The Dollop with Dave Anthony and Gareth Reynolds - 247 - The Falling Pilot

Episode Date: March 2, 2017

Comedians Gareth Reynolds and Dave Anthony examine pilot William Rankin. SOURCESTOUR DATESREDBUBBLE MERCH

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read a story from American history to my friend. Gareth Reynolds who has no idea what the topic is going to be about. It's a weird way for me to come out. Is that what that was? I just went with it. I thought you were maybe talking planes. I'm gonna send this to my wife. Good. And then I'm gonna bring over Phil. Phil's gonna start living in the garage. Who? Phil. Phil's my lover. Is gonna live in the garage and you'll stay in the house? Yeah, I'll go out. And your wife is where? My wife is in the house. My wife will be in the house. Right. But my gentleman friend Phil will be in the garage and when I feel like making love

with a gentleman, I will go out to the garage. Right. Okay. Yeah. No, that is, that's the buy lifestyle that I've read about. That's what I'm talking about. Yeah. Everything's normal there. So, cool. That sounds cool. Let me know. Why is there a cat looking at me? Look, look, look, look. You're gonna need to calm down. God, do you want to look who to do? I'll do one bottle. People say this is funny. Not Gary Gera. Dave, okay. Someone or something is tickling people. Is it for fun? And this is not gonna become a tickly podcast. Okay. You are queen fakie of made-up town. All hail queen shit of Liesville. A bunch of religious virgins go to Mingle and do

what? Pray. Hi, Gary. No. Is he done, my friend? No. No. Well, Dave, as you know, we are in the middle of the two week reverse dollop bonanza as everyone's hashtagging it. This thing has just caught fire. I didn't like how the first one went. Every, this thing has just caught fire. Everyone's hashtagging it. The kids are talking about it. Let's dive in, Derry. July 20. No. July 26, 1959, just before 6 p.m. Pilot Lieutenant William Rankin and Wingman, shut up, Dave. Pilot Lieutenant William Rankin and Wingman Herbert Nolan were flying a pair of F-8 Crusaders from the Naval Air Station at South Weymouth,

Massachusetts, to the Marine Corps Air Station in Buford, South Carolina. They were attempting to keep above some nasty-looking storm clouds as they cruised around 45,000 feet. They've done that. You've done that? Yeah. At 45,000 feet, you've you've cruised at that altitude to avoid storm clouds. Yeah, at a Chevy Malibu. I don't think you're. Okay, anyway, there they are. 45,000 feet. To get away from it, Rankin and Nolan climbed to 47,000 feet and were cruising at roughly 624 miles per hour. I know you're probably like, whoa, that's so fast. It's not that fast. That is nothing for the F-8 Crusader. The F-8 was mainly used in

the Vietnam War and could go up to a thousand miles per hour, as one did when future astronaut John Glenn ripped it up to that speed in 1957. Fucking yeah. You know what I mean? Sound barrier? No, that's Chuck Yeager. No, that's Yeager Meister, exactly. I've broken through the sound barrier with Yeager Meister a couple of times, my friend. A couple of times. It was also used during the Cuban Missile Crisis to take low-level photographs that couldn't be taken any other way of Cuba. So, Lieutenant Rankin climbed to 47,000 feet when something went wrong. He heard what he called a loud bump and rumble from

the engine. That's not good. Not good. It's not a good sign. I feel like you never want to hear a bump and rumble. A bump is okay, a rumble is okay, but a bump and rumble? I'm not down with any of them. I gotta be honest. Yeah. Or sneeze. Dude, bump and rumble also sounds like a mid-90s hip-hop song. Gonna do the bump and rumble, yeah. I guess I was. I mean, no, I'm thinking like Bones Thug, you know, like Bones Thug. So, I'm sort of picturing like, see what the crossroads. That's the chorus. There's a whole lyric. There's a bunch of rappers on this band. Yep, I'm totally down with whatever. They're the bump and

rumbles, baby. The B&Rs. So, here's the bump and rumble coming from the engine. Now, he stayed calm because Rankin was an experienced pilot and he was a general badass who fought in World War II in the Korean War. Oh, he's an older guy. Well, no, this is like, this is a while ago. This is 59. Yeah, so he's not, I mean, he's probably, yeah. Sorry, I got confused when I said they flew in Vietnam, but they haven't flown in Vietnam yet. What you do is time travel. Thank you. There'll be a lot of that with mine. So, as he tried to assess the issue, he heard a fire warning, then experienced, then experienced the system failure. Those

are both. Does a little fireman come out and say warning? Like a little tiny guy comes out of the cockpit. Once again, our hoses are inadequate for this job. Why did we install the little fireman? It gets your attention. Yeah. He's got a little hat on that turns into a siren. Yeah. What are these things? Sorry. They just make them. Things got worse when the engine stopped working completely and warning lights began flashing all over. Well, this is, I'm going to say it right now. This is all bad. Least the lights are flashing. Okay. Lights are on. Lights, that's a good sign. So, if you wanted it to do this, at this point, you could obtain one. You could

obtain one because he can see still. Exactly. So, he tried to turn on the auxiliary power for the jet, but the lever for the auxiliary power broke off in his hand. So, he's way too strong. He's hulking out. Yeah. He's hulking out. He's totally freaking out right now. Dave, you could say William Rankwin and Rankin as I like to call him was having one of those days because it's funny as I would say William Rankin. Rankin's fun. Rankin transmitted a brief message to Nolan, the other pilot in the other plane. Hey, fuck, fucking, hey, fuck, fuck. Oh, that's not good. He's giving me the hey fucks. No, the message read power failure may have

to eject. So, he was all he was kind of over water. He was short. Well, right now they're so, I mean, dude, they're 47,000 feet. But they're over water, right? No, they're over land. They're over land. They're over land. They're flying from Massachusetts to South Carolina. So, they're hanging, because you could do that over water. I would do it over water. That's just how I roll, but they're doing it over land. What would you do over water? If I flew from Massachusetts down to South Carolina, I'd take the water. Oh, you'd take the water. Well, they might be over water. Anyway, but he might, he might take a pop. He might have sold me on

this water pitch. Yeah. He might take a pop, see how he is, they're called in the business. Well, I think, I think, as he said, he might have to eject, or as you called it a popsy outie. A popsy outie. My dad was in the military. I'm not sure that that. Anyway, but he didn't want to popsy outie. He knew what he was facing if he did popsy outie. Uh-huh. At 47,000 feet, he would be dealing with some major altitude issues. Oh, yeah, that can't be great. With no pressurization. The wind hitting you would go on 600. That can't be good either. Dude. None of it sounds awesome. It's 47,000 feet. I feel like my eyes would come out. With no

pressurization suit, he would be forced into freezing temperatures, severe decompression, and no oxygen. By the way, we're gonna be in Iceland. That reminds me of Iceland. By the way, Iceland Harpa, get there. Show us a ticket for any show and you can come in and have a beer with us. He did have an oxygen tank, but he was so high up that it may not be enough. So as he lost all hope in the powerless jet, he made the tough decision. He remembered his training. He had to move quickly because this plane was about to nosedive. He sat up straight, checked the harness, and pulled the ejection lever. Oh, fuck. Boom. He shot out

of the cockpit and broke through part of the canopy into the atmosphere like a rocket. Fun. It was six p.m. Was he holding like a light or anything? Did it look fun? Did what look fun? Well, when he's flying out for anybody watching, it would look cool if he had like whoops. Sorry. Let's let's let's let's let's not get to the end of the point when there's so many red flags in the middle of it. If you had sparklers or Roman candles. Sorry. To be clear, this is not near or around the Super Bowl. So no man is. I'm just saying make stuff look good. History has taken your note. Okay, they'll get back to you. Think of

everything. It was 6 p.m. Now he's literally just 47,000 feet in the air free falling at 6 p.m. at 6 p.m. So you've seen a nice sunset. Dude, beauty. Yeah, kind of you wish you wish a gal was by your side going through the same shit. Man, I should have brought a lady up here. I wish there was a lady dying with me in the sky. He shoots a Roman candle. So again, 47,000 feet in the air. As you can imagine, it was cold. Yeah. And a matter of seconds, he's gone. He's going from a cockpit that's 75 degrees to basically space where it was negative 70, which is cold, cold. So he's flying through. He's flying through

the air at a couple hundred miles per hour. He felt like he was like a piece of beef being tossed in the freeze. Okay, he was like freezing. He was so cold that he felt like he was on fire eventually. But then that quickly gave way to welcome numbing this because it was better to feel nothing at this point at this altitude. Sure. I feel it's called the icy hot effect. I feel like for most people in a dollop, it's better to feel nothing. I think that numb numb the numb come out on top most times. Yep. You can't argue that a lobotomized person isn't like going numb the happiest at the end of it. Fuck

yes, you know. So he's basically feeling nothing, but he's not out of the woods by any means. Okay, so his stomach is cramping up. It feels like he's being stretched. He actually he looks at his stomach and it's so big. It looks like he's late in pregnancy shirt off his shirt is not off. But you know your own body. Yeah, you pull it taught. You're like, Oh, God, I'm gaining. I wish I didn't know my own body, but I get I know your body. Well, I know your body will. His abdomen was distending and it felt like it was going to explode. Jesus. His eyes. What what is the what is the what's happening physically that

his stomach is? Oh, it's because pressure pressure. It's just pressure. The pressure is so different. It's like the yeah, what he's dealing. Yeah, this is what would happen if you're in space, right? Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I mean, I would imagine his eyes should come out. Well, his eyes felt as though they were being torn from their sockets. I'm talking about his head felt like it was splitting apart. Yeah. And his ears felt like they would burst his ear drums felt like they would burst at any moment. So it's like a hangover. It's like a bad hangover. Someone needs an emergency. Yeah, seriously. After around 20 seconds,

this is 20 seconds. This is 20 seconds. 20 seconds. 20 seconds. After 20 seconds, no, we know he lives because other else he would write this in his diary. No, no, it's funny. I'm about to get to this. He had a biographer falling with him. Oh, okay. He had a biographer falling with him. Good guy. Yep. Doesn't make it. I don't want to spoil it. So your couch finds a lighter in the couch. By the way, my only reaction to that is yes. Boom. So it couldn't get much worse. His body is experiencing such strong G force that he can't really move his arms or legs. But he does feel something rattling against his face. And he realizes

it's the oxygen mask because he'd forgotten about oxygen. He'd almost forgotten that he had to put that on. So what he needs to do now is he needs to strap the oxygen mask to his face, even though he can't really move his stuff. Totally paralyzed. He can't move. So he's holding his breath and he's struggling mightily until he breaks through some clouds, which kind of stop a little bit. They make the G force lower a little bit. And he's able now to move his arms slightly, grabs the mask, straps it to his face. So now he's breathing on his oxygen. So this is for all those people that hate clouds. Here's a great

reason to love them. Yeah, these. Yeah, people are like chemtrails. Yeah, those people fuck those people. Clouds are cool. The clouds are cool. Clouds are great for the most part. So the shoot was the thing he couldn't stop thinking about, right? Yeah, it's important. It's a big, probably a big, I mean you've got to have a couple things going through your head at this point, but the shoot is up there. Yeah, you gotta be like, I hope that thing works. That better work. It had not deployed yet and it wouldn't until Rankin hit 10,000 feet where the barometric sensing device would trigger because of the heavier air and it would release the

shoot. Or not. Or not. And once the shoot deployed, don't don't do the me thing. Don't do the me thing. No, no, no, no, no. No, no, no. These are so weird, right? Right now, right now, 80% he hits the ground. Okay. Once the shoot deployed, he wouldn't need the oxygen mask anymore. So he had enough oxygen for about five minutes, which was the free fall. So all he had to really do was endure that and that was it. But William was antsy. Not sure why. He was worried. Yeah, I mean, I think antsy would be the, that's like the least of how I'm feeling at this point. He's antsy. He's got ants in his pants and he needs the chance. He's kind of

nervous about something. Yeah, exactly. He's got the butterflies. He's got the butterflies right now. I think a lot of them too because he's pregnant with them. Oh, fuck. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's right. So he's worried about the shoot. He's starting to freak out. He's worried, like, will it deploy all this stuff? So he wants to pull the ripcord, but then he realizes he's letting these emotions get the better of them. And really, the truth is that he needs the free fall. The free fall is doing him a favor because the closer he gets to the ground, the faster, the less freezing he will be. Also, he's less puffy the whole thing. The

whole thing. Plus, he also needs the oxygen. So if he prematurely pulls the cord, he's going to be going down when he needs oxygen and he'll just suffocate in the sky, which is how I want to go. I've told you a number of times on this show, I want to suffocate in the sky. Right. I want to be dragged behind the truck. Okay. So we, the race is on, my friend. See you at the finish line. Like, I have a better chance. Don't you worry, buddy. I'm coming. So he takes a breath. He puts his hands on his helmet to keep them away from the D-ring entirely. He didn't want to be tempted. Yeah. So as he refocuses. Gotta be hard to not pull

that D-ring. You know how it is with the D-ring. You know what I mean? Go out. Put your hand on the D-ring. Put a D-ring on it. Know what I mean? Okay. Alrighty. So he refocuses and he notices some blood. Is it his? Well, odds are it's his. Okay. He might not be. No. This could be the scene of a murder. Sorry. I didn't even realize this. No, he's near a slaughterhouse on the sky. It's cow blood. 40 pigs go by. He sees 40 pigs go to the slaughterhouse. So he's not sure where the blood comes from, but there's a lot of it. Oh, well, that's and not good. It's not great as far as living goes. Well, he did go through that

cockpit thing, right? The cockpit thing, which is one of the culprits. There's a canopy. There's a number of window, I assume. There's a number of culprits. It's I mean, yeah, it's super intense. That's hard. But I mean, again, he's so, I mean, his adrenaline is on another level. I would have cracked that baby open. He kind of gooseed. It's kind of like what happened to goose. Fucking goose. And that other guy, he's Nelson. Can I tell you something? Sure. Never seen Nelson. You've never what? Never seen it. You've never seen Goose and Maverick? No. You've never seen Top Gun. I haven't seen Titanic. There's a bunch of movies I haven't seen

because they don't sound good to me. Titanic I can get. I can totally understand. Yeah. But I top gun is like and again, I'm not it's not even like I'm one of these people who's like what it's on. I'm like, Oh, man, make the popcorn. Yeah. You know, but I it is a that's crazy. So all these the years when I went off the off the podcast, I've been talking to you about the volleyball scene and you've been nodding and I and I've been saying the, you know, you've lost that love that scene and you've been nodding the time when Tom Scarrett goes into the bathroom and talks to Maverick and I said that that

was like you that one time when you pulled me aside and talked to me and you said that really resonates with me. Yeah. But the Iceman Val Kilmer in the locker room. I don't need to see it because you have so many posters in your house that I can basically seen the movie several times based on the posters and it wasn't easy to make a room that was frame by frame Top Gun. A lot of people said I couldn't do it. Well, you did. I did it. Yep. I did it. So there are a couple culprits with this blood. Sure. And by the way, watch Top Gun. His nose is gushing because yes, it had been broken when he ejected. He hit the canopy, smacked his

mask, smacked him in the face. Fucking mask. But really, most of the blood was leaking from his ears and his eyes due to severe decompression. Oh, see, that's that shouldn't happen. It's not good unless you have a bowl. Unless it's the stigmata or Ebola. Right. Stigmata is a good one. So I sometimes that'll happen to me at night. I'll bleed from my ears and my eyes because I turn if you cry hard enough blood comes out. Yeah, but I also turn into a demon. We're recording this. So just so you know, I can't I sleep in a hell mouth. Okey dokey. So the decompression had made him swell. It had made his weaker blood vessels just start

popping off like fireworks. You know, these are coming out of his nose, his eyes. So he's a free falling blood spewing human rocket. Yeah. And he just keeps telling himself, hang on, hang in there. This will end. The more dense the air gets, the more oxygen I'll be getting. The more oxygen means the less decompression. That's bleeding as he's just gushing his eyes and ears. I don't want to. But what do you do? I mean, yeah, it's you know, you just go. Yeah, you're just like, I mean, that's kind of what like he is brave, obviously. But yeah, that's kind of like what are you like? What are you supposed to do? This

isn't a case of bravery. I mean, he's brave because he flies a jet. I think that's a great thing to do. But just dropping through the air is not brave. The wildest survive, I would say, is brave. What's he going to do? Is there a switch he's going to hit to turn himself off? Like it's instinct to survive. He was surprisingly focused all things considered. He was, however, curious what time it was, and he checked his luminous watch. Shout out to the Radium Girls. Who wouldn't at this point check their watch? Oh my god, I have to make a thing. Oh gosh, I'm gonna miss my 645. I'm supposed to be on land. Oh, good

Lord, I have a dinner. Right. I'm gonna have to call the peltzes and let them know. Oh boy, and even if I do make it at this point, I'll probably be out of blood. No reception. So he checks the luminous watch that the Radium Girls lost their jaws for, and it is four past six. So he ejected at six. So what's that? He's four minutes into this sweet sweet journey. He's four minutes into this dream journey from the sky while blood is pouring out of him. So he's trying to do some quick math to determine how fast he's falling. Again, this is all motivated by the shoot paranoia. He knows he's falling somewhere between four to

10,000 feet a minute at this point, and as he's noodling, he gets distracted by the feeling of these tiny rocks that start hitting him. Uh-oh. So that shouldn't be happening. It's not good. Neighborhood kids. Or it's him. It was parts of him. Or it's another guy. He's like, oh, those are my toes. Hey, that's my hand. Howie. It's Hale. He's feeling the precipitation here, but he knows that if he's feeling precipitation at this level, he has to be close to shoot deployment. Or was he past it? Because he's past the clouds, and yeah, all right. Well, he's still above it, but he's worried about the shoot. But he's

starting to get crazy, and he's like, I have to be at 10,000 feet if I'm feeling anything. So he's worried. He can't wait any longer. He puts his hand on the D-ring. Don't do it. And then wham. His shoot deploys. Not because he pulled it, but because of the trigger. So he's at 10,000 feet. He's like, okay, I'm at 10,000 feet. Happened the way it was supposed to happen. Happened the way it was supposed to happen. He was going to do it, but then old bloody, bloody hands. He just, yeah, blood, yeah, he was crying more blood. The shoot is probably just covered in blood. Oh, but looks great at this point. I mean, that's a good look. Red, yeah, it's a Pollock. So

William had slowed down to a breezy 10 miles per hour at this point, and it was right on time, too. He was just out of oxygen, and the fact that his shoot deployed meant that he was okay to breathe on his own now because, again, the barometric reader would only go off when it was okay. Right. So he rips the oxygen mask off his face, and a blob of blood shoots out. Yeah, that'll happen. He takes further inventory of the damage, and he's definitely hurting. Uh-huh. His internal organs, his bones, and his flesh are all painfully reshaping. Sure, that's bad. His face is swollen. By reshaping into the shape he wants? It's

like the swamp, but in the sky. It's becoming different. It's becoming like the swamp thing. He is now in the sky. I like to think that he's a caterpillar coming out of the cocoon. Okay. So he's now, it's the swamp. So at this point, it's an all-new him. When he hits the ground, he could be anything. Oh, when he hits the ground, he lands on a stage, and his friends are there applauding, and he's like, he runs out of a picture of the old him. Okay, I love it. It's new me. I love this story. He's new, so he's reshaping. His face is swollen, but still, he looks up, the shoot looks good. Both the harnesses seem taught, shoots

fully open. One of his gloves had fallen off during the ordeal, and the one remaining glove was now like swelling and ballooning. Yeah. No, it's just thinking this is something Michael Jackson got the idea. This is. Yep, this is. That's where we're going. Because of the blood bubbles from the eyes, too. That's what he named the monkey after. Yeah. There's a lot of parallels here. Okay. So he's got the one glove on, but it's ballooning because of the wind. So he's just at this point, he's like, whatever, I'm through it. So he takes the glove off. So he takes it, he lets it fly away. And at this point, William notices that he

just has over nine fingers. What? On the one hand? On the one hand. No, no, no, yeah, no, yeah, he picked up four. So he's missing a finger. He's not fully missing a finger. One is just basically completely dangling off, and he could see the bone. And that's also from when he shot out of the plane? Or that's, yeah, that's, that's damage sustained at some point here. Yeah. Impact. Yeah. I mean, yeah, there's a lot going on. So he's got a hanging. So he's got a, he's got a hangnail, but it's his hand and it's his finger. Yeah. So he's like, okay, I'm just gonna ignore that as much as I can. What? Yeah. So he just, ignore that for sure.

He put a pin in that, obviously. You put a pin in that right away. That's not happening right now. Okay, so that's, that's, I'm not worried about that. So he tries to ignore this as much as he can. He just has to focus on getting to the ground. Still, it could be worse, a lot worse. Well, he even took a mom to think about how great this will be to tell people when he gets down. He can let fellow pilots know that they could survive a fall of nearly 50,000 feet. At this point, you start thinking about a one-man show. It's, if you've listened to the dollop, at this point, he has enough for, he just has to survive to go

go on a long theater run. Right. Always, always a show. This one would be called, what was I thinking? What was I thinking? Yeah. That has two meanings. Yeah, that's, I'm gonna actually want to hear different pitches. So William looks down and he sees how far, to see how far he has to go, but his eagerness turns to dread as he sees now a new complication waiting for him. Oh, ducks? He re, a flock of ducks. Oh no, he's about to sully. He realized his journey was just getting started when he saw the source of the earlier precipitation. A huge thunderstorm. Oh no. And if he was above this huge thunderstorm. Oh, lightning goes up. And he

was going down. Oh, fuck. He was gonna have to go through it. No. And this wasn't just any storm, did he? This storm was a bunch of cumulonibus clouds, which are mushroom-shaped, dense, produce lightning, thunder, and even tornadoes. What? Basically, William was about to fall through one of the worst storms in East, the East Coast had seen up until this point. You could say William Rankin was having one of those days. My luck. He plunged in and it was an immediate nightmare. He felt the thunder as it clapped around his head. He felt it in his bones, especially the exposed finger one. Yeah. The lightning was so bright that he had to close his

eyes when he could. Jesus. And when he couldn't, he said it looked like thick blue scissor blades that he would worry, that he was worried, but sliced him in half. This sounds like Studio 54 a little bit. This is a lot, this is a lot like the back room in Studio 54. Yeah. When the lightning stopped, he was lost in total darkness and sure on what would come next. He was being thrown back and forth so much he was getting nauseous. He knew this couldn't go on much longer. He had almost, he had to almost be through it. And in one of the moments of darkness, he thought that he actually died. He was sure he was dead, so he checked his watch

to see if he could see it. Indeed, he could. He was not dead. But the watch revealed more bad news. Oh God. The watch read 620. No. He'd been in the storm for 15 minutes. He was puzzled. Oh my God. And then he realized what was going on. He was trapped inside. He wasn't drifting through the clouds at all. He was locked inside with the nightmarish wind and his chute. Oh my God. Now it's a TV show. Now it's a show. We want you to pitch to thunder next week, William. Man in the cloud. The cloud. So much water was hitting him that he was worried he would drown. What? He checked to see if, I mean, it's, he's in the middle of the...

Who fucking air drowns? Dude, you air drown in this situation. Jesus Christ. Well, he didn't want to, so he checks his oxygen mask to see... Oh, he didn't want to drown? No, he was against it. He was on record before this, too. He isn't one of the guys that once he's in this situation... He said he previously said. He previously said on record. So he sees if he has any more oxygen in the oxygen mask. He doesn't. So he tried to time his breathing out as best he could, like someone caught under water grabbing oxygen when they could come up for air. So since he's trapped inside, he becomes really worried about the chute. The chute appeared to be okay until a gust of

wind blew him into it, wrapping him into the silk with what felt like a silky bear hug. Well, that's nice. He was being jerked around, flung through the chute. Let me just take a moment to feel how nice that is. It's a nice... Everything going on. How about a little silk hug? It's like being back in the womb. Right? They called the womb the silk hug. Yeah. They always have. They have always said that. I'll be taking a moment to appreciate what happened there. This is nice. Yeah. This is fingers off. That's a nice feeling. Oh, man. I could just, I could, I could, if I'm not careful, I'll drift off. Did he name his finger yet? Yeah. The hangie? Gony. Gony. Yeah. So he's jerked again and then he's flung out of his chute, which miraculously opens again.

But that's good and bad because again he's trapped in there because of the chute. So next he feels what he calls a symphony of hammers. This is the hail going to work on him. It pelts him all over, crashing into his helmet, so much that it's almost deafening. His eyes are closed, but he guessed that they were the size of baseballs from their feeling, which isn't crazy because hail can hit the earth at 17 inches away over a pound. Oh, wow. And he's right in the storm too. So he's like where it's freezing. Yeah. So there are lulls in the storm where he gets 15 or 20 second breaks where he can get his bearings. So he would look to see

if he could see a break in the storm, but nothing. He just gets continued to, he's continued to be pelting with rain and hail and thunder. And instead of wondering what if he would give in, he just kept thinking that the storm is going to have to end at some point. You know what's going to be cool though? He's going to end up being dropped at his house. He for sure ends up at it. This is what Amazon does. This is like being one of the Amazon packages. So he's just closing his eyes, he's trying to hold on. The wind is strong, but it's getting a little less strong. The rain is bad, but he's not drowning as much. And suddenly he sees

some green through the clouds. Oh yeah. He focuses, he checked the chute, it looks good, he breaks through, he couldn't believe it. He looks above and he sees the storm is actually above him now, he's left it. But still, he's got to deal with the stuff coming out of the storm. He's jacked up as he is. Yeah, he's got to keep his eye on the prize, earth. And yeah, he's still below this terrible storm. That has lightning. And less than ten fingers. Yeah, terrible. He's trying to land. So he's all messed up and he just tries to. Remember, let's go back. And it's night too. Let's go back to when he was just worried about the chute. Oh, that was a fun era. That was

when everything seemed. When he was like, man, I thought this thing deploys. Well, that's the thing too, is that like, you know, the reader, like the reader was correct. But it was because of the storm. It's just because the storm made it go early. Right. So it's really predicting like when is it, when are his oxygen levels going to be acceptable? Yeah. And because of the storm, it just deploys early. So the reader was like, got your back, boss. And he was like, no. So he's looking below and he sees a green landscape. So he's aiming for this clearing and he's like, he thinks he can stick it. At this point, he's in the

backwoods of North Carolina. He looks down and sees there's no feet. He sees no feet. No, he's just the head. He's just got a point pointed. But it's like he's been turned into like a pointy, two pointy ends. And he's just going to stick on the ground. Yeah. No, he's going to fall. He's hoping to fall like a sword. He's a man fork. It's calling. It's called Excalibur. Okay. Yeah. And all the kids are doing it. He's been turned into a shank. He's shanked. Yeah. He's been a shank. So it's still so blackout that he can't make out a good spot. So he's aiming for this area. Is it nighttime or is it daytime? Well, it's it's it's

dark and it's soup 30 now. Well, because of the storm, though, too, it's also really dark. You know, it's a terrible storm. So he finds the spot he aims for the area. And just as he's prepared to land, the storm couldn't help but give him one last FU. So the wind picks up, takes him off course. And when he can finally see raise headed, he sees that it's like a thickly wooded area. That's a bad thing. It's not good. Don't want to land in. It's not. And again, I mean, how many times are you going to hit the scratch off lottery? I mean, he's not. He cashed in wrong. Yeah. So he's now facing a ton of trees. He's just having

one of those days. So William Rankin knows that it'll be no picnic. So he's headed it. Let's just say it's already not a picnic. I think he's had a good time so far. Sounds like six flags. So he clenches his jaw. He closes his eyes. He puts his hand over his junk and he prepares to barrel into the forest at around 40 miles per hour. He's not wearing a cup. No cup. But again, I mean, he's doing the soccer move. Football. As he broke through, his parachute gets caught up in the branches and the speed takes him headfirst into the trunk of a tree. Perfect. Thankfully his flight helmet absorbed the last blow, saving him

from serious injury, which is honestly true. Like he might have gone through all this and just been paralyzed, which is not, I mean, you know, it's just like because they would have just been like, I probably died in the sky. Like I did everything. And then the tree and then he hits the tree and he's dang on there and he sees that the world has been overrun by zombies. Yeah. So he lays on the ground. He said he felt like he was vibrating. He catches his breath. It's over and he can't fucking believe it. Right. He looks at his watch and it said 640 and then a dog pisses on. There's no dog. So it says 640. So he just survived

a brutalizing 40 minute fall through a raging thunderstorm from nearly nine miles in the air from where he ejected. Do we know how long he was in the storm then? He was in the storm for about 35 minutes. Okay. Is there any sort of device on him where people can track him? Yeah, he's got the Santa tracker. All right. Okay. So he's in the air for 40 minutes. He's nine miles. He was nine miles up from where he ejected and he was 64 miles away from where he started. So he got blown. He got blown 64 miles away. No one's gonna believe this. Nobody. But he's not out of the woods yet this time literally. No, he's actually in

the woods. He's in the woods. He's still in need of serious medical attention. So he gets up, he walks through a clearing where he eventually found a road where he tried to hitch a ride. That wasn't easy. But he's missing a thumb. It wasn't easy. Yeah, you know, he's lost his hitch and thumb. Yeah. Yeah. It's fucked up. He's soaking. He's bloody. He's covered in vomit and he's missing a finger for the most part. So for some reason people keep driving by him. Wait, people are actually passing by him? Oh, yeah. Multiple people. Multiple people pass by him. Is he in a flight suit? Yeah. But it's like soaking wet and he's like bloody and

covered in puke. So he looks like a killer. He looks like someone you're probably not gonna invite in the car. Okay. Yeah. So finally someone stops and they drive him to a pay phone where he's able to call for an ambulance. Which I love. I know. I can get you to a phone, but that's about it buddy. You said pay phone and that's kind of where I even looking at you now. You didn't say pay phone. I support the military, but just as far as like a pay phone. Don't die with that one finger either, man. So he calls an ambulance for himself. They come and get him and he spends the next few weeks recovering from frostbite, the

intense decompression, tons of bruises and welds. His fingers saved. He actually suffered no long-term damage from the ordeal. That's pretty amazing. From then on he was known as the man who rode the Thunder, which is what he titled his autobiography. That's weird because that is actually my nickname. Is it? Yeah. I wrote it. I thought you were the man the Thunder rode. No. Okay. I take that back. Yeah. You're not listening. He's the man who rode the Thunder. Gotcha. You've been ridden by it. Right. It's in the garage. In 2012 Red Bull Stratus paired with Austrian skydiver Felix Baumgartner for a space jump. Wait, what's happening? Don't

worry. He jumped from approximately 126,000 feet. I remember this. His whole jump lasted 10 minutes. His shoot deployed after just four minutes, which are pretty cute numbers compared to what rank and putting. That guy's a pussy. He also had a pressure suit and he didn't go through a hellish storm. Yeah. Show me some fucking balls. Get into a fucking thunderstorm, bitch. Okay. Gonna need you to calm down a lot. I'm pretty sure I said get into a thunderstorm, bitch. Gonna need you to calm down a lot. Yeah, Red Bull. We should make a car called Thunderstorm and that should be the tag for it. Get in a thunderstorm, bitch.

Lieutenant Private William Rankin died on January 11th, 2007. This is a bitch where he reads. I don't believe that for a second. I don't think he's dead. William James Rankin of Columbus died Thursday, January 11th, 2007 in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Proceeded in death by his father, John Henry Rankin. He graduated from Catholic Central High School in Steubenville and played on the 1971 state championship football team. He received his bachelor's of fine arts from Ohio State University. His passions were his loving wife, children, family, friends, the outdoors, his art and music, especially the Beatles. Funeral service

8 p.m. Wednesday, January 17th. He touched the lives of everyone he knew. No mention of the time. He spent 40 fucking minutes drowning in a tornado. What? How was that possible? That's how they ended it. Fucking lead with that shit. That's it. Man who was in a cloud. Oh, by the way, I lived in a cloud for a while. I mean honestly. You wouldn't hear the end of it from me. No, I would. Anybody. You guys talking about the time I went through the storm and lived? We buying shots? Yeah, I mean, yeah, but we've heard that story. What story? The time that I went through Oh, these girls probably haven't heard it. How are you girls doing? Hey, I think my

buddies were just talking about the time that I actually was 47,000 feet in the air. I cried blood. My finger almost came off. I got a ride to the hospital from a payphone and and I lived to tell the story. So that's they call me the man who rode the Thunder. So your name's Thunder, my lady. Who wants to do Yeagers? You were talking about some of those. No. You buy? No, this is yeah. When you die, we're not gonna put this in your eye. I'm not dying. I'm the man who wrote the thunder. I forget what it sounds like. The finger get put back on. Yeah, just the wrong hand. Oh, you're bleeding a little bit right here. Yeah, that happens. Just some

decompression and no, I'm not pregnant. That'll go away once it's four. So yeah, that's the time the man is an American hero. Yeah. Yeah, he wrote his. So his book, his book is his autobiography is written from his perspective and it's pretty he's like his version of it is very colorful, but it is amazed like he the whole time he's like, I mean, all I could think about was how great a wall man show. Yeah. Well, yeah, I mean, you know, 47,000 feet and then you could do that as a movie. You could like gravity. Yeah, you can do a version of it. Yeah, for sure. But you know what Hollywood would do? They'd put in a couple other

characters. They'd be like, what about a neighbor skydiver? What? And then you make it. Hey, William, can I borrow some soup? In the cloud, he runs into Sarah. Oh, William, I never thought I'd see you again. They were in love in college. Are you a sight for blood eyes? But they never actually had closure. And they have a baby in the storm. And don't raise him. That is the sequel cloud baby. It's called cloud baby. He spends his first 15 years in the cloud. What's earth like? Son, you don't want to know. All right. I'm proud of you. Thank you. We've reversed. We've reversed. Yep. We signed clouds.