is the western
diamondback's big cousin, the eastern diamondback. Good job. OK, don't worry. Don't worry. Get it from the middle, John. NARRATOR: The
eastern diamondback is the largest of
all rattlesnakes and, because of its more
frequent attacks on humans, is arguably as dangerous
as the western diamondback. JOHN C. PEREZ: OK, I'm
gonna pin its head down. This is our western-- eastern diamondback. And I'm gonna let it
bite into this diaphragm. This one really
gets a lot of venom. NARRATOR: When the snake's fangs
puncture a paraffin barrier, it immediately pumps
venom into the cup. Each snake has a barcode-like
device called a pit tag beneath its skin
for identification. Venom samples are
easily traced back to the donor with a scanner. ELDA SANCHEZ: So, basically,
what we've collected is about half a mil of venom,
and this is quite a bit of venom that will do
quite a bit of damage if a person is bitten. NARRATOR: The venom
is centrifuged to remove cellular
debris, and then frozen for future research. JOHN C. PEREZ: I think
what we're doing here, and with other countries,
is laying groundwork for future generations
to discover. Some of these species
will become extinct, and if we don't capture
their genes and bacteria, we will never be able to
use them in drug discovery. NARRATOR: Mankind has everything
to gain from the venom of the most dangerous snakes. But when it comes to the
most dangerous weather event in the United States,
we have everything to lose. MAN: Oh my god. Oh my god! NARRATOR: The aftermath
of a killer storm tells a brutal truth. In the face of nature's fury,
no one is completely safe. What is the most dangerous
weather event in the United States? After the devastation wrought by
Katrina, the 2005 tragedy that took more than 1,800
lives, the hurricane would seem the likely answer. But hurricanes are infrequent,
easily detected, and often arrive with days of forewarning. The random ferocity of lightning
ranks high on the danger list. The air around a bolt sizzles
at around 30,000 degrees, six times hotter than
the sun's surface. Some 60 people a year die
when struck by lightning. But it's not the biggest threat. Because of its sudden, immense
capacity for destruction, the most dangerous weather
event in the United States is the tornado. HOWARD BLUESTEIN: Tornadoes
can have extremely high wind speeds, wind speeds as high
as 250, 260 miles per hour. They can do tremendous
damage to structures. And they can break
houses and buildings apart into small pieces of debris,
which can hurt people as they fly around. We really aren't able to
give very long lead times on tornadoes that tell
people that they're coming. They usually only have
minutes to respond. NARRATOR: The most dangerous
tornadoes, rated F-2 or higher on the Fujita scale, appear
to be random, unpredictable events. And they can appear in droves. The only predictable aspect
is the geographic area most frequently hit. America's infamous Tornado Alley
extends up the central plains of the United States where
warm, moist air from the Gulf of Mexico meets cold, dry
air from the Rocky Mountains. And the presence of those
two big geographic factors leads to us bringing
the ingredients together for tornadoes here more than
anyplace else on the planet. MAN: We got one now,
and it's going down. It's on the ground. NARRATOR: Over the
past half century, 311 twisters have taken
lives in the plains. Fewer tornadoes strike
the American Southeast, states like Arkansas, Tennessee,
Alabama, and Mississippi. But its residents are
in even greater danger. The reason? The Southeast has the
greatest concentration of mobile homes in the country. Since they lack foundations,
these tornado targets are the most
vulnerable shelters. Mobilehome residents are
15 to 20 times more likely to be killed in a tornado than
permanent home residents are. That's the most dangerous place
for human life in tornadoes in the country. NARRATOR: The human
toll is distressing, but not when you compare
it to a worst-case scenario that someday might
conceivably occur. HAROLD BROOKS: Perhaps the
biggest nightmare scenario is hitting a large sporting
venue, say, the Texas Motor Speedway in Fort Worth during
the NASCAR race in early April or the Indianapolis Motor
Speedway during the 500 at the end of May. When you have
hundreds of thousands of people in a small area,
and in an area where even under the absolute
best conditions, it takes three or four hours
to actually get everybody out of there. NARRATOR: America's
most dangerous twister to date occurred
on March 18, 1925. The tri-state tornado traveled
to 219 miles at over 60 miles per hour through Missouri,
Illinois, and Indiana. After 3 and 1/2 hours,
an estimated 695 people were dead and 2,000 injured. Two factors played a huge
role in the heavy death toll-- the lack of a tornado warning
system and inadequate shelter. MAN: 2, 1, fire! [thud] NARRATOR: Thanks
to research labs like the Wind Science Center
at Texas Tech University, the modern storm shelter
is sturdier and more resistant to windblown debris. Scientists here
built a debris cannon to simulate the effects
of a large tornado, hurling building
materials through the air at lethal speeds-- in this case, a
15-pound two-by-four traveling at 100 miles per hour. It takes more than four
layers of 3/4 inch plywood to stop this missile. The masonry does a good job,
provided its reinforced. But if it's not reinforced, then
it provides little protection against the impact. So with ordinary construction,
a brick-veneer house is not safe at all. NARRATOR: Studies here
have led to the development of life-saving,
above-ground storm shelters and reinforced safe rooms built
directly into home floor plans. But a better shelter is
only half the answer. Timely prediction is the
key to reducing the carnage. The National Weather
Service monitors storm cells around the clock and issues
alerts when conditions are favorable for tornadoes. In Norman, Oklahoma, scientists
at the National Severe Storms Lab and the
University of Oklahoma unlock the mysteries
of tornado dynamics with the 800-pound gorilla of
radar systems, the cutting edge Smart Mobile Doppler. MICHAEL BIGGERSTAFF: It allows
us to take this Doppler weather radar into hurricanes and
tornadic storm environments where we can actually look
close and see the very low level parts of the storm where
the most severe weather is occurring. NARRATOR: This data is later
used to help build tornado computer models. HOWARD BLUESTEIN: We don't
yet completely understand how it is that tornadoes form. We have hypotheses, but
they need to be tested. Using a computer
model, we can go ahead and change the
way the winds vary with height in the atmosphere. We can change the
way temperature and humidity vary with height. And we can see how the
atmosphere would respond to these different
types of conditions. NARRATOR: The hope is that
one day, the National Weather Service can actually predict
lethal tornadoes with even greater lead time,
saving countless lives. A tornado is undoubtedly
a killer force of nature, but statistically,
someone in your family is in far greater danger playing
the most dangerous team sport. It's a statistical fact
that many of America's favorite sports are dangerous. Some 22,000 people are injured
every year playing ice hockey. Some 120,000 broken bones,
torn muscles, and head injuries happen annually on
the baseball diamond. The Centers for Disease Control
estimates Americans suffer between 1.6 and 3.8 million
sports-related concussions every year. The statistical leader
in concussive events, and therefore the most
dangerous, is football. The physics associated with
ever-larger, more-powerful athletes applying brutal
hits can spell disaster for the brain. In professional and
college-level games, players are sometimes traveling
more than 20 miles per hour when helmet impacts occur. TONY STRICKLAND: You
see, this is a brain, and it is surrounded by a ball. That ball is the skull. When a concussion occurs,
there is movement, movement, acceleration, then
sudden deceleration. NARRATOR: As the
brain decelerates, it impacts against the
skull, causing bruising. In severe cases, the brain can
actually bounce back and strike the other side of the skull. JOSEPH SKIBA: It's a collision
sport, and injuries do happen. And sometimes, what happens
is it could be the lightest hit that will turn the neck the
wrong way, and one of them's down on the ground
injured with a concussion. NARRATOR: The majority
of dangerous concussions occur not among pros,
but younger athletes whose brains are
still developing. TONY STRICKLAND:
It is particularly dangerous for individuals
age 18 and younger because of the related growth and the
risk for herniation and edema, or swelling, that
occurs in young brains. NARRATOR: The first line
of defense is the helmet. 21st century sporting
goods manufacturers are racing to build the most
advanced protective headgear in history, a history that
began more than a century ago. In 1893, a lineman
for Navy, Joe Reeves, wore the first crude football
helmet in the Army-Navy game, later giving birth to
the term leather heads. The leather headgear
offered little protection, and it wasn't until the 1930s
that helmets became mandatory. After World War II, plastics
revolutionized the game with vastly-more-protective
helmets. Over the past 60 years, Schutt
Sports in Salem, Illinois has churned out
millions of helmets for pro, college, high school,
and even peewee leagues. Their genesis? Millions of polycarbonate
resin pellets. When heated to 450
degrees Fahrenheit, the resin melts and injects
into a custom helmet mold. After a quick
baking and cooling, a precision robotic drill
creates all of the ventilation and hardware holes. Lastly, the paint
shop mixes and matches thousands of colors before the
helmets get to the gridiron. Beneath the glossy hues,
Schutt's most advanced helmet is a far cry from the
foam-padded relics of the past. KEN NIMMONS: This is the
Schutt ION 4D helmet, and it's our newest
helmet in the lineup of helmet protection. With the helmet, we have
the SKYDEX padding system, which is a three-dimensional
shaped padding system which fits much closer to
the player's head. NARRATOR: The ION 4D's
thermoplastic SKYDEX padding is designed with opposing
outer and inner hemispheres. At impact, the hemispheres
collapse together and absorb more energy from nasty hits. Beyond that, the ION's face
guard adds more protection over the standard bolt-on cage. The face guard slips
directly into two ports built into the helmet. A thermoplastic rubber energy
wedge holds the cage in place. At impact, the face guard
compresses into the wedge, dampening the force of
the hit by as much as 15%. Engineers at Schutt
create new helmet designs on a 3D modeling pad system. NOCSAE, the National
Operating Committee on Standards for
Athletic Equipment, provides strict
performance standards that the helmets must meet. New design concepts are analyzed
in the impact test facility. In this hall of horrors,
replicant human heads get some major headaches
so athletes don't have to. The NOCSAE head forms
are somewhat quasi humanoid to get the harmonics
more like the human head. Inside the head form is
a cranial vault, a skull. This is filled with a
glycerin material that is very close to the specific
gravity of the brain matter. And embedded in the center
of gravity of the head form is the triaxial accelerometer
that measures the G-forces. NARRATOR: The standard NOCSAE
drop test simulates a player impacting an immovable object
at nearly 13 miles per hour, about like running head
first into a brick wall. The computer records the
severity index, or the number of G-forces the humanoid head
form will experience at impact. This head form
experienced 108 Gs. Compare that to the same test
inflicted on a vintage 1960s helmet padded with old-school
suspension webbing. This head form experienced
a whopping 218 Gs, more than double the trauma
compared to the Schutt helmet. But the vast majority
of helmet hits are not of the
brick-wall variety, most will impact the brain from
different angles and speeds. To simulate these hits,
the linear impact test propels a 30-pound ram. LARRY MADDUX: In this test,
it's somewhat more real world. It has the dummy neck that's
fairly rigid but flexible. It also has a
roller-bearing table to where when it's struck,
that the body and the head form move with the impact. NARRATOR: A final
integrity check serves up a helmet on ice. The cold-crack test requires
freezing a helmet to 0 degrees Fahrenheit to make it
brittle, and then hitting it with a 20-pound projectile
dropped four feet through a tube. If it doesn't crack now,
it likely never will. We have many materials that
we have an ongoing research of looking at better shock
attenuation materials, better plastics that would
be able to be used, looking for the best
combination of things. NARRATOR: No one disputes
that a brain injury is a serious event. But when you leap off a
bridge over the Snake River Canyon, a concussion. doesn't compare to what
could happen if you make the slightest mistake. It's a crystal-clear day
in Twin Falls, Idaho, perfect conditions for a jump. Chris Wilson is a
veteran skydiver. But today, there is no airplane. Today, he'll leap from the
IB Perrine Bridge, 485 feet above the Snake River Canyon. It's his first attempt
at an extreme sport that many consider
the most dangerous. I think when I climb
over that railing, there might be a little
bit of nervousness. But as of now, I feel pretty
confident and pretty good. NARRATOR: BASE jumping
bears little resemblance to skydiving. Leaping off fixed positions
so close to the Earth presents a multitude of hazards-- unpredictable wind
gusts, sheer rock faces speeding by
just feet away. And the precious few seconds to
pull the chute mean any given jump could be your last. BASE is an acronym for
Building, Antenna, Span, Earth. To qualify for a
recognized BASE membership, a person must successfully
jump all four. There are an estimated
4,000 recognized BASE jumpers worldwide. With approximately 120
estimated deaths to date, the accident ratio in
this sport is extreme. 1 in 33 jumpers will die. Unlike other jump locations,
the Perrine Bridge is the only spot in
the United States where BASE jumpers don't have to
fear legal prosecution, but not without a courtesy call
to the Twin Falls police. Yeah, we just have to
call them because there's been a couple of times
when somebody driving across the bridge has
seen someone jump, called in thinking
they saw suicide, and then they have to send out
a car and see what's happening. Tom Aiello runs the
Snake River BASE Academy. He calls his four-day first
timers class Death Camp. Day one orientation
requires each student to write a letter to relatives
explaining why he or she died BASE jumping. TOM AIELLO: It makes the
students sit and think about the reality of
what they're doing. We're all connected
to other people, and they're connected to their
families and their friends. And they need to think about
the impact on those people of the decisions they make. NARRATOR: The American flag
marks the landing zone. Land anywhere else, and the
danger magnifies even more. See where the
wooden footbridge is over that little gully? From there to the bridge
is bad landing, OK? The gully itself is about
six or eight feet deep. And on this side, there's
a bunch of boulders hiding in those weeds, OK? So you don't want to
try and land there. NARRATOR: An early rehearsal
helps to ease the tension. CHRIS WILSON: This is it, man. This is the moment
I've been waiting for. NARRATOR: But every jumper
knows there is one X-factor that could spell disaster, a
parachute malfunction. The Academy spends hours
packing and repacking chutes. Unlike skydivers who carry
a main and a reserve chute, BASE jumpers don't have the
luxury of time in freefall to determine if their
chute is faulty. For them, there is no time
to deploy a reserve chute. They rely on one, and
only one parachute that's similar in size to a
skydiving reserve canopy. This reality has helped
darken the history of even a user-friendly jump
site like the Perrine Bridge. Six people have met their
death, and several more have been injured jumping here. Most of the tragedies occurred
when chutes failed to deploy. To prevent this, BASE
jumpers typically release a small pilot chute
that causes the main chute to deploy effectively. TOM AIELLO: Ooh. MAN: Oh. TOM AIELLO: You want
to talk about that? WOMAN: Ooh, man. TOM AIELLO: Yeah, he
fumbled the pilot chute. Sketchy. And then because
he had fumbled, he was kicking and threw
herself in a line twist. The line twist happened
because his body position got thrown off by missing. - All right, let's do it.
- All right. NARRATOR: To ensure this
won't happen to him, Chris will perform what's
known as a PCA, or Pilot Chute Assist. I'm ready. NARRATOR: Tom will hold
on to the pilot chute and help deploy the main
parachute as Chris falls. Ready! 3, 2, 1, I'm out! Ah! Yeah! Woo! TOM AIELLO: Chris's
jump looked really good, aside from at the very
end, I think he should've turned around a little sooner. So it was good. MAN: How'd that jump go?
Describe it. - Oh, it was amazing.
- All right. Stand up landing. I'm all in one
piece, so right on. NARRATOR: Another day
sets on Death Camp. The hope is that it will
never live up to its name. CHRIS WILSON: The
margin of error is so small, you really don't
have time to fix any mistakes. So, yeah, if something happens,
and you don't react quick enough, see ya. BASE jumping is dangerous. There's nothing you can do
to make it completely safe. And quite honestly, that's part
of the appeal for some people. It's facing a danger
and overcoming. NARRATOR: Those who
encounter the most dangerous come in all types. Some embrace the danger
with a relentless passion. Others weigh the risks
but still play the game, while others wait in the
shadows and silently pray they are spared. MAN: Watch behind us, guys. NARRATOR: None of us is
immune to the danger. Our only say in the matter
is how well we cope with it.
