HOW

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WORKS

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H i tMsE 1
VOLU

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SEAMANSHIP IN SMALL BOATS • 9/11 Myths • ALCATRAZ
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Hosts Jacqueline Detwiler and
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Learn everything from lawn-care secrets to the best way to hang a TV

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Jacqueline and Kevin had an on-air push-up contest. (She won.)
 JA N UA RY F E B R UA RY

04 From the Editor Along with revolutionary Cross-country skiing

06 PM Everywhere products, Apple has also 36 Road Tested with
09 The First Story: Kia produced great talent. Ezra Dyer: Heavy-duty
went from being the 18 How do you get even trucks
butt of jokes to maker more hops in beer? 38 The New Vintage: 1994
of reliable cars that can Science. Toyota Supra
be driven right off the 22 Why you should surf 74 The infamous Alcatraz
factory line. Which is this winter prison break that
exactly what we did. 26 My First Kitchen relied on an issue of PM
BY EZRA DYER 30 Ask Roy 88 Great Unknowns:
16 The Apple Diaspora: 33 Getting Started In: Fallout shelters

40 The Greatest Hits: Vol. I

42 Fire on the flight deck • 1974

46 Good seamanship in small boats • 1940
48 Hammer skills • 1953
52 Rocket science • 1940
56 How to organize your home workshop • 1981
58 A small-plot garden • 1980
61 Roy’s first story • 1989
64 Our prospects of living on other planets • 1952
68 Debunking 9/11 conspiracies • 2005
70 Deconstructing Bigfoot • 1992
82 A kid’s easel • 2005

JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2018 003

 M E O N I N S TA G R A M

Volume I
I REMEMBER WHEN Bruce Springsteen’s
Greatest Hits album came out. I was in col-
lege, and I walked through the snow down
to the record store (the record store!) and
bought it on compact disc. For a fan of
any musician, greatest hits albums were
always a little strange. You were used to
You’re holding the first-ever “greatest
hits” issue of Popular Mechanics. To kick
off our 117th year, we thought we’d look
back and see how much of our history holds
up—how many stories still matter. A ton, rhdagostino Time to retire my old Yamaha.
My pal @petefrancis3 took me to @mattu-
it turns out. Most, even. We had a blast manovguitars on Bleecker Street. Got this
looking through the 12 decades of Popular sweet Sunburst Seagull. #amateur

hearing songs in the context of the other
songs on the record. Now here they were
all out of order, and only the hits, not the
B-sides and non-radio-friendly tracks
where they belonged. In Springsteen’s
case, all the hits were there, of course—
“Born to Run,” “Hungry Heart,” “Born in
the U.S.A.” (And also, curiously, “Atlantic
City.” Was that a hit?) I loved them all as
songs, but I wondered if this album would
sound like an album or merely a collec-
tion of songs.
Because there’s a difference.
This question might not make sense
to anyone very young, because albums
aren’t a thing anymore. Today, the single
is everything, and we stream songs one
at a time on Spotify and make playlists
(which aren’t all that different from mix-
tapes). But albums used to be conceived
as complete works, with all the songs in a
precise order, ideally adding up to some-
thing more powerful than each individual
track. I wondered if Springsteen’s songs
out of order might lose some of that power.
They didn’t. At least I didn’t think they
did. The reason is that the songs were so
good that not only did they stand on their
own, but I heard a newness in them that
was exciting.
Mechanics, and we found so many stories
that still ring true that we’re thinking of
making an annual thing of this. Volume
I, Volume II, etc.
This exercise was like using reclaimed
materials to construct some new and
equally useful, equally wonderful thing—
a dining table out of barn wood. You go
back, you find the best stuff, you touch
it up, you use it. Presented in a new con-
text, it not only continues to do its job, it
takes on new meaning, stirs in us differ-
ent feelings. These stories from all eras of rhdagostino The studio project is
our history are not only still relevant, but really coming along. #diy #backyard
#tablesaw @hitachipowertoolsusa
they come to us full of the passions and
dreams of people who were pretty much
just like us. As it turns out, the old, worn
wood of a hayloft looks new and vibrant
in the center of the family room. So it is
in this issue. We appreciate these things
that were created so carefully before our
time, and we’ve used them to build some-
thing for you, anew.
rhdagostino A workbench at the black-
RYAN D’AGOSTINO smith’s shop @mysticseaportmuseum in
Editor in Chief Connecticut, a pefect re-creation of a New
@rhdagostino England whaling village.

Editor in Chief Ryan D’Agostino • Design Director Michael Wilson • Executive Editor Peter Martin • Managing Editor Helene F. Rubinstein • Deputy
Managing Editor Aimee E. Bartol • Associate Creative Director Allyson Torrisi • Articles Editor Jacqueline Detwiler • Senior Editors Matt Allyn, Roy
Berendsohn • Automotive Editor Ezra Dyer • Technology Editor Alexander George • Senior Associate Editor Kevin Dupzyk • Associate Editor Lara
Sorokanich • Field Editor James Lynch • Assistant to the Editor in Chief Eleanor Hildebrandt • Copy Chief Robin Tribble • Copy Editor Maude
Campbell • Research Director David Cohen • Research Editor Henry Robertson • Art: Art Director Duane Bruton • Associate Art Director Zachary
SINCE 1902 Gilyard • Contributing Editors: Tom Chiarella, Daniel Dubno, Wylie Dufresne, Kendall Hamilton, Francine Maroukian, David Owen, Joe Pappalardo,
Richard Romanski, James Schadewald, Joseph Truini, Nicholas Wicks • Imaging: Digital Imaging Specialist Steve Fusco • PopularMechanics.com: Site
Director Andrew Moseman • Deputy Editor Eric Limer • Senior Editor Darren Orf • DIY Editor Timothy Dahl • Web Video Editor Ryan Mazer • Assistant
Editor Jay Bennett • Mobile Editions: Mobile Editions Editor Tom Losinski • Popular Mechanics Interactive: Producer Jeff Zinn • Popular Mechanics
International Editions: Russia, South Africa • SVP/International Editorial Director Kim St. Clair Bodden • Published by Hearst Communications, Inc. President & Chief Executive Officer Steven R. Swartz • Chairman
William R. Hearst III • Executive Vice Chairman Frank A. Bennack, Jr. • Hearst Magazines Division: President David Carey • President, Marketing & Publishing Director Michael Clinton • President, Digital Media Troy
Young • Chief Content Officer Joanna Coles • Senior Vice President, Chief Financial Officer Debi Chirichella • Publishing Consultants Gilbert C. Maurer, Mark F. Miller

Publisher, Chief Revenue Officer Cameron Connors • Associate Publisher Adam C. Dub • Executive Director, Integrated Marketing Jason Graham • Advertising Sales Offices: NEW YORK: East Coast
Automotive Director Joe Pennacchio • Integrated Account Director Sara Schiano • Vice President, Digital Sales, Lifestyle and Design Group Sue Katzen • LOS ANGELES: Integration Associate Michelle
Nelson • SAN FRANCISCO: William G. Smith, Smith Media Sales, LLC • CHICAGO: Midwest Director Justin Harris • Integrated Midwest Manager, Auto Aftermarket Marc Gordon • Assistant Yvonne
Villareal • DETROIT: Integrated Sales Director Mark Fikany • Midwest Account Manager Bryce Vredevoogd • Assistant Toni Starrs • DALLAS: Patty Rudolph PR 4.0 Media • Hearst Direct Media:
Sales Manager Brad Gettelfinger • Marketing Solutions: Director, Integrated Marketing William Upton • Director, Group Marketing Yasir Salem • Special Projects Director Karen Mendolia • Senior
Manager, Integrated Marketing Amanda Kaye • Senior Director, Digital Marketing Samantha Gladis • Senior Digital Marketing Manager A’ngelique Tyree • Senior Digital Marketing Manager Lee Anne
Murphy • Creative Solutions: Executive Creative Director, Group Marketing Jana Nesbitt Gale • Art Director Michael B. Sarpy • Administration: Advertising Services Director Regina Wall • Executive Assistant to
the Publisher Amanda Bessim • Production/Operations Director Chuck Lodato • Operations Account Manager Jackie Beck • Premedia Account Manager Lauren Rosato • Circulation: Consumer Marketing Director
William Carter • Research Manager Peter Davis • Group Vice President and Global Chief Licensing Director Steve Ross • Hearst Men’s Group: Senior Vice President & Publishing Director Jack Essig • General
Manager Samantha Irwin • Executive Assistant to the Group Publishing Director & Business Coordinator Mary Jane Boscia

4 JANUARY/FEBRUARY _ 2018 P O P U L A R M E C H A N I C S.CO M

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 BY E Z R A DY E R

HOW After panels have been

stamped and hand-
inspected for defects,
robots handle the welding.
This Kia plant in Georgia
operates 24 hours a day,
five days a week.

The Korean Peninsula is hot right now.

Nuclear tension, the Olympics, and . . . Kia!
Here’s how the car company went from
rental-lot reject to customer favorite.

@PopularMechanics JANUARY/FEBRUARY
MONTH _
_ 2018
2017 9
 A welder makes
final repairs to a FIVE-WORD
completed body
before it goes REVIEWS
to paint. (KIA EDITION)

But for the past two

years, Kia has ranked
number one on the
IQS survey, with SOUL
corporate siblings Most popular
Hyundai and Gene- cube since Rubik’s.
sis near the top, too.
But reputations have
inertia. I recently
heard a comedian
named Paul Var-
ghese do a whole slew CADENZA
Posh, but nobody
of Kia jokes. Setup:
knows it.
“The guy at the rental
counter said, ‘Sir, we
upgraded you . . . to a
I WASN’T SURE Kia would go for it. I was Kia.’ ” (Audience laughs.) Punch line: “You
going to visit the factory in West Point, upgraded me from what, shoes?”
Georgia, an hour southwest of Atlanta, Scott Upham, CEO of Valient Market SEDONA
and drive 400-something miles home to Research, has followed the Korean auto Solid minivan, plus
North Carolina in a Sorento SX Limited companies for decades and written stud- quasi-SUV hood.
plucked straight off the assembly line. ies to help their managers understand how
Handing a freshly built car over to a mag- to establish manufacturing in the U.S.
azine writer requires confidence in your “After Hyundai’s initial failures with its
product—no break-in mileage, and no first wave of cars, they spent over a billion
making sure that I get a perfect car. But dollars researching how to improve qual-
Kia agreed. It’s a bold play, one that dem- ity,” he says. “This was new, for a Korean SORENTO
Locking center
onstrates that it has a point to prove. brand to make this high-level investment diff! What? Gnarly.
Kia spent the early 2000s, its forma- into quality. But it takes time to build up
tive years, as the butt of jokes. Its cars goodwill. They’ve had a tough row to hoe.”
were a reliable fixture at the bottom of the Everyone at Kia, both at the Georgia
J.D. Power Initial Quality Study (IQS), factory and in Seoul, is aware of this, work-
which tallies owners’ complaints after ing hard to reverse those perceptions.
three months of driving. As recently as OPTIMA PHEV
2005, Kia ranked 30th. A few years before I REMEMBER DRIVING the cars that The plug-in goes
that, it anchored the bottom, 37th place. informed that era of Kia. The mid-2000s 29 miles.
Like fellow Koreans Hyundai and Dae- Amanti felt like a goggle-eyed Mercedes
woo, its cars were known for cheap MSRPs E-Class rip-off. The Sedona was built with
and not much else. In the early 2000s, the so much cast iron it weighed as much as
mechanic who worked on my ’91 Saab—no a Tahoe. But change started in 2006. Kia
paragon of reliability itself—had a lucra- hired designer Peter Schreyer away from
tive side job keeping Kias on the road. “I’ve Audi. It was a big poach —his résumé NIRO
Prius mileage with
got a pile of Sportage engines out behind included the iconic Audi TT—and after
better styling.
the building,” he told me. “They’re always he arrived, the cars started looking bet-
blowing up.” ter. In 2009, the Soul became a surprise

I WONDERED IF THERE WAS A TURNING

STINGER
POINT, WHERE AN EXECUTIVE IN KOREA Rear-wheel drive,
365 horsepower,
POUNDED A FIST ON A CONFERENCE TABLE. fun.

10 JANUARY/FEBRUARY _ 2018 P O P U L A R M E C H A N I C S.CO M

 Far left: Using a computerized wrench, a
worker calculates and records the number
of revolutions and torque applied to bolts
for the rear seat. Left: Inconspicuous
mechanical platforms assist in the instal-
lation of doors. Below: Entering the paint
station requires a decontamination process
similar to a microchip factory’s clean room.

a particular moment, a turning point

when an executive in Korea pounded
a fist on a conference table and issued
a decree to beat Lexus in the IQS. It
took a few weeks for Kia, writing from
Korea, to issue a response stating that
there had been such a decision: “Yes,
over a decade ago, Hyundai Motor
Group, which includes Kia, made a
Dunlop, reflects a deliberate distinc- conscious and deliberate decision to
tion between cost and value—“It’s not concentrate on quality rather than vol-
about being at the bargain end of the ume.” It seems nobody there wants to
pricing spectrum,” he says. That means take credit. But back in Georgia, Kia
modern Kias still tend to be somewhat was totally willing to show me how it
hit, and, across the whole company, less expensive than their competitors, translated that unlikely goal—worst to
IQS numbers and sales tracked up. In but not always. The Cadenza Limited is first—into a reality.
2005, Kia’s market share was 1.62 per- about $45,000. A totally loaded Lexus
cent, rising to 3.53 percent today. That ES 350 is only about $3,000 more, while W EST POINT, LIKE any car factory,
growth is unprecedented in this indus- a lesser ES might cost the same. Charg- is where theories and goals meet the
try, and partly the result of Schreyer’s ing similar prices is part of Kia’s way harsh reality of large-scale manu-
mission to make Kias better looking. of saying, We’re not so different from facturing. This is where a thousand
More specifically, to make them look Lexus, you know. things can go wrong. Kia’s strategy is
different from Hyundais. This pricing tactic reflects a trans- to catch them early. This plant has 39
Ah yes, Hyundai. Back in 1998, formation beyond quality. On the codes just to flag paint defects (No. 14:
Hyundai bought a bankrupt Kia, and factory floor, I wondered if there was “thin coat”; No. 39: “mottle”). And a
now owns about a third of the com-
pany. For the cars bearing either
name, think of them as siblings, but
not twins. Within the parameters of
shared engineering, Hyundai and Kia
have fairly wide leeway to design and
market their cars in different ways. Not
every Kia has a Hyundai equivalent,
and vice versa. There is no Kia version
of the Hyundai Veloster, no Hyundai
version of the Soul. I’d say Kia’s designs
skew younger and sportier, in general,
but maybe I’m just buying into that
hip-hamster-based marketing.
Besides introducing anthropomor-
phic hamsters, Kia has also gradually
moved upmarket. Charging more
for its cars, says Kia spokesman Neil

The Newest Car Company: It isn’t Tesla or Faraday Future—it’s Genesis, Hyundai’s luxury division,
which officially hung its shingle in late 2015. Hyundai has sold Genesis-branded cars for years, but those
were merely the beachhead to get U.S. buyers accustomed to the idea of an upscale Korean car. Now,
Genesis is its own company and its latest sedans crib directly from the Lexus strategy in the early ’90s:
Meet or beat the established player in quality, performance, and luxury at a significantly lower price.
New Genesis models, like the twin-turbo, rear-wheel-drive G80 Sport (left), are an enticing proposition
for the brand-agnostic: You’re paying for the car, not the badge. At least, not yet.

12 JANUARY/FEBRUARY _ 2018 P O P U L A R M E C H A N I C S.CO M

panel only gets paint if it makes it past
an earlier barrage of quality tests. “If
even a single hair gets into a die,” says
Ted Arnold, senior manager of quality
assurance, “that can come out in the
metal.” Thousands of tons of stamping
force, and a hair can ruin everything.
Arnold is an industry veteran, hav-
ing come from a Mercedes plant in
Alabama. And even though there are
3,000 workers employed at West Point,
he seems to know everyone—at least,
everyone on this day shift. The line
runs 24 hours a day, Monday to Friday.
When a shift changes, the incoming
workers stand behind the ones who are
about to punch out and seamlessly con-
tinue building cars. “A lot of people
around here used to work in the tex-
tile industry,” Arnold says. “So there
was already a skilled labor force that we
could recruit.” Every one of the plant’s
employees spent at least 40 hours at
the $22 million Kia Georgia Training
Center down the road, which houses
welding, robotics, and electronics and
quality-control labs. And more than
two-thirds of those employees have
flown to Korea for even more training.
Robots weld and stamp panels like
in any modern car factory, but there’s a
surprising amount of human artistry
in a Sorento, Optima, and Hyundai
Santa Fe, the three models built here.
Consider stoning, for instance. Workers
hand-rub fine stones over every tenth
door panel that comes through, search-
ing for imperfections. “Any high points
will show up bright silver, and low
points will be darker,” Arnold says. If
they find anything wrong, they rub the
entire batch. And the batch that came
before that. “We want to catch anything
before it gets to paint, because here it’s
easier to fix,” he says. I figured this is the
sort of job that would be done by laser-
eyed Terminator robots the world over.
But Honda does this, too, at its plant in
Marysville. For quality control, even on
the scale of Hondas and Kias, human
hands still play a role in the business of
smashing metal into shape.
AFTER ANY FL AGGED issues are
fixed (my loaner Sorento had only one,
resolved earlier on, noted as some kind
of residue on one of the seats), the car
gets four gallons of gas, just enough
@PopularMechanics
to test it and move it around en route
to the dealer. A diagnostic computer
fires the car’s electric synapses while
a worker sits behind the wheel push-
ing buttons on the dash, verifying all
the connections. Front-seat coolers:
check. The surround-view cameras are
calibrated by driving the car into what
looks like a Hollywood green-screen
room, the Kia employee tapping tar-
gets on the dash touchscreen. The car
gets an alignment, followed by a high-
speed four-wheel dynamometer test to
verify engine power and transmission
function. Then, it’s outside for a lap
around the test track, where a driver
checks the antilock brakes, steering,
acceleration, suspension, and even
the brake’s hill-holder function. Back
inside, the Sorento enters a leak-test
chamber that looks like an exception-
ally ferocious car wash.
But it’s the same question as the
stoning: Doesn’t everyone do this? No,
not everyone. I’ve seen McLaren dyno
test each $200,000-plus supercar. But
in Marysville, Honda only spot checks.
Kia does this with every car.
Tour over, I climb into my Sorento,
which has 13 miles on the odometer.
I ask Arnold if I need to break it in,
take it easy for a few hundred miles.
He says there’s no particular break-in
period—after all, they gunned it on the
dyno test from the first moment the oil
“FOR A KOREAN
COMPANY TO SPEND
$1 BILLION TO
RESEARCH QUALITY,
THIS WAS NEW.”
A Sorento like my factory-fresh
SX Limited costs $47,140. Paying
that much for a Kia makes more
sense from the heated and cooled,
14-way adjustable, Nappa-leather-
upholstered driver’s seat.
was warm. So as I turn onto the high-
way on-ramp, I floor it, summoning
all 290 horses from the 3.3-liter V-6.
It’s peppy, the Sorento. But this design
has been around a while. Introduced
in 2011, it shows its age. The transmis-
sion has six gears instead of eight or
nine. There’s no electronic lane keep-
ing. And when I stop for gas, there’s a
plastic cap to unscrew. Little details
remind you that the Sorento is due for
an overhaul, but the car is otherwise a
fundamentally pleasant companion.
The interior is smartly designed—
actual knobs for the stereo and
HVAC—and quiet on the highway. The
Sorento is competent and well made,
a car that strives to soothe rather than
excite. Kia now knows how to do the
latter (see: Stinger) but that’s not the
mission for midsize crossovers.
I would cover nearly 1,000 miles
before Kia reclaimed the Sorento.
Along the way, there were a thousand
things that could have gone wrong.
But nothing did.
JANUARY/FEBRUARY _ 2018 13
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MEASURE ROOMS FOR REMODELING

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Last winter, we hired an interior designer. She scheduled a time to come
over, spent 30 minutes measuring our living room, and sent that info to a
CAD artist who set it up with all the proposed furniture. We had to pay that
CAD artist, too. PLNAR, a new room-mapping app that runs on Apple’s
ARKit, doesn’t totally replace that, but it definitely would have saved us
time and a little money. With my iPhone, I measured the same room in less
than two minutes. After you mark out the perimeter by aiming the phone
at the floor and tapping a button at every corner or new surface, you can
mark off walls, doors, and openings. There’s a lot of clutter in the room
while we figure out where to put things, but the app still worked over fur-
niture that was blocking sight lines. You can then send a PDF and CAD file
of the room layout to yourself or your designer. It can also measure walls to
create 3D room models, and map backyards, where using a tape measure is
either annoying or useless. —Peter Martin

GIVE YOUR Shut it down and start the physical cleaning.

Clogged vents and overheating prompt the
LAPTOP AN machine to slow down. Dab rubbing alcohol

OIL CHANGE on a microfiber cloth, wipe the screen, key-

board, and case, and shoot air under the keys.
Extra credit if you unscrew the shell (check iFixit.com) and take
a hobby paintbrush to the circuits and fans—but this may void
the warranty. For the trackpad, a business card fits in the groove
around the edge, and a Mr. Clean Magic Eraser gets oil off the sur-
face. Now boot it up. Open the applications folder and uninstall
anything you don’t use. Be ruthless. Next, reduce the apps that
automatically run when you start up (the Task Manager’s Startup
tab on a PC; the Users & Groups folder called Login Items on a
Mac) to two essentials. Completely clear the desktop. Run the
storage optimization app (Disk Cleanup on a PC; Disk Utility on
a Mac). And if the laptop is pestering you to download updates, do
it. Unless it’s five years old, the latest software will make it faster
and more secure. —Alexander George

14 JANUARY/FEBRUARY _ 2018 P O P U L A R M E C H A N I C S.CO M

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 THE APPLE
Among Apple’s lesser-known products: some of
the world’s greatest engineering, managerial, and
creative talent. We assembled an abridged list of

DIASPORA notable alumni who aren’t moving into Apple’s

new headquarters in Cupertino, and asked a few
of them about what it’s like inside the most
important—and secretive—technology company.

Brian Acton Robert Schlub

AT APPLE (1993–1996) AT APPLE
Hardware, then software, (2006–2015)
engineer. He worked on Head of the division
Shantanu Narayen the first Power Macintosh responsible for the
AT APPLE (1989–1995) computers. iPhone’s antennas.
Multiple senior management positions. CURRENTLY CURRENTLY
CURRENTLY Head of a to-be-announced Vice president of
CEO of Adobe Systems, a $64.4 billion com- nonprofit. Before that, he research and develop-
pany best known for products like Photoshop, was the cofounder and head ment at DJI, the largest
InDesign, Lightroom. Narayen had to deal with engineer of WhatsApp, the drone manufacturer in
Apple again when Steve Jobs omitted Adobe’s messaging app for which Face- the world.
Flash software from the iPad and iPhone. book paid $19 billion in 2014.

Reid Hoffman Jon Rubinstein

AT APPLE (1994–1996)
AT APPLE (1997–2006)
Developed user experience
Senior executive, oversaw the development
for Apple products. He created
and release of the iMac and iPod.
an early social network called
eWorld, later bought by AOL. CURRENTLY
Advisor for Bridgewater Associates, the
CURRENTLY
world’s largest hedge fund. Until April last year,
Partner at Greylock Partners,
he was co-chief executive. The company han-
a venture-capital firm that has
dles about $160 billion.
made lucrative investments
Andy Rubin in companies like Airbnb,
AT APPLE Facebook, and Dropbox.
(1989–1992) Before that, he was CEO and
Software engineer cofounder of LinkedIn (now at
during development around 500 million users).
of the Macintosh Por-
table and then the
PowerBook.
Chrissy Meyer
CURRENTLY
CEO of Essential, AT APPLE (2007–2013)
a smartphone com- Went from intern to engineering program
pany, and head of manager. She worked on the first Apple Watch
Playground Global, and several generations of the iPod Touch.
which gives resources CURRENTLY
to startups. Before Partner at Root Ventures, where she advises
that, he cocreated startups. Before that, she was head of hard-
and developed the ware development at Pearl Automation, which
Android operating made the only non-factory backup car camera
system. we’ve tested that actually worked. The com-
pany shut down in 2017.
“I was an intern in the iPod New Tech
team, which is exactly what it sounds like.
Trip Hawkins We took these new technologies that might
AT APPLE (1978–1982) not be mature enough for a current prod-
Director of strategy and marketing during uct, assessed them, then worked with the
the early years of the Apple II. suppliers and the inventor. When we felt
comfortable and the product had matured,
CURRENTLY they’d be included in the design for the next-
Founded Electronic Arts in 1982. Current generation iPod or iPhone. It was really, really
market capitalization is $35 billion thanks to fun. You’re seeing the coolest stuff!”
franchises like FIFA, Madden, and The Sims.
He’s also a professor at UC Santa Barbara.

16 P O P U L A R M E C H A N I C S.CO M

AT APPLE
(2006–2007)
Built hardware and
software that ran the
iPhone’s graphics.
CURRENTLY
Building his house in
the first app with the
pull-to-refresh function
you see everywhere on
smartphones. Twitter
bought Brichter’s com-
in 2010.
Paul Nangeroni Matt Rogers and Tony Fadell
AT APPLE (2008–2015) AT APPLE (2007–2010)
Engineering manager for iPod, iPhone, then Apple Rogers oversaw the software that ran the
Watch, working on the original design and production iPod and iPhone. Fadell has been called the
for stuff like haptic actuators. Podfather for his role in creating the iPod.
CURRENTLY CURRENTLY
Head of product at Eero, which makes the best and Cofounders of Nest Labs. The company’s
best-looking Wi-Fi routers we’ve tested. original smart thermostat was the break-
through product that helped create the
up a former Apple executive who I had confided in off Internet of Things industry. Google bought
and on. He said, ‘You don’t join a startup to get rich. You the company for $3.2 billion in 2014. Rogers
join a startup because you want to learn. And people is still chief product officer. Fadell quit in 2016.
who focus on learning will find that it pays higher divi-
dends than earning a fat check at a stable company.’ So
far, that has run true. At a startup, you are forced to do
things yourself. I’ve learned UX [user experience] design,
user research, mobile software development, platform
software development—things I would have never had
exposure to because Apple is far too secretive in the
way that it develops things.” Chris Lattner
AT APPLE
(2011–2017)
Senior director and
architect for Developer
Tools. He helped create
the programming lan-
Mike Pilliod guage Swift, which runs
AT APPLE (2008–2014) on every Apple device.
Senior materials engineer.
CURRENTLY
His name is on the patents
Engineering director
for dozens of products
at Google, working in
related to the iPhone.
the machine learning
CURRENTLY and artificial intelligence
Director of Tesla Glass, division. Before that,
where he develops solar he was VP of Autopilot
panels for charging Software at Tesla but
stations. quit after six months,
reportedly because he

Anna-Katrina Shedletsky
AT APPLE (2009–2015)
Oversaw the assembly logistics, both in
Cupertino and at the plants in China, that
produced millions of iPod Touches, iPod
Nanos, and Apple Watches.
CURRENTLY
Founder and CEO of Instrumental, which
makes devices and software that scans for

Ron Johnson

(2000–2011)
Jesse Dorogusker Head of retail. He devel-
AT APPLE (2003–2011)
As the head of accessories for
the iPod, iPhone, and iPad, he is CEO of Enjoy, a site that
best known for moving iDevices
from that 30-pin connector to
the Lightning cable.
CURRENTLY
Head of hardware for Square,
the mobile credit-card reader
you see at coffee shops and con-
cert merch tents. He reports to
CEO Jack Dorsey.

@PopularMechanics JANUARY/FEBRUARY _ 2018 17

 CO2 is pressurized to
as much as 6,000 psi to
reach the supercritical
state, where it acts like
a gas with the density
of a liquid, and then sent
through hop pellets.
Lupulin Powder
• Used for flavor and aroma, this
yellow-green powder is three
times more potent than tradi-
tional hop pellets, says John Paul
Maye, technical director for Hop-
steiner hops company. Dried hop
flowers are cooled to minus 40
degrees Fahrenheit, freezing the
lupulin sacks at the base of hop
leaves. The flowers pass through
a series of rolling sieves, separat-
ing the concentrated packets of
hop oils from the leaves.

Debittered Leaves
• The cast-off from lupulin powder,
these leaves act like low-bitter-
ness European hops, and add
tannins and mouthfeel. We used
it in our lager (see “Our Hoppy
As the CO2 passes
Experiment”) to add a kick of old-
through the hop pel- school pilsner character under
lets, the aromatic the bright, lupulin-powder aroma.
oils and acids dis-
solve into it. The
green vegetable CO2 Extract Hop Oil
material, about 70 • Hop-oil extract replaces bitter-
to 90 percent of the ing hop pellets added at the start
hop pellet by weight, of the boil. It can also provide
is left behind.
aroma and flavor, but that’s often
frowned on as too untraditional.
The hop-filled CO2
is decompressed,
releasing the hop Whirlpool Addition
oils and acids into a • After the boil, the unfermented
honey-like goop of beer remains near-boiling during
flavor and aroma. the 30 to 60 minutes it takes to
pump a batch through a whirlpool
filter and heat exchange before
it hits the fermenter. The slightly
lower temperature volatilizes less
THE IPA BOOM that you may have noticed aromatic oil—just like you brew
T H E N EW at your local restaurant/bar/beer shop/
bodega/grocery store is forcing brewers to
coffee sub-boiling—while still dis-
persing hoppy compounds into

SCI ENCE innovate in the quest to cram more hops

into every batch. Conventional brewing wisdom saw
the wort, making it a more effec-
tive addition than late in the boil.

OF HOPS hop pellets and dried flowers go in at the start of a

boil, the end, and then after fermentation. But the
hoppiest brewers have already hit the limit of how
Fermentation Dry Hopping
• Adding hops while the yeast
ferments increases contact and
Brewers, engineers, and extraction thanks to the
much physical hop flower can go into a beer (about
researchers push the heat and movement yeast
three pounds per keg) before a soggy kale taste sets
boundaries of hoppy beer. generates. Some yeast strains
in. Nobody likes soggy kale. Here are the new tools also interact with hop oils,
B Y M AT T A L LY N
and tricks for making ridiculously hoppy beer that typically amplifying juicy flavors
you will want more than one of. and muting the piney notes.
I L LU S T R AT I O N BY S I N E L A B

OUR HOPPY EXPERIMENT: 1902 L AGER To test these new methods, we teamed up with New York’s Blue Point
Brewing. But instead of making another IPA, we brewed a pre-Prohibition
lager inspired by what American brewers were making in 1902, the year Popular Mechanics launched. That means we
used a handful of America’s most abundant grain, corn, a traditional lager yeast, and bittering hops from New York,
once the country’s leading hop producer. In addition to those hop pellets, we poured debittered leaves into the kettle,

captured the herbal lemon flavors of an old-world German pilsner and the juicy aromas from today’s biggest IPAs.

18 JANUARY/FEBRUARY _ 2018 P O P U L A R M E C H A N I C S.CO M

 $100
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 THE FIRST Robots armed with MIG welders are com-
pleting construction of the first 3D-printed
3D-PRINTED stainless-steel bridge this spring. The Neth-
STEEL BRIDGE erlands-based design company behind the
bridge, MX3D, specializes in large-scale 3D
printing, making custom furniture, art, and industrial tools. It launched
the project in 2015 to push the possibilities of 3D fabrication in con-
struction and architecture, says MX3D chief technology officer Tim
Geurtjens. The robot 3D printers were developed out of necessity after
MX3D couldn’t buy printers capable of building bigger objects. So the
firm outfitted a standard automotive assembly robot with a MIG welder,
and then wrote software to turn it into an additive printer. “A MIG
welder melts stainless-steel wire on a layer. It’s strong and homogeneous,
and if you keep adding wire, that’s 3D printing,” says Geurtjens. The
39-foot pedestrian walkway will be installed in Amsterdam’s red light
district after several months of stress testing. Once installed, sensors
on the bridge will report back to MX3D, creating a digital mirror of the
bridge to monitor flex, vibrations, and foot traffic.

TRANSFORM CONCRETE INTO FURNITURE

A little-known breed of concrete mixed with glass fibers is elevating the
masonry material from something you’d only stand or drive on to a material
you can eat off—or put your plate on. Standard concrete is tough, but heavy
and weak under tension without rebar, which makes it even heavier. But high-
strength glass-fiber-reinforced concrete (GFRC), a mix typically used to coat
building exteriors, is being adopted by artisans who turn it into (relatively)
lightweight sinks, chairs, and dining tables, says Brandon Gore, founder
of the Concrete Design School in Eureka Springs, Arkansas. GFRC substi-
tutes plasticizers and polymers for much of the usual cement, making a
higher density mix that can be cast as thin as one inch, is less prone to air
bubbles, and can be polished to a matte finish like slate. In addition
to leading GFRC workshops, Gore uses it to make custom furniture:
tables that appear draped in cloth, sinks that look like a riverbank. He
recommends a countertop for your first project. “There’s very little
forming,” he says. “If you mix it right and cast properly, it’s almost
bulletproof.” Gore offers online tutorials at ConservatoryofCraft.
com and you can buy GFRC mixes at BuddyRhodes.com.

JUMPER CABLES The Mychanic Smart Jumper Cables

($25) include the brilliant feature of
THAT SAVE YOU reverse polarity protection. Live positive
FROM YOURSELF to dead positive, live negative to ground
is ingrained in your memory. But if you
haven’t jumped a car since Pogs were a thing, you’ll be excused for a brief
lapse that requires the protection. Instead of a blinding spark, followed
by some creative swearing, crossed wires result in a beep and a blinking
light. A voltage meter, built into the 12-foot, six-gauge cables, detects
incorrect voltage (less than zero volts), and triggers the reverse polarity
alarm, stopping the flow of electrons. The voltage meter also reads the
charge on your battery to confirm that your battery is the problem, not
your starter or alternator. Fully charged, with the engine off, a healthy
battery will register between 12.4 and 12.7 volts.

20 JANUARY/FEBRUARY _ 2018 P O P U L A R M E C H A N I C S.CO M


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 AT SOME POINT, when you’re a half
mile out to sea and at least forty-five
minutes from a hot shower, your body
will tell you that it’s time to go in. Not
like summer or fall, when you quit if
the wind changes or the tide gets too
high. In February, I turn back only
when my hands and feet stop working.
My fingers curl up into a claw so I can’t
grip the board, or I lose feeling in my
feet and can’t stand up.
That makes me sound tougher
than I am. Modern wetsuits are very
good at keeping you warm,
even comfortable. You can
spend hours getting tossed
around in the 45-degree
Atlantic Ocean. Besides, the
fun of riding waves is usu-
ally enough to make you not
notice that your extremities
aren’t working correctly. Every winter
surfer’s threshold is different, but the
time will come when you get cold.
To answer the question I get from
every down-jacketed pedestrian I
encounter walking their dog on the
boardwalk, from people in their drive-
way scraping ice off a windshield: It’s
worth it because winter waves are
reliably better than summer waves,
and you don’t have to suffer crowds or
beach badges.
And, yes, it makes you feel tough.
Walking through an inch of snow
toward big, loud waves just after dawn,
no other human in sight, you grasp that
you’re a long way from help. The same
water would look green and warm in
the context of sunshine, lifeguards, and
moms on blankets handing out pop-
sicles. But when it’s just you, the same
water is gray and uninviting. If you’re
like me and spend most waking hours
in a cubicle, I encourage you to find your
own version of this, some frightening
environment that you enter by choice.
Riding cold waves starts in that
cubicle. Every day, I check the buoys
and tides. If the surf looks promising,
I leave work on Friday, take the three-
hour train down to Asbury Park, New
Jersey, and walk to the gray, cold, no-
carpet, late-’80s house near the water
that’s been in my family for decades. If
I remember, I turn on the Nest thermo-
stat ahead of time to burn off the chill
before I get there. Because in February,

22 JANUARY/FEBRUARY _ 2018 P O P U L A R M E C H A N I C S.CO M

I’m the only one who goes to the beach.
I tell Siri to wake me up at dawn. She
does, and with one eye open, I tap the
Surfline app. Part of me always hopes
the wind will be off or it’ll be too small,
something to justify staying under
warm covers. But I eventually get up,
drink coffee, contort myself into a thick
rubber unitard, and drive around with
the heat blasting, looking for waves.
The actual surfing is pretty similar
to any other season. You get the seren-
ity of floating in a big ocean with no
noise except the water. When the waves
are overhead, you can get long, fast
rides that you’ll remember for weeks or
years. When it’s small, you ride a long-
board and practice cross-stepping and
graceful turns.
The difference, though, is that first
duck dive. When you paddle out from
shore, trying to get past the break-
ers to the spot in the water where you
catch waves right as they break, you
have to go through whitewater. To avoid
being pushed back to shore, you stroke
straight at this wall of ocean, then, at
the last moment, shove your board and
your body underwater. If you do it right,
the turbulence passes just overhead,
and you emerge out the other side.
Your wetsuit will, as it should, let
some water in through the hood. But
when that water sloshes around and
finally trickles down your back, you’ll
remember it’s winter. It took practice,
GEAR THE COLD-WATER KIT
Ziploc Bag Surfline
For car-key fobs Buoy readings
and such. Roll and weather
it up in a Zip- forecasts to
loc, and stuff it predict the
down the back surf. Plus: live
of your suit. surf cams!
($70 a year)
No, you can’t surf in a dry suit. The loose ones made for kayaking and
diving will drag when you paddle, and the tight ones weigh too much.
@PopularMechanics
but I’ve learned to resist gasping. You
need to keep breathing deeply in case
the next wave is big and you have to fill
your lungs before getting held under.
This experience sounds worse than
it is, especially if you have the right
equipment. A good wetsuit, like a
$500 Patagonia R4, stretches, so every
stroke doesn’t feel like you’re fight-
ing a dozen TheraBands. The polyester
lining and seam tape hold the water
you’ve already warmed up in while
keeping new, cold Atlantic Ocean
water out. Even if, back at the parking
lot, you have to hold your hands under
your armpits until your fingers warm
up enough to operate the unlock but-
ton, you won’t go hypothermic, not this
close to a 7-Eleven.
But wetsuit designers have yet to
solve the only part of winter surfing
I don’t like. I get back to the house,
stomp the sand off my feet, and can
barely turn on the shower my arms are
so exhausted. It’ll take a few tries to
yank off the gloves, then the booties.
Then begins the wetsuit extrication.
Ever put on a duvet cover alone? It’s like
Xcel Drylock Vaseline
TDC Split Toe A layer on your
Boot 5mm face minimizes
You can go up to windburn. Works
7mm thickness, on land, too. ($4)
but unless you’re
in Scandinavia,
5mm is plenty.
($85)
that, plus weightlifting. Wetsuits only
work if they’re very tight, so stretch-
ing the rubber open enough to free
your arms, torso, and legs means lots of
grunting and flailing. I have punched
myself in the face more than once. But
if you’re still cold enough, you don’t
really feel it.
I free both feet from the suit, hold
it up to the showerhead to rinse—look,
everyone pees in their suit, especially
in winter. I drop it in the tub, then
clean myself. Here, you would think
you want the water steaming hot and to
stand under it for an hour. But I never
do. As soon as I can feel blood in all
fingers and toes, I turn off the water,
towel off, and put the wetsuit on the
drying rack. I get into a hoodie and
sweatpants, pour some lukewarm cof-
fee, then find a couch and a bad TV
show. Because now, you get this spe-
cial feeling of your body getting back
to 98.6 degrees. If you didn’t feel it in
the ocean, now is the time to appreciate
how much voluntary abuse your body
can handle, and how good it can make
you feel after it’s over.
Texture Yulex Front-Zip
Skin 5 Finger Hooded Full Suit
Glove 5mm No heated vests.
Some like a mit- This is all you
ten. I use a glove, need, a 5-mil or
which gives you 5/4/3 wetsuit.
more grip when Fit is vital, so visit
duck diving and a surf shop to try
popping up. ($70) it on. ($509)
JANUARY/FEBRUARY _ 2018 23
 U.S., then invest those profits in sharing the
very same technology with people in devel-
oping countries. The Solar Home 620 ($150)
is already being used in 5,000 homes across
Kenya. It will also work well in your RV, your
tent, your attic, or your kid’s treehouse, on a
cool evening as the sun sets and he needs a
place to bring some chocolate milk and turn
on his music and flip through a book and be
himself. —Ryan D’Agostino

GET THE CLOTH INTERIOR

Leather is the default interior upgrade on any car. We
urge you to reconsider. Yes, leather cleans up nice.
But it’s also freezing in the winter, scorching in the
summer, and generally not that imaginative. Cloth is
anything you want, the canvas upon which Porsche
paints houndstooth and Volkswagen stitches plaid.
You can heat it, if you like, but you needn’t build an
entire HVAC system into your seat, because cloth
I L LU S T R AT I O N BY C H R I S P H I L P OT

breathes. In trucks, cloth is honest. And in a sports

car, it grips. The Shelby GT350 has Recaro cloth seats
that glue your torso in place. But if you’d rather be
plastered against the door when the car pulls a g,
get that upgrade to leather. Did you know that
Rolls-Royce uses hides from Alpine bulls that live
in high-altitude meadows with no mosquitoes or
barbed wire, so the leather is blemish-free? Cloth
seats are always blemish-free. And they don’t
squeak. Get the cloth seats. —Ezra Dyer

24 JANUARY/FEBRUARY _ 2018 P O P U L A R M E C H A N I C S.CO M

Real People. STIHL People. You can find them coast to coast, and they define STIHL in many different ways.

They are American workers building STIHL equipment, and independent Dealers fulfilling the American dream.
They are professionals working hard to get the job done, and homeowners taking great pride in their landscapes.

And although they may appear different on the surface, it is what is beneath the surface that makes them the same.
They all share the same desire for power, quality, and dependability. And they all share the same passion for STIHL.
 BUILT IN AMERICA. *

Heather Jones | Assembly / Blowers

Over the years, we’ve seen extraordinary growth – expanding from 50 employees assembling *
one chain saw to 2,100 employees producing over 275 models of handheld outdoor power
equipment. By combining proven German engineering with advanced American manufacturing,
our facility in Virginia Beach currently produces and exports products to over 90 countries.
And while many of our competitors choose to move manufacturing overseas, we remain
committed to creating more jobs in America.

Built in America sets STIHL apart.

*A majority of STIHL gasoline-powered units sold in the United States are built in the United States from domestic and foreign parts and components.
 SERVING AMERICA.
Malinda & Jarrett Milam | Dealers / Owners
M Kay Supply

At STIHL, we choose to sell our products in the U.S. exclusively through servicing
Dealers, helping our customers get professional advice, product demonstrations, and
in-store parts and technical service. You won’t find these offerings at the big box stores,
and that’s why you won’t find STIHL at the big box stores. Providing exceptional
service, before and after the sale, is a guiding principle we continue to stand behind.

independentwestand.org
Servicing Dealers in America set STIHL apart.
 AT WORK IN AMERICA.
Jeremy Hart | 3rd Generation Logger

Our commitment to quality manufacturing and superior service has done more than help us
sell equipment – it has helped us earn a reputation among America’s hardest workers. From
those who maintain the integrity of our forests and the beauty of our landscapes,
people choose STIHL when it matters most. Because at the end of the day, there’s no
substitute for reliability.

Trusted dependability sets STIHL apart.

*A majority of STIHL gasoline-powered units sold in the United States are built in the United States from domestic and foreign parts and components.
 NUMBER ONE IN AMERICA. *

Nathan & Jen Owen | Homeowners

Our loyal customers have made us the number one selling brand of gasoline- powered
handheld outdoor power equipment in America*. In today’s marketplace, we know people
have many choices, so to be chosen more often gives us an enormous sense of pride. We
respect all those who care for nature, and we sincerely thank all the nation’s homeowners,
landscapers, loggers, and contractors who proudly use STIHL equipment.

Being Number One in America sets STIHL apart.

*“Number one selling brand” is based on syndicated Irwin Broh Research as well as independent consumer research of 2009-2017 U.S. sales and market share
data for the gasoline-powered handheld outdoor power equipment category combined sales to consumers and commercial landscapers. ©2018 STIHL
*A majority of STIHL gasoline-powered units sold in the United States are built in the United States from domestic and foreign parts and components.

To find a Dealer: For product info:

STIHLdealers.com STIHLusa.com /stihlusa
Bill Chambers Jeff Jones Kelly and Scott Cengia Hector Cantu | Dealer/Owner
Disaster Relief President / Bud Jones and Sons, Inc. Homeowners Saw House Power Equipment & Supply

The story of STIHL is bigger than any one advertisement can tell. Our story is best To find a Dealer:
told by the people who actually use STIHL. That’s why we created RealSTIHL.com – STIHLdealers.com
a place that captures our customers’ amazing experiences. Do you have a real
STIHL story to tell? Visit the site or tag your own tweets and posts with #RealSTIHL. For product info:
Right now, people across the country are sharing their stories. STIHLusa.com

Will you join us? Visit RealSTIHL.com /stihlusa

18STN8FP1 ©2018 STIHL

 PROMOTION

This fall,
Popular Mechanics
joined forces with
American Field
to co-host a series of pop-up
exhibitions and markets celebrating
innovative and emerging brands and
the talented people behind them.
2018 event dates coming soon!
 MY FIRST
KITCHEN
Tired of “stovetop B Y J A M E S LY N C H
chicken,” a recent ALL I HAD in my apartment to stanch the blood after
college graduate shaving off the tip of my thumb was a hunk of paper
towel and six inches of duct tape, which didn’t help my
outfits his first nerves. I could feel the dull throb quicken as I turned
kitchen with the back to the countertop to finish chopping, my thumb
swaddled thick as a fingerling potato. Beside me stood
help of a chef. two-time James Beard Best Chefs in America semi-
finalist Anna Klinger, who runs the popular Al Di La
Trattoria down the street from my Brooklyn apart-
ment. She dispensed a bit of advice that was as useful
as it was late: When using a sharp knife, pull your fin-
gers in. Use your knuckles as your guide.
I’ve never been a kitchen guy. I’m more of a canoes,
A N N A K L I N G E R In addition to running a beloved Italian trattoria not far from the
AL DI LA, author’s apartment, chef Anna Klinger has twice been short-listed
B R O O K LY N , N .Y. for James Beard’s Best Chefs in America award.
26 JANUARY/FEBRUARY _ 2018
guns, and tents guy. In the outdoors,
I can logroll and split firewood, but in
the kitchen, my confidence evaporates.
I own exactly zero pans. I cut peppers
in my hand with a butter knife. During
one four-month period, I ate the same
thing—stovetop chicken—for dinner
every single night. I had asked Klinger to
come to my apartment to help me out of
my dark period of kitchen amateurism.
A man should be able to feed himself, but
a year and a half after graduating college,
it was turning out to be more difficult,
and blander, than I had expected.
We were going to make my moth-
er’s shepherd’s pie. And a loaf of bread,
because I figured making two things
doubled my odds of getting something
right. Before Klinger arrived, I’d asked
her for a list of basic kitchen tools (see
“The Essentials,” page 29) so I wouldn’t
be stuck browning beef in the micro-
wave in my roommate’s coffee cup. My
cramped and dingy kitchen overflowed
with the shiny new tools: a paring knife,
a chef’s knife, a cutting board, a Dutch
oven. With all this, I should be able to
cook anything.
While I reread my mother’s recipe,
my duct-tape-wrapped thumb sticking
out like I was trying to hitch a ride out
of the kitchen, Klinger got to work. She
surveyed the partially chopped vegeta-
bles and, with a wet paper towel beneath
the cutting board (“it stops it from slid-
ing,” she says), wielded the knife to make
neat colorful piles. “Pivot the knife off
the tip,” she says. “You don’t want to hear
it.” Or feel it, I thought.
My kitchen had never smelled of any-
thing but boiled pasta and PB&J, but as
I dumped our chopped veggies in one
P H OTO G R A P H BY M AG G I E S H A N N O N
warm oiled pan and a pound of ground
beef in another, the scent brought me
back to my parents’ house in the way that
only smells, familiar but forgotten, can.
Feeling like I should be doing something,
I turned the beef over and over again
with the wooden spoon. “If you move it
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too much, it’s not going to brown. Let it sit a little As Klinger promised, the food cooked as we
bit,” Klinger said. I set the spoon down and stood talked, and under her trained eye it all finished at
there, arms hanging at my sides. the same time, which had never happened to me
A merciful beep meant the oven was ready. I before. We moved the bread, a handsome brown,
wrestled the bread dough I had mixed the night onto an improvised cooling rack—the cereal shelf.
before out of its bowl, chunks of the sticky mess I scraped the softened vegetables out of their pan
working its way deep into the duct-tape bandage, and onto the cooked meat, and after a quick whisk, JAMES’S MOM’S
and plopped it into the lightly floured Dutch oven, covered it all in mashed potatoes, then tossed the SHEPHERD’S PIE
which I then placed in the whole thing in the oven to 3-4 medium
actual oven. Klinger looked bake in my new cast-iron pan. potatoes
calm, but I couldn’t stop fidg- Not even conversation 1 small onion,
eting. One thing no one had could fill these tense five min- chopped
told me about cooking is that I watched the utes. There still seemed to be 1 lb ground beef
1 can Campbell’s
sometimes you just have to plenty of time to mess it up. I
wait and let things cook. shepherd’s watched the shepherd’s pie
condensed
tomato soup
So Klinger and I talked. through the oven door con-
She told me the benefits of pie through vinced it would burst into
1 large carrot
1 green pepper
1 cup green
stainless-steel measuring
cups over plastic (they don’t
the oven door flames. When it was time,
the fully cooked pie emerged beans, blanched
and chopped
stain or score) and about
her mother cooking her way
convinced from the oven as golden and
perfect as my mother’s.
½ cup milk
2 Tbsp butter
through Julia Child’s cook-
books. We put the potatoes
it would burst I haven’t found many
meaningful hobbies in the
salt and pepper

in water with enough salt “to into flames. cramped spaces of New York 1. Peel and boil
make it taste like the sea,” City yet. It’s hard, moving potatoes until
and as we waited for it to boil from a college town in Ver- soft enough to be
we recounted stories about our childhoods, about mont to a tiny apartment in a city. There is no mashed with a fork.
Drain.
learning or not learning essential kitchen skills, and garage for working on cars, no shed for tools, no
about the times both of our fathers cooked omelets yard for an axe or shovel. My calluses have gone 2. Add onion to a
for dinner while our mothers were out of town. I’ve soft and with them went the satisfaction of mak- frying pan and cook
never had conversations about any of these things ing things with my hands. But, plunging a fork into over medium heat
until translucent.
in front of a microwave. a meal I had cooked from raw and inedible parts, I
Add beef and brown.
felt a bit of the old satisfaction creeping in. Cooking Drain fat.
was pretty much the same as any other skill—all it
took was a little instruction, a little effort, and the 3. Add tomato soup
to beef and stir to
right tools. It has been a while since I scrubbed dirt,
combine. Spread
oil, or paint from my hands, but flour, and a little beef mixture on the
blood, makes a worthy substitute. bottom of a cast-
iron pan.
4. Rinse frying pan,
and sauté the carrot
and green pepper
for about six min-
utes. Mix in blanched
green beans, and
then place all the
vegetables on top of
P H OTO G R A P H S BY M AG G I E S H A N N O N

the meat mixture.

5. Mash the potatoes
with milk, butter,
salt, and pepper.
6. Cover meat and
vegetables with
mashed potatoes
and bake at 350
degrees for about
Right: Chef Anna Klinger and the 30 minutes or until
author immediately post-duct tape
debacle. Above: Shepherd’s pie top of potatoes are
works well in a cast-iron skillet. golden brown.

28 JANUARY/FEBRUARY _ 2018 P O P U L A R M E C H A N I C S.CO M

1. CUTTING
THE 9. PEPPERMILL
BOARD
A tough, wood-
fiber composite
board made by
Epicurean is
ESSENTIALS
Because no one should have to brown beef in the microwave.
Fresh-ground
pepper tastes
better. Plus,
whole pepper-
corns are cheaper
dishwasher-safe, than the pre-
and there’s no 1
ground stuff.
need to oil it.
10. DUTCH OVEN
2. WOODEN A Staub, though
SPOON 3
pricey, will be the
Wood is stiffer last you’ll ever
than plastic, a buy. And it looks
real advantage nice enough to
for stirring and 2 keep on a shelf.
mashing.
11. DEEP
3. CHEF’S KNIFE SAUTÉ PAN
Victorinox makes Demeyere pans
a great, and are as pretty
affordable, intro- hanging as they
ductory knife that are on the stove
will serve you top. The depth
well for years. If lets you work
you’re ready for larger quantities
the next step, try of food and fry
4
something from 5
bacon without
Zwilling. splattering.
4. STAINLESS- 6
12. MICROPLANE
STEEL MEASUR- Think fine cheese
ING CUPS grater. Also
Spring for the 8
known as a rasp.
metal ones, Works as well on
which won’t 9 cheese, garlic,
stain or score nutmeg, and any-
like plastic. time a recipe calls
5. TONGS 10
for citrus peel.
They make a 13. CAST-IRON
huge difference SKILLET
7
if you need to flip Lodge is an
something. American clas-
6. HALF- sic, but a new
SHEET PAN company, Field, is
Perfect for trying to redesign
roasting broccoli, the old standard,
asparagus, or and Klinger is a
potatoes. The big fan. Either will
11
smaller size is set you straight.
easier to store. 12 14. STRAINER
7. SPATULA Whether you
Rubber will bend buy traditional
into corners and metal or collaps-
slide under eggs. 14 ible rubber, you’ll
Try OXO. save yourself
from burning
8. PARING KNIFE your hands trying
Useful for more to strain pasta
delicate tasks, through the lid
like chopping to your pot. Also
shallots. Keep all great for washing
knives sharp. vegetables.

@PopularMechanics JANUARY/FEBRUARY _ 2018 29

 EDITOR’S NOTE

For this month’s column,

Senior Home Editor Roy
Berendsohn scanned decades
of reader questions to find
some of his favorites, then
updated the answers.

askroy@popularmechanics.com @askroypm

I’ve heard that Will stretch-

tossing a whole,
dead chicken into my
septic tank lessens
the need to have the
tank pumped because
the bacterial action
created by the rotting
carcass is effective
at breaking down
sewage. True?
Like the Jersey Devil
and other urban
myths, this theory seems
to have taken on a life of its
own. I first learned of it in
the late ’80s from readers
who said they knew people
who’d been using the tech-
nique for decades. I’ve also
heard about people throw-
ing in rotting hamburger
meat or roadkill. Then or
now, adding anything to
your septic tank to stimu-
late decomposition is liable
to have the opposite effect.
I suspect that there are
still people who fervently
believe in the chicken
hypothesis, swearing that
they haven’t had to pump
their tank in years, if ever.
Really, all they’re doing is
contributing to ground-
water pollution by sending
bacteria-laden filth out
of an over-burdened tank
into the system’s leach-
ing field (the buried pipes
that receive the outflow,
known as effluent, from
the septic tank). For fur-
ther study, the National
Environmental Services
Center at West Virginia
University has a wealth of
information on maintaining
residential septic systems.
Until evidence suggests
otherwise, the center
advises against using sep-
tic additives. Instead, have
your septic tank inspected
yearly and pumped as
needed, depending on vari-
ables such as the number
of people who live in the
home, the size of the tank,
the system’s age, and soil
conditions.
ing copper
wires across my
roof help elimi-
nate roof moss?
Yes, sort of. An old-
fashioned solution to
rooftop moss control was to
stretch copper wires spaced
at 5-foot intervals horizon-
tally along the roof. The
tightly stretched wires were
discreetly positioned right
at the edge of a shingle to
be less noticeable. Rainwa-
ter washing over the wires
leaches copper and copper
oxides onto the roof, killing
the moss and leaving behind
residue that makes it diffi-
cult to establish itself again.
A more modern solution
is to use products like Scotts
3-in-1 Moss Control or Bayer
Advanced 2-in-1 Moss &
Algae killer. You spray these
on your lawn, patio, or roof.
They’re easy to use—the
applicator attaches to your
garden hose. You don’t have
to mix a product at the right
proportions.

We’re having You’re not alone. Although I’m of the move-it, don’t-melt-it camp,
many homeowners and business owners think it makes more
a new drive- sense to heat pavement. This is not an inexpensive option. The longer
way built, and I and colder the winter, and the larger the heated area, the more it costs
I L LU S T R AT I O N S BY J E F F LO W RY

want to have coils
installed under
it to melt snow.
Thoughts?
for installation and operation. You can either heat the entire surface or
run a pair of tracks down it, heating the pavement one of two ways: with
a boiler that heats a solution of antifreeze and water or with an electri-
cal heating element. I haven’t seen a detailed engineering study at the
residential level (there are studies that examine this for airports), but
one company, Heatizon, claims that a 285-square-foot version of its
electrical heating mat costs about a dollar or less per hour of operation.

30 JANUARY/FEBRUARY _ 2018 P O P U L A R M E C H A N I C S.CO M

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 Advertisement

How To: Fix Your Fatigue and

Get More Energy
Founder and Director Dr. Steven
Gundry is a world-renowned heart
surgeon, a best-selling author, and the
personal physician to many
celebrities. But his breakthrough could
be the most important accomplishment
of his career.

Dr. Gundry has unveiled a simple —

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to exactly how it works.
“When you’re feeling low energy, that’s
your body screaming HELP!” Dr. Watch the presentation here at
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by a breakthrough with a “hopeless”
patient who had been massively over- Within just a few hours, this video had
weight, chronically fatigued and suffer- gotten thousands of hits, and is now
ing from severely clogged arteries. considered to have gone viral. One
viewer commented: “If this works, it’s
The secret to his breakthrough? exactly what I’ve been praying for my
“There are key ‘micronutrients’ whole life. I’ve never seen anything
missing from your diet,” Dr. Gundry like it before…the truth about my diet
said, “If you can replenish them in very was shocking and eye-opening.”
high dosages, the results can be
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 GE T T ING START ED IN... I GREW UP in Minneapolis, so I can say this for sure: Winter
is more bearable when you have something to look forward to.
We knew it was going to get dark and cold for five months, so

CROSS- you either embraced the opportunities snow brought—pond

hockey, snowmobiles, and skiing—or bought a timeshare in
Orlando. As a young kid with poor hand–puck coordination, I

COUNTRY was put on skis by my parents. The sport opened up a new side
of Minnesota. I could now glide through silent white forests
and trek up frozen creeks I’d fished a season before. Here’s

SKIING how to begin exploring the snow-covered world outside your

back door. —Matt Allyn

@PopularMechanics JANUARY/FEBRUARY _ 2018 33

 1
WH E R E TO START
Visit a cross-country ski
center with groomed
trails, rent some gear,
and try it out. These
carved tracks eliminate
90 percent of your
worries about sailing off
into the woods because
they keep your skis
pointed forward, says
Drew Gelinas, the Nordic
ski director at Vermont’s
Edson Hill, a lodge near
Stowe with more than
15 miles of trails. They
also offer lessons, which
significantly accelerate
your learning.
2 TH E VAR I ETI E S
Groomed Trails
They’re like skiing on rails. Using a heavy-
weight or hydraulic press, a groomer
carves a hip-width double track into the
snow. Each track measures 70mm wide,
enough to accommodate most cross-coun-
try skis (except backcountry skis, which
are wider). In addition to keeping your skis
straight, the tracks guide you around turns.
Backcountry
Anything off a groomed trail counts as
backcountry. That means your local golf
course (avoid the greens), parks, and
frozen lakes in addition to ungroomed
trails. Skiing without a set track requires
significantly more balance, but wider skis
will aid stability.
Skate Skiing
Performed on wide, groomed lanes, this
technique mimics the fluid, side-to-side
motion of skating. It’s faster but requires
stiffer skis, longer poles, more supportive
boots—doubling your ski gear—and a hell
of a lot more balance. Start with rentals
and a lesson.
34 JANUARY/FEBRUARY _ 2018
3 TH E BA S I C M OVE M E NTS
The basic cross-country technique, the diagonal stride, is like a
powerful walk with help from your arms. And if you get tired, you can
always downgrade to actual walking.
Glide
If you’re comfortable walking on skis,
add glide. Step forward and transfer your
weight to your front ski, compressing its
kick zone, the area just in front of and under
your boots that grips the snow. Pull
the ski back like you’re scraping a
shoe on the ground to propel
yourself forward. Drive
the opposite ski forward,
transferring your weight
onto it and enjoying a
brief, free ride along
Plant your pole with the basket in line with the opposite foot and your
arm extended in front of your shoulder. Your arms should swing front-
to-back-to-front like pendulums, providing momentum as they come
forward. Practice this by holding your poles midshaft and only using
them to prevent a fall. This will also improve your balance and leg
drive on each ski.
Go Uphill
I L LU S T R AT I O N S BY S T E V E S A N F O R D
When trails get steep,
your kick zone won’t
provide enough trac-
tion. The herringbone
technique, which looks
just like the pattern, can
ascend any grade. Turn
your feet out to form a V
with your skis, and walk
up the hill, planting your
pole behind your boot.
P O P U L A R M E C H A N I C S.CO M
 Things That Hurt After Your First Cross-Country Ski
Lower back, shoulders, glutes, leg abductors, upper back, biceps,
triceps, leg adductors, calves, ego, abs.

TH E R E ST O F TH E G E AR

A D

Best for
Groomed
Trails

Best for
Back-
country
B
G E

Poles Boots Clothes

Your poles should Cross-country You’re going to fall
come up to your arm- skiing needlessly a lot and sweat a
pits. If you’re going offers two incom- lot, so wear water-
to ski backcountry, patible binding resistant layers that
opt for a larger bas- systems (SNS and breathe, says Gelinas.
ket to get traction in NNN). Neither has a Our favorites are
powder. A The Swix real advantage, but the C Swix Univer-
Classic ($40) works the B Salomon sal pants ($99), D
well in both situa- Escape 7 ($135) is Black Diamond First
tions. To properly use available with either Light Hybrid hoody
the strap, bring your interface and adds ($229), E Smart-
Fischer Ultralite Madshus BC 55 hand through from an ankle cuff for wool PhD light
Crown EF ($200) MGV+ ($265) below and tighten stability. Backcoun- base layers (top,
it enough that you try skiers should $80; F bottoms,
can let go of the pole buy taller, more $85), and G Gore
H OW TO B U Y S KI S when your arm is supportive boots Windstopper box-
extended back. This (like a hiking boot) ers ($40)—for the
boosts your power with a gaiter ring. last place you want
Your weight is the main factor in selecting skis, and range of motion. frostbite.
which are essentially leaf springs. When
you step down on one ski, you want the kick zone to
collapse and bite the snow. While gliding along WHAT’S THAT SPORT WITH THE SKIS AND RIFLES?
Biathlon, the civilian evolution of a Scandinavian military
with your weight on both skis, you want the exercise. Cheer for American Lowell Bailey, the current
kick zone floating above the track. Shorter skis are biathlon world champion, at the 2018 Winter Olympics.
easier to control, so when in doubt, size down.

@PopularMechanics JANUARY/FEBRUARY _ 2018 35

 W I T H E Z R A DY E R

Maybe you need a heavy-duty diesel truck. Or maybe you just want one. Either way, your
choice will likely be guided by some combination of logic and tribalism. To that stew,
allow us to add a dash of critical insight, based on our tests of the Big Three trucks in
their most versatile configuration—diesel, single rear wheel, three-quarter-ton 4x4.

Engine: 6.7-liter V-8,

Ford F-250 mentioned the Chevy Silverado’s inde-
pendent front suspension and a Ford
Super Duty engineer said, “That’s fine for a coffee-
(The iPhone X.) shop truck.” Ouch. See, the F-250 is
the truck most often used in commer-
cial fleets, designed to suffer the abuse
of drivers who throw the keys back on
440 hp/925 lb-ft
Price: $49,020
day. Like the F-150, this new Super
Minimum payload:
Duty also went to an aluminum 3,130 lb
body, but it lost only 350 pounds
(compared to the F-150’s 700)
because Ford reinvested that savings in beefier suspension,
frame, and drivetrain components. As such, the F-250 is per-
fectly happy ripping out tree stumps and hauling gravel. Yet,
the Ford is also the most modern and posh truck you can buy—
its electronic variable ratio steering, for instance, is a rarity
outside the world of luxury cars. Yes, you see a lot of jacked-up
Super Dutys with loud exhaust, brash and bratty. I guess those
owners really want to make the most of the tailgate ladder. But
from the factory, this is a quiet and sophisticated vehicle, an

FIVE-WORD
REVIEWS

36 JANUARY/FEBRUARY _ 2018 P O P U L A R M E C H A N I C S.CO M


Cummins
(The big rig.)
The Ram is the only
truck with coil-spring
(and optional air-spring) rear
suspension, helping it deliver
a surprisingly cushy ride. But
this truck is really defined by
its engine. While the Ford and
Chevy use V-8s, the Ram packs
inder bores the size of elevator
shafts. Chrysler has been install-
ing these diesels in Rams since
1989, and the sturdy sixes have
a diehard following and a repu-
tation for longevity. They can
also be easily tuned for more
power, as evidenced by Ram’s
own disparity in torque ratings,
JOBS WHERE
ONLY HEAVY
DUTY WILL DO
@PopularMechanics
the Cummins makes 660 lb-ft
of torque, but automatic 3500
models have as much as 930
lb-ft. Out on the road, you rou-
tinely see the tachometer drop
to around 1,000 rpm before the
Engine:
•
•
•
•
Chevy redesigned the 6.6-liter Duramax V-8 for
2017, even going so far as to include a functional
hood scoop. (We love functional hood scoops.) Its power
borders on overkill. I recently rode shotgun with a GM
engineer in a 3500 dually with the same engine, hauling
a 20,000-pound excavator. Merging was not a problem.
(I couldn’t legally drive that thing because the truck and
trailer were over 26,000 pounds, requiring a commer-
cial license.) The single-rear-wheel model will send you
from zero to 60 in the six-second range, and the inde-
pendent front suspension contributes to steering that
is more precise than it has any right to be. On that front,
GM’s Digital Steering Assist system helps these 7,000-
pound leviathans drive like smaller trucks, adding extra
assist at low speeds and even applying steering torque
to help compensate for crowned roads or crosswinds.
There are plenty of smart updates, but this design is get-
ting on in years—the ignition key is an actual key. When
JANUARY/FEBRUARY _ 2018 37
 1994 Toyota
Supra
OWNER:
Kristopher Gardner
LO C AT I O N : North Richland Hills, Texas
Where I grew up in
FOUND ON: PURCHASE YEARS
Ohio, the car scene
Online PRICE: OWNED:
was pretty big, and
forum $29,750 31/2
when a Supra would roll into
one of these meets, it was
always, “Oh, the Supra’s the
best.” Then, The Fast and
the Furious came out, which
just cemented it even more.
The body lines are timeless.
It’s reliable. It had the best
stopping distance for years
until Porsche beat them out.
But really, it’s the 2JZ-
GTE engine. In Japan, the
car manufacturers used to
have this gentleman’s agree-
ment that they wouldn’t say
that their cars made more
than 276 horsepower. It’s
100 percent true! But when
you would dyno them, they
were probably at 320 to the
wheels. Add a boost control-
38 JANUARY/FEBRUARY _ 2018 P O P U L A R M E C H A N I C S.CO M
ler, and you can turn it up to
400 hp or more. For mine,
I did a full engine rebuild
around 130,000 miles—big-
ger pistons, bigger injectors,
higher compression,
upgraded rods and pistons.
Once it was done, it made
811 hp to the wheels. When
the turbo’s full on at 4,200
rpm, it’ll punch you in the
chest and put you in your
seat. If I went up to a 76mm
turbo, it’d be making 1,000
horsepower.
P H OTO G R A P H S BY M A X B
Toyota’s working on,
potentially, the FT-1. There’s
no word whether it’s going
to be the new Supra. But for
the fans, if it’s not a 2JZ, it’s
not a Supra. And the origi-
nal Supra is the dream car.
I’ve had offers, but I’m not
gonna sell it.
 g Belt Kits!
plete Timin
Com
 Popular Mechanics has been serving five generations of Americans
(and counting) with great stories and rock-solid advice.
The best of it was indispensable when it came out—and remains so today.
A S E T O F P L A I N W H I T E locking cabinets in the Popular
Mechanics offices houses the PM archives. The editors here
pull these hardbound copies—big, black things with gold let-
tering, like volumes of a mail-order encyclopedia—off the
shelves with surprising regularity. Sometimes it’s to find a
dusty Shop Note that still works, or to check on a prescient
old story whose subject is finally news. But much of the time,
it’s just to smile. This is a magazine that has predicted fly-
ing cars in no fewer than six separate cover stories. We once
suggested rejuvenating a sputtering ballpoint pen by tying
it to a string and swinging it around until centrifugal force
pushed the ink to the tip. We wrote about photography by
carrier pigeon in prewar Germany.
The thing you’ll notice about pigeon photography, by
the way, is that it looks just like drone footage—80 years
before anyone knew what a drone was. We pore through our
archives, in other words, to be inspired. And in this, our first-
ever collection of Popular Mechanics’ greatest hits, we share
that inspiration with you. Over the next 36 pages, we pres-
ent things to build, cook, try doing, learn about, and marvel
at—116 years’ worth, from a vast and sometimes genuinely
odd assortment of topics. Popular Mechanics is, and always
has been, an exhaustive review of the things that fascinate
us and fuel our optimism about the future.
In that spirit, we’ve published the thoughts of curious
novelists, eminent scientists, and American presidents.
JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2018
040
(Yes, plural.) “In the years before I was born, commenta-
tors declared the American frontier closed,” Ronald Reagan
wrote in these pages in July 1986. “No more land grabs, no
more gold rushes.” Popular Mechanics arrived in those same
years. The first issue is from January 11, 1902, and isn’t
much more than a pamphlet. There is a copy here in the office
with yellowed pages that flake around the edges like poorly
applied paint. It is 16 pages long, monochrome, and carries
only nine photographs and four advertisements. But for its
readers, a claustrophobic world must have been nearly impos-
sible to imagine. They read stories about learning languages,
elementary electricity, quicksand, techniques for cleaning
pipes, a record-breaking electric automobile, and the rise
of telephones. American life, they knew, was in bloom. So
of course Reagan was just teeing up his real point. “Ameri-
cans need frontiers,” he said. “Close one down and we open
P H OTO G R A P H BY B E N G O L D S T E I N
up another.” He wrote of the space station we were planning
to build—and today, as you read this, the International Space
Station, a frontier outpost on the edge of the unknown, orbits
overhead. “What now exists only in our imagination will
someday become a tool for greater prosperity,” Reagan said.
Indeed. We’ll continue to build up and out and in deep space
and cyberspace. And at each new outpost, you can be certain
Popular Mechanics will be the village rag, reporting, as it
always has, on a world shaped by curious, interested, inno-
vative people—a frontier that will never be closed or tamed.
EDITOR’S NOTE

In the 1960s, aircraft carrier fires plagued the Navy. This

article, which reports that new technology and training
made subsequent fires less disastrous, is newly relevant in
the wake of last summer’s deadly collisions involving Naval
ships. Senator John McCain was then a Navy lieutenant
commander on the carrier (see page 45).

The cry went out, but before it could

be heeded, the mighty carrier Forrestal
exploded into a raging inferno—a living
nightmare that was to last for days, claim
134 lives, and badly cripple one of the
world’s greatest warships. In the past few
years, similar disasters have struck other
carriers, causing a rising death toll. Here’s
the revealing story of how such tragedies
occur and what’s being done to stop them.

By Mort Schultz
Illustration by Roy Grinnell

D
espite their exhaustion, the pilots and
crewmen were in a jovial mood. The
day was bright and clear, and the intel-
ligence reports were good: The planes
should encounter little flak on their
bombing run into North Vietnam. It was near midday
on Saturday, July 27, 1967. The ship was the mammoth
aircraft carrier USS Forrestal—a floating skyscraper
more than three football fields long with four acres of
deck space, ten deck levels, 2,000 compartments, and
a crew of more than 5,000. She was steaming through
the Gulf of Tonkin at a brisk 27 knots only 60 miles off
the enemy coast. In the past four days her A-4 Skyhawks
and F-4 Phantoms had made 150 sorties into North
Vietnam. Now it was time for another mission. By all
indications, it would be routine. There was no hint of
the colossal disaster about to strike.
As pilots manned their planes and crewmen loaded
bombs into racks beneath the wings, there was an air
of relaxed calm—too relaxed. Some were visiting bud-
dies in areas on the flight deck where they didn’t belong.
Others were strolling through their work bare-chested
and in shorts. Those loading bombs were strong-
backing the job, giving no thought to the use of nearby
hoisting equipment.
“We were pros,” was the attitude of one sailor. “What
could happen?”
What could—and did—happen was the death of 134
officers and men, terrible injuries to 161 others, and
the near destruction of one of the Navy’s most power-
ful fighting ships—all in a matter of minutes.
Seconds before the first scheduled launch the ship’s
normal routine was abruptly shattered as a Zuni rocket
streaked aft from the wing of a Phantom parked on the
foredeck. No one is sure to this day just what triggered
the Zuni, but the missile shot down the flight deck and

043
slammed into a Skyhawk waiting to take off on the afterdeck, Right: Hours after the
initial blast, men aboard
blasting the bomber and spewing blazing jet fuel onto other air- the Forrestal still fight
craft standing nearby. fires on wreckage-strewn
flight deck. Below: Smoke
Within an instant, the afterdeck is a raging inferno as one fuel and flames stream aft
tank after another explodes in the intense heat. Pilots attempting from the stricken carrier
as a destroyer rushes to
the leap from their planes fall helplessly into the fiery sea of burn- her aid, picking up sur-
ing fuel. Crewmen rushing to their aid are engulfed by the flames vivors blown or forced
to jump into the sea.
and disappear. Others caught between the spreading fire and the The explosion-triggered
edges of the deck are forced overboard. Bits of burning bodies are inferno raged several
days, taking a tragic toll:
blown in all directions. 134 dead, 161 injured,
But the worst is still to come. Lying on the deck near the flames, 63 aircraft destroyed or
damaged, and $72 million
hidden by billowing smoke, are two 1,000-pound bombs, apparently worth of damage to the
jolted loose from one of the Skyhawks. In less than two minutes, ship itself. This was the
second and worst of three
they will wipe out most of the trained firefighters aboard the For- major carrier fires occur-
restal, tear huge craters in the hull, and put the ship in deep trouble. ring during the 1960s.
“Fire on the flight deck, fire on the flight deck,” blare the ship’s
loudspeakers. “All hands, man your battle stations.” Urgently
shouted orders mingle with the rapid-fire clang of the general
quarters alarm bell. Frantically, the two main firefighting par-
ties struggle to reach the flames, pulling hoses and carrying
extinguishers.
“I watched them from the island,” one officer recalls. “They
were having trouble. Fire had cut off plugs in the stern. Those
amidships had developed pump problems. So the men had to
haul hoses from the forward stations.”
Precious seconds lost—seconds that gave those two hidden
bombs time to get hotter. Finally, the men get their lines hooked
up and are ready to start spraying foam on the fire-swept after-
deck. But it’s too late. As the firefighters approach the flames,
there are two gigantic explosions a fraction of a second apart
that rock the mighty 78,000-ton carrier as if she were a toy boat
in a bathtub. Suddenly the men are gone—they simply vanish.
In their place are huge, ugly, gaping holes in the deck. Those
two unseen 1,000-pound bombs, ignited by the mounting heat,
had ripped through two-inch-thick steel plate like cardboard,
exposing the decks below. Rivers of flaming jet fuel
pour down the holes deep into the bowels of the
ship, turning her insides into a living nightmare.
Scores of men caught in the intricate maze of com-
partments and companionways belowdecks are
trapped and die, many of them needlessly. Escape
routes could have been used, but either the men
hadn’t been told about them or in their panic had
forgotten them.
Topside, the scene is still one of horror and havoc. With most
of the experienced firefighters lost, the job of saving the ship now
falls on a courageous but inexperienced crew. This leads to terri-
ble mistakes that cost more lives. In the confusion and disorder
that prevail, little is done in the next five minutes to keep fire from
spreading to other bombs and missiles lying on the flight deck.
More explosions shake the Forrestal—nine major blasts in all—
each ripping a new hole in the deck through which jet fuel pours.
Finally—nearly eight minutes after the original Zuni mishap—
the order goes out to close the divisional steel doors between the
ship’s compartments—the first thing that should have been done Clockwise from middle: Aboard the Oriskany, men above deck anxiously await
to keep fire from spreading belowdecks. word of shipmates trapped in bunks by fire. Forty-four died. Carrier America
tries out automatic flight-deck sprinkler system designed to prevent Forrestal-
Then comes the most tragic irony of all. Gallant but untrained type disasters; twin nozzles can spray foam and Purple K together; new
firefighting crews, hurriedly formed, work side by side, some “lightwater” foam effectively smothers a jet fire in tests.

044 P OPULAR MECHANICS


unwittingly nullifying
the effects of the others.
One team sprays on pro-
tein foam—the proper
extinguishing agent for
petroleum-fed fires—while
another comes along and,
knowing nothing better,
washes away the foam with
water. The foam works only
if it’s allowed to blanket a
fire and smother it; water
merely dilutes the foam
and renders it ineffective.
More precious time is lost
and the fire rages on. There
is concern for the after
ammunition magazine. If
flames reach it, the entire
ship could go up. Luckily,
the magazine is ordered
flooded in time to prevent
this danger. Other ships in
the task force, heeding the
Forrestal’s distress call,
rush to her aid, but can do
little to help except to stand
by and search for survi-
vors. A few of the men who
jumped or were blown over-
board are picked up, but
most are never recovered.
Gradually, the mis-
takes of those first terrible
moments become appar-
ent and corrective orders
are issued. The ship is
kept headed into the wind
to confine the fire to the stern, but speed is
reduced from 27 knots to 15 to keep the wind
from fanning the flames. After ten exhaustive,
agonizing hours of firefighting, the main blazes
are at last brought under control, but other fires
continue to burn throughout the ship for days.
“I lost track of time,” says Chief Petty Offi-
cer Gerard G. Johnson, “but I do know I was
still putting out fires when the ship pulled into
Subic Bay in the Philippines.”
The grim tragedy aboard the fire-ravaged
Forrestal took a fearsome toll: 295 crewmen
dead or disabled, 63 of the carrier’s 81 air-
craft destroyed or damaged, and $72 million
worth of damage to the ship itself. Her gut-
ted stern charred and twisted, the crippled
carrier remained out of action for more than
six months. It may be a miracle that she sur-
vived at all.
Actually, fires aboard ships of the size
JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2018
and complexity of an aircraft carrier are not
uncommon and occur almost daily. While few
reach the magnitude of the Forrestal’s, each
holds the potential for a Forrestal-type trag-
edy—a fact that has prompted Navy men to
exclaim that “an aircraft carrier is a disaster
waiting to happen.”
Only nine months prior to the Forrestal fire
another major carrier catastrophe occurred
aboard the USS Oriskany off Vietnam. The
trouble began as sailors were unloading illu-
minating magnesium parachute flares from
planes after a scrubbed bombing mission. The
ripcord on one of the flares being carried over
a crewman’s shoulder snagged on the edge of
a watertight door. Forty-four men perished
and $7 million worth of damage resulted. A
third major carrier mishap occurred aboard
the USS Enterprise on January 14, 1969,
75 miles south of Pearl Harbor. During maneu-
vers, hot exhaust from a jet-engine starting
unit caused a bomb to explode. The bomb had
been stupidly placed only 18 inches away from
the unit’s exhaust pipe. Result: 28 crewmen
dead, 300 injured, 15 planes destroyed, and
$68 million in damage to the ship.
“There are 14 carriers in the fleet and I bet
they have several fires a day when at sea,” says
Lt. Cmdr. John Donnelly, executive officer of
the U.S. Navy Damage Control Training Center
in Philadelphia. His command, plus another
one like it in San Diego, trains sailors going to
sea in the techniques of shipboard damage con-
trol, which includes firefighting.
“Fires have to be expected on a carrier,”
explains Donnelly. “You can’t escape that
fact—not with the overwhelming amount of
fuel and explosives involved, mixing with care-
lessness and chance which 5,000 people living
together in a relatively confined area present.”
But disasters teach lessons. The three major
carrier fires of the 1960s shocked the Navy,
which realized that unless firefighting train-
ing and equipment improved, more accidents
of the Forrestal type could be expected. And
improved they have been, with significant
results. Since the Enterprise, the number of
fires hasn’t diminished, but the severity of
their effects has. Within recent years, more
than 700 have been reported, and no one
knows how many more have gone unreported.
But the important point is that not since the
tragic events of the 1960s has there been a
major ship fire at sea. The chances for another
Forrestal-type tragedy are slimmer today than
ever before. Perhaps the lives lost on the For-
restal, Oriskany, and Enterprise were not
entirely in vain after all.
John in
McCa
Fifty years ago, a tragic fire
aboard the aircraft carrier USS
Forrestal left nearly 300 sailors
and Marines dead or injured. On
that Saturday morning in July,
as I sat in the cockpit of my A-4
preparing to take off, a rocket
hit the fuel tank under my air-
plane—and the fire erupted. As
I scrambled out of my aircraft
and ran across the burning flight
deck, I watched as sailors carried
hoses and extinguishers toward
the flames. A moment later, the
first bomb exploded, and those
brave men were gone.
As ready as the Forrestal was
for combat, nothing could have
prepared us for the calamity
that befell us that day. But while
the men on board may not have
been prepared for that particular
enemy, they fought it coura-
geously nonetheless. In the end,
134 brave souls died in the heroic
struggle to save the Forrestal.
The tragedy aboard the
Forrestal exposed significant
shortfalls in the Navy’s safety
posture. In response, the Navy
instituted substantial changes
to its training regime and stan-
dard operating procedures,
resulting in a safer and more
effective force.
Even so, going to sea in ships
remains and will always be an
inherently dangerous vocation.
The 17 lives lost aboard the
USS Fitzgerald and USS John S.
McCain this past summer dem-
onstrate the need for continued
vigilance in training and safety
standards.
Across the armed services,
preventable accidents dur-
ing peacetime operations and
training are now killing more of
our service members than our
enemies on the battlefield. We
must never relent in the quest to
improve our standards and pro-
tect those putting their lives on
the line for our freedom. As one
of the lucky ones who escaped
the horrific flames of the For-
restal, I consider it my sacred
duty to do no less.
045
 Classic Know-How
Follow any hobby for 116 years and you’ll see a lot of things
change (especially gear, judging by these illustrations). But as the
following three primers attest, the underlying skills never do.

GOOD SEAMANSHIP
By THOMAS P. LAKE

GETTING IN AND OUT

W
HEN stepping into a small boat, always place the
first foot in the center of the floor, never on the
gunwale. Then immediately place your weight
on this foot and crouch down, resting a hand lightly on each
gunwale, and sit down. When getting out, keep one hand
on the dock or landing platform, to hold the boat against
it. Then rise to a crouching position and step quickly and
smoothly to avoid pushing the boat away from the dock. Also,
while transferring your weight from the foot in the boat to
the other on the dock, pull your feet together to prevent the
boat from being pushed away.

is the
latest, all-new marine
smartwatch, meaning not only can it access the Garmin
Connect IQ store to get a variety of apps, but it’s designed
for handling other nautical tasks, like checking tides,
alerting you to drifting, and logging fish you reel in.

046 P OPULAR MECHANICS

 STEERING
To practice steering
safely, tie the bow to
the dock, leaving only
a foot or two of slack
in the painter (the
rope by which a boat
is made fast). Then
step in and, when
SHOVING OFF seated, push against
the dock to swing the

G
IVE a slight shove against the dock to push the bow farther away from the dock than the stern, stern out until it is at
so that when the boat gathers headway (forward motion) the stern will not be swung into the right angles with the
dock if it is necessary to turn immediately. If you are facing forward, as you should be, turn your dock. Now start the
head and watch the corner of the stern nearest the dock. Only when this has drawn clear of the dock can motor and run it at
you turn the boat. If you can’t see over the dock from your position in the boat, run slowly and wide of the very slow speed. The
dock until you have passed the end. If no boat is approaching, you may speed up. bow is held against
the dock by the
propeller thrust and
the short-tied painter
CROSSING WAVES prevents it from
slipping far while you

W
HEN your course
takes you near large,
fast boats, you have
the problem of crossing waves
made by them. Suppose that a
large boat is rapidly overhaul-
ing you from behind on your port
(left) side. Alter the course about
30 degrees to the right to put
more room between your courses.
As the boat goes by, keep an eye
on the large, steep-sided bow
wave, and, as it approaches, turn
and head for it. When the wave study steering effects.
is immediately ahead, reduce
speed so the bow can lift with the
impact. As the wave rolls past the
stern, swing back to your origi-
nal course. If your boat has a wide,
flaring bow, you can alterna-
tively meet the wave broad on the
bow (about 45 degrees from dead
ahead). The wide flare throws
spray outward and provides a
sharp lift to the bow, usually suffi-
cient to clear the crest of the wave.

DOCKING

H
EAD for the dock at very nearly the place at which you want the boat to
lie. Throttle down to about 5 or 6 mph. When a length and a half from
the dock, and collision seems inevitable, suddenly throw the steering
lever hard over to one side, so that the propeller is facing about 60 degrees from
astern. The stern immediately begins to swing around the bow. Hold this steer-
ing angle and slow the motor to dead slow. By this time the forward motion of the
boat is almost entirely lost, and the boat is at right angles to its original course. It
is now parallel to the dock, and not more than several inches from it. Then, before
the boat begins to develop headway, shut off the motor. Keep in mind that a heav-
ily loaded boat usually requires more room to slide sideways, and may be sluggish
in responding to the hard-over, and that longer boats may approach the dock at
an angle of 45 degrees or even less because they have more grip on the water and
require less turn to make them lose headway.

047

A
GOOD hammer makes fewer “mistakes” and causes less fatigue than a poorly made
one. A quality hammer is tough and durable: The face of the poll is polished smooth and
the edges are ground to a uniform bevel to prevent chipping; the claws are ground to
“nipper” ends for getting into narrow spaces between nailheads and the surface of the work. A
tapered slot between the claws has the right bevel to grip not only the head but also the body of a
nail firmly. Handles are shaped to give a certain amount of spring to ease shock and minimize
strain on the arm muscles of the user.
C
LAW hammers come in various
SIZES weights, 5-, 7-, 13-, 16-, and
AND TYPES 20-ounce heads being more or less
OF CLAW standard. Alternatively there are num-
HAMMERS bered sizes, No. 1 being the largest and
No. 4 the smallest. A No. 1½ hammer with
a 16-ounce head is best for all-around use.
Finishers like a pronounced crown,
or bell face, on the poll, as this enables
them to drive a nail flush or slightly
below the surface of the wood without
denting it. However, such a hammer
requires skillful handling; general
use calls for less crown. Claws come in
two main types: a pronounced curve,
especially suited to pulling nails, or
straighter and heavier, good for prying
or ripping.
048
USING A CLAW
HAMMER
G
RIP the hammer
near the end of the
handle. This hold
gives the maximum leverage,
power, and drive. The trick
in starting a nail is to use
light taps, holding the handle
approximately at right angles
to the axis of the nail and uti-
lizing the wrist as a pivot.
After starting, or setting, the
nail, use the full stroke. When
heavy blows are required, the
wrist, forearm, and upper
arm are brought into simul-
taneous use to deliver the full
driving power of the hammer.
As the head of the nail nears
the work surface the force of
the blows should be lessened.
When pulling a nail,
proceed by stages, as undue
pressure may break off the
nailhead. Raise the nail
slightly, then release the
claws and take another
bite. The initial stroke
should be stopped just
before the poll of the ham-
mer contacts the surface of
the work, as the leverage is
greatly reduced when the
poll becomes the fulcrum.
Lift the hammer and insert
a block or wedge before
applying pressure in the
second stage.
P OPULAR MECHANICS
CARE OF HAMMER
How to
F
OR the safety of yourself and others who may
be nearby, never use a hammer with a loose
head. Take time to put in new wedges or install
a new handle. Details below, A to D inclusive, show
Fell, Buck,
four essential steps in replacing a hammer handle.
These steps apply to all types of hammers with only and Limb
minor variations. When replacing the handle, never
burn the old wood out of the eye as the heat may draw
the temper of the head.
a Tree
B
ASICALLY,
When the tool is not in use keep the head oiled
there are
to prevent rusting. Wipe off the oil before using.
three reasons
why a homeowner
has to take down a
tree on his property:
1. Room is needed
for an addition; 2.
The tree has died
and poses a safety
threat with the first
heavy windstorm
that comes along; or
3. A dense cluster of
trees requires pru-
dent thinning.
Felling a tree
with a handsaw or
axe is now a thing
of the past. A gas
or electric chain-
saw is the only way
to go, but it must
be used correctly.
If you don’t own a
chainsaw, it is well
worth the few dol-
lars it will cost to
rent one.
EVEN MORE ON USING
A CLAW HAMMER

S
OMETIMES a big nail—that is, long and large
diameter—will be missing its head. That makes
it tough to use a claw hammer in the traditional
way. Don’t despair! One extra tool and a little luck will
help. Here are three workarounds, in ascending order
of desperation:
1. Wedge the nail deep enough into the claw that the SAFETY RULES YOU SHOULD ALWAYS OBSERVE
sides of the claw bite into it, in a manner that will allow
Think the job out if there is any It could become
it to be pulled in the usual fashion.
beforehand and chance of timber caught in the
2. If the nail is too large, or awkwardly located, try stick to your plan. or branches falling chainsaw or falling
gripping it with a pair of locking pliers, close to the from above. limbs. Always wear
Plan an escape
substrate. Roll against the pliers’ jaw for leverage. work gloves.
route at a 2018 UPDATE!
3. Bite into the headless nail with locking pliers, this 45-degree angle Wear a hard hat. If your job collects
time nearer the top. Then grip with the claw against opposite the direc- Period. a crowd, stop.
the pliers, which act as the nail’s head. tion of tree fall.
Don’t wear loose- Work only with a
Works like a charm. Wear a hard hat fitting clothing. sharp saw chain.
MORE

JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2018 049

Basic Sawing Techniques: Notching and Felling
Done properly, it takes three cuts to fell a tree: two passes to
make the undercut (notch) and a back cut on the opposite side of
the trunk. The notch should be cut to a depth of approximately
one-third the tree diameter, and perpendicular to the line of fall.
After making the first two cuts, remove the wedge from the trunk.
Make the back cut at least 2 inches higher than the notch so
as to leave a “hinge” of uncut wood to guide the tree over. Do
not cut through the notch. As the tree starts to fall, pull your saw
free. Immediately turn off power and retreat quickly along your
pre-planned escape route. If you suspect the tree may not fall in
the desired direction, or may tilt back causing the saw to bind,
do not complete the back cut. Withdraw the saw and use wood,
plastic, or magnesium wedges to open the cut and tilt the tree in
the direction of the fall.

Bucking a Tree for Log Cuts

Once the tree is down, keep in mind that wood is heavy and that it will bend and pinch the saw if improperly supported. (The trunk will
weaken at the point where you make the cut unless the tree is lying on perfectly flat ground or supported as shown.) To cut the trunk,
use the bucking and two-cut sequence shown. The first cut should be no deeper than one-third the trunk diameter.

Getting Rid of
the Tree Stump
The cheapest way to elimi-
nate the stump is to simply
bury it. Cut the stump off
close to the ground and
cover it with soil. To speed
the rotting process, bore
holes 6 inches deep before
burying. For aesthetic rea-
sons, cover the mound with
ground-cover plantings.

A
VETERAN
FORES
TER

Limbing a Tree
To saw off a large limb supported only
by the trunk, first cut one-third of the
way through the limb on its under-
side. Make a second cut through the
limb from the top. Make certain you In 2018, our chainsaw
of choice is still this
lash the ladder securely to the tree.
industry veteran. The
Run a rope around the trunk a couple
newest versions have
of times, then tie it securely to the top
carburetor heating and
rung. Plant the ladder so that its feet
heated handles—no
are level and are placed a distance small advantage in the
from the base of the tree that is equal cold dark of winter.
to one-quarter of the vertical height.

050 P OPULAR MECHANICS


We’ve been reporting on shifting weather patterns
for more than a century. What has changed is the
outlook we have on the possible consequences.
MARCH 1912
Remarkable Weather
of 1911 1
“It has been found that if the air
contained more carbon diox-
ide, which is the product of the
combustion of coal or vegetable
material, the temperature would
6 be somewhat higher. Since burn-
ing coal produces carbon dioxide
it may be inquired whether the
enormous use of the fuel in
modern times may not be an
important factor in filling the
atmosphere with this substance,
and consequently indirectly rais-
ing the temperature of the earth.”
M AY 1 9 3 0
Is Our Climate Changing? 2
“The belief that appreciable
changes of climate occur within
7
the compass of human memory
is at least 99 percent illusion. The
other 1 percent of the idea may
be based on facts, more or less.”
APRIL 1940
Coal Dust Speeds Melting of
Ice by Absorbing Sun’s Heat
“Glaciers which are now breed-
ing grounds of cold-air masses
affecting climate and weather of
civilized regions might someday
be melted by widespread use of
coal dust and thus soften the cli-
mate of the moderate latitudes.”
SE PTE M B E R 1957
1 What’s Happening to the
Weather 3
“Q: What are some of the
occurrences during the
warm period that is sup-
posed to be ending? A:
Sverre Petterssen, Uni-
versity of Chicago: If the
JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2018
2 3
warm trend continues there will 4
be some remarkable changes.
There will be very little summer
ice in the Arctic. With this would
be a northward migration of
vegetation, fish, and animal life.
Cyclones would continue to move
northward. I think the changes
would be quite severe.”
AUGUST 196 4
The Air Around Us:
How It Is Changing 4
“Man’s tampering with nature
has thrown earth’s CO2 cycle
out of balance. A prime offender,
researchers agree, is the
automobile.”
APRIL 1988
South to the Pole 5
“There is speculation that atmo-
spheric pollution may have already
contributed to global warming—
with damaging consequences for
the south polar ice cap.”
JAN UARY 19 97
200-mph Trees Bomb Away
at Greenhouse Effect 6
“Moshe Alamaro believes the
answer is to replace the forests.
The key to his plan is an aerody-
namic tree-planting cone strong
enough to sustain the 200-mph
impact of striking the earth.”
OCTOBER 20 04
The Cold Truth 7
“There is an emerging consensus
that future global models will only
confirm the need for tighter con-
trols on greenhouse gases. But
for the moment, only one predic-
tion can be made with any degree
of confidence: Global warming 5
may hold some chilling surprises.”
051
 EDITOR’S NOTE

When we took readers inside the Jet Propulsion

Laboratory in November 2016 (“The Right Kind of
Crazy”), we hinted that John Parsons and the CalTech
group that founded the lab were a wild bunch blow-
ing stuff up in the California desert. Here’s a look at
that early work, which did indeed feature explosions.

SEEKING G
uarded by sandbags, a man sits
before a panel on which are rows
of gauges. As he turns valves, nee-
dles of the gauges spin and gyrate.
From behind the sandbags comes a
1

all the fires of hell have been

raging in the little cylinder
behind the sandbags. Terrifi-
cally explosive gases have just
reached a temperature half
that of the sun and a velocity
of 3,600 miles per hour—and

Scientists are hardheaded men. They do not

speculate on traveling to the moon every time they
see a sky rocket.3 They say simply:
“We are experimenting with fuels for rockets.
We’ve found out a few things. It may be that in the
reasonably near future science will succeed in send-
ing a rocket higher than any man-made contrivance
ever traveled before. Perhaps such a rocket might
reach an altitude of 500,000 feet.
“If a rocket could be shot that high, it could carry
recording instruments which would gather infor-
mation of the greatest importance. A rocket to the
moon...Men still dream of that. But science deals
with facts. Still, the dream is perhaps a little bit
nearer realization.”
Behind that simple statement is another chap-
ter in man’s struggle to escape the chains of gravity

1. The setting, curi-

Our view from the ously omitted in
1940s makes the early the original article:
work of JPL—before Arroyo Seco, Califor-
it had formally taken nia, circa 1938.
that name—seem 2. The researcher
oddly modest. The had good reason to
lab’s official histo- be tense: The sci-
rian, ERIK CONWAY, entists had already
helped us understand been thrown out of
the bigger picture, CalTech for explo-
as it can only be seen sions on campus.
with eight decades of 3. According to Con-
perspective. way, the men simply

052 P OPULAR MECHANICS

 Right: A rocket
starts up fired by
remote control.
Below: A test
rocket used at
California Tech.

which bind him to one planet.
Three years ago it was decided to
study rocket motors at California Insti-
tute of Technology.4 Although many
rocket experiments had been conducted
throughout the world, no complete and
systematic investigation of motors has
been available.5 Yet it is just those very
problems of a powerful enough fuel and
a long-life combustion chamber that are
the stumbling blocks which are holding
back rocket flights.
So three experimenters at California
Tech, Frank J. Malina, John W. Parsons,
and Edward Forman,6 decided to build a
rocket which did not fly, a rocket which
moved but a few fractions of an inch, but
which told those vital facts about what
goes on when a charge is fired.
As a background for their work, they
had the long history of rocket experi-
mentation, going back to the days of early
Chinese culture when rockets were first
used for fireworks displays. The western
world did not begin to construct rock-
ets until about the fourteenth century.
Immediately, the question of their pos-
sible military importance arose. But no
one devised a successful military rocket
until 1805, when William Congreve per-
fected one—and in so doing helped write
the American national anthem.
For it was the Congreve rockets fired
by the British forces attacking Fort
McHenry that inspired Francis Scott
Key to write the lines of “The Star Span-
gled Banner,” “and the rockets’ red
glare.” Congreve rockets were also used
with telling effect against Napoleon at
Waterloo. Both incendiary and explosive
charges were carried by these rockets.
But whatever the military signifi-
cance of the rocket, its most dramatic
and intriguing potentiality is that of con-
quering space.7 Although many older writers of fantasy
speculated on space rockets, the first really practical
experimentation in America was done by Professor
R.H. Goddard, beginning in 1909.
In 1918 Goddard published a set of calculations
which he believed established the possibility of a rocket
flight to the moon. If such a rocket could be constructed,
he proposed that a small charge of flash powder be car-
ried, and exploded when the rocket struck the moon.
The flash would be visible to the earth’s large telescopes.
Ten years later Goddard fired some experimental
altitude rockets which attained a height of about two
miles and a vertical climbing speed of 700 miles per
hour, far greater than the fastest airplane. Since that
time, Goddard has continued his exper-
iments in perfecting rocket design.
Recently he incorporated a gyroscope to
stabilize his rockets during flight.
However, the old problem of a suffi-
ciently powerful fuel and a sufficiently
durable firing chamber still remained.
Certain experiments seem to favor the
use of powder explosives, but in general,
liquid fuels seem to offer the best pros-
pects. A combination of liquid oxygen
and gasoline has proved very efficient.8
Rockets powered by such fuels have The first problem faced
been used by the American and German was to design a highly accu-
rocket societies. A British society has rate testing machine. Such
made speculative plans for space travel a device must be able to reg-
should the day ever arrive when fuel and ister thrust, temperature, pressure of gases, amount
construction problems are licked. This of fuel used, and the efficiency of the combustion.
society has designed space suits, and For experimental purposes, gaseous combusti-
has even made tentative arrangements bles are used instead of liquid. The propellant now
to secure human beings who would be being experimented with is a mixture of ethylene
willing to take the terrific gamble should and oxygen. These gases are kept under pressures of
the conquest of space ever be technically 1,200 and 2,000 pounds to the square inch. Opera-
possible. tors control the flow of gas by means of valves. The
These problems of fuel and com- gauges which record the performance of the rocket
bustion chamber the California Tech motor are photographed to give a permanent record.
scientists have set out to study—and they The rocket motor is a single steel cylinder about
have made such advancement that they 18 inches long and six in diameter. It is lined with
talk of a sounding rocket which might carbon to guard against the terrific heat when the
reach a height of half a million feet.9 motor is operated. A temperature of 5,000 degrees

knew that a rocket that
could reach the moon
was a long way off.
In fact, Frank Malina
published an academic
paper in the late 1930s
that explored what it
would take to launch
people into space.
4. Rockets had never
been formally studied
because they weren’t
as useful as balloons. Of
limited military appli-
cation, rockets were
mainly of interest as a
potential tool for atmo-
spheric studies—but
balloons could go higher,
and were less likely to
demolish a lab building.
5. The formal creation
of the Jet Propulsion
Laboratory would come
in 1944. It’s named for
jets because the
modern distinction
between a jet (gets
oxygen from the air) and
a rocket (carries its own
supply of oxygen) didn’t
yet exist.
6. Only Malina had ties
to CalTech, where he
worked at the Gug-
genheim Aeronautical
Laboratory. Parsons
and Forman attended a
CalTech talk on German
rocket planes, and were
steered to Malina. They
worked for a company
that built explosives.
7. While the CalTech
rocketry work was
spurred in part by antici-
pation of the U.S. joining
World War II, long-range
rockets were at this
time so inconvenient to
launch and so inaccurate
that the work was ulti-
mately not significant to
the war effort.
8. JPL’s liquid fuel
technologies had a long
life span: With minor
chemical modifications,
they were in service
until the 1980s, and a
derivative is still used in
spacecraft today.
9. In 1946 a test of JPL’s
WAC Corporal rocket
reached 230,000 feet,
finally surpassing what
balloons could do.
Malina, not particularly
interested in weapons
applications, left JPL in
1947 because CalTech
rebuffed his suggestion
to make it into a
sounding rocket for
scientific use.

JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2018 053

Fahrenheit is sometimes reached—almost half that
of the sun’s corona.
Rocket motor, tanks of ethylene and oxygen, and
connecting tubes are mounted on a torsion balance
so delicate that it will register forces of only one-
tenth of an ounce. When the motor is fired, motor,
lines, and braces move as a single unit. The thrust
is then registered by a dial on the control panel.
Because of the terrifically explosive character
of all fuels used, the control panel and operator are
protected from the firing chamber by sandbags.
Once a nozzle blew out during a test, and the result-
ing roar was heard for blocks.10
Nozzles for the rocket motor are made from
such substances as pure carbon, stainless steel, and
copper alloys. Experiments have shown that few
substances will stand the extreme heat and pres-
sure of the exhaust gases. Velocities of 6,000 feet
per second, or better than 3,600 miles per hour,
have been recorded. Often after one minute in the
firing chamber, a nozzle, which a moment before
was a beautifully machined piece of metal, will be
charred, distorted, and blacked, looking as if it had
been subjected to the eternal fires.
Rocket scientists have calculated that a velocity
of seven miles per second, or approximately 25,000
miles per hour, would be necessary for a rocket to
escape Earth’s gravity. They further believe that
6,000 tons of fuel would be necessary to carry ten
tons of payload. The California men do not specu-
late on space travel. However, they do say that their
experiments indicate that with a “step” rocket (one
having three motors, two of which would be released
during flight), a velocity of 11,000 feet per second
might be reached. This would carry the rocket to a
height of 500,000 feet, five times the record height
for a sounding balloon.11 Physical information gath-
ered by such a rocket would be of incalculable value.
Meanwhile, the motor behind the sandbags
hisses and thrusts and the needles on the dials con-
tinue to write their record of vital facts. And another
significant step is being taken in man’s struggle to
conquer space.12
10. Worth men- 12. Despite the lack
tioning: Because of of an impact on
the explosions they World War II, JPL
caused, colleagues went on to develop
at CalTech had taken new propellants,
to calling Malina, large-scale solid
Parsons, and Forman rockets, radio-
the “Suicide Squad.” controlled guidance
11. JPL helped cre- systems—technolo-
ate a two-step rocket gies that meant their
by combining a WAC impact on the Cold
Corporal with a Ger- War was massive.
man V-2. In 1949 it And we made it to
went up 244 miles. the moon.
054
The three headlines below are all more than half
a century old, but the questions are still relevant—so we
looked into them. Again.
Some of Waldemar Kaempffert’s fore-
casts (Personal helicopters! Food made
from sawdust!) were a smidgen off. Oth-
ers, like video calling, were prescient. What
about 2068? Futurist Amy Webb suggests
completely automated transportation,
personalized medicine and education,
and the primacy of the Amazon–Whole
Foods conglomerate. Intangible changes,
too. “Human data will be equivalent to any
other natural resource, like precious met-
als. The country that has the ability to mine
and refine its citizens’ data—you could see
shifts in global superpowers.”
and, in response, people develop new technologies and
combine old technologies to find new ways to extract
oil.” So we have more than we think—and need, he says,
since alternatives will get cheap far before we run out.
Phil Klotzbach, an atmospheric
scientist at Colorado State Uni-
versity, says last year saw the
third or fourth warmest oceans
since 1980, which fuels storms.
More significant was extremely
low vertical wind shear, varia-
tion in speed and direction that
can pull apart a storm’s eye.
Regardless, unable to control
Dick Frederic wrote after Hurricanes wind—or cool oceans—we’re
Connie and Diane thrashed the Atlan- no closer to ending hurricanes
tic coast in 1955, boosting interest in than in 1955. But we’re better
how superstorms form—and might at seeing them coming. And
be prevented. Predictions for 2017’s meteorologists are no longer
storms were more accurate, but a faxing storm-pattern Polaroids
precise cause is still hard to pin down. to the Weather Bureau.
M A R C H 19 5 6 , PAG E
P OPULAR MECHANICS
 4

5
FOOTBALL
Inventors have been working on football
equipment for more than a century, trying to help
the sport’s safety catch up to its visceral appeal.
JAN UARY 19 0 6 tive equipment. One of the most
“Socker” Football important may be that carried
“The appalling list of 19 deaths on at Northwestern University.
and 132 serious accidents during In their experiment, they are
the American football season of putting instruments into a foot-
1905 has called forth the demand ball helmet which are designed
from the press, public, and college to radio back to the sidelines
presidents for an immediate and data on both impact and brain
radical change. ‘Socker’ football activity.”
[Ed: Today called ‘soccer’] is sug-
gested as much less strenuous.” NOVE M B E R 1985
Television Touchdowns 6
MARCH 1910 “When a New Jersey player gets
Football Armor 1

OCTOB E R 1939
Touchdowns in the
Making 2
“‘Stub’ Allison, head football coach
at the University of California:
‘Twenty-five years ago the devel- ing on the field.”
opment or selection of varsity
football material was largely a OCTOBER 1995
survival of the fittest. The empha- Battle Helmets 7
sis was on weight and strength;
today it is on speed and brains. formation that helmets
Only the fastest, brainiest, and
best-conditioned men make the
California Golden Bear teams.’”

OCTOBER 194 4

2 3

goal line.”

FE B RUARY 2 0 07
Anatomy of a Hit

etry System, which employs

4

impacts all the time,’ says

5
Biomechanics, ‘and several
over 150 g’s.’”

055
 Organize Everything
It’s a new year. Time to get organized (and lose five pounds). From
Popular Mechanics’ back catalog, here are classic techniques that we’d
endorse for any maker in 2018.

3 Ways a Professional
Keeps His Shop Organized
A place for everything
and everything in place
is the way of life in this
well-organized shop.

By Jorma Hyypia

1 Hang saws
teeth in.
Most people store their hand-
saws flat, and, by doing so, use
space that is better left to other
things. I created this storage Storing saws with the blades facing
system under my 8 x 48–inch the wall helps protect them from
accidental contact. For smaller saws,
grinder shelf. The 2 ¾-inch use the hook from the top of a coat
spring clamps hold the top of hanger instead of spring clamps.
my large saws securely, while the
two ½-inch-thick dowels on the
bottom keep each blade aligned.
It works best if these dowels are
loose enough to rotate when the
blade is inserted.

2 Store items in jars.

As numerous shop owners discovered long ago,
baby-food bottles are ideal keepers for all kinds of
small items. In my shop, I changed several large
shelves above my workbench to accommodate over
100 of these jars. By adding a smaller shelf between,
I could fit three rows and still have space left on the
wider shelves for tools I want to keep nearby tempo-
rarily, but not clutter the workbench.

Small jars are ideal for holding nails, screws, and nuts. Use a
label-maker to identify similar-looking contents. A goose-neck
lamp, shown, aids sorting and selection.

056
 3 Clever Ways
to Put Magnets
to Work
B C D

A portable vise can be set aside to F

E
make more surface area available, K
especially useful in a small shop. H

G
3
3 Make a J
I
roaming vise. You can use Peg-Board to
A / Drill B / Eight C / Two mount narrow shelving for
Mount a vise to a piece of TOOL for 1⁄4"-20 or 8-32 holding jars and other small
¾-inch plywood and clamp RACK machine 1⁄4"-28 brass bolts
screws machine objects that can’t be hung
it wherever it’s needed. If screws from a hook. And because
the vise vibrates when doing
D / Two E / Four F/ G / Two the shelves are hung on the
heavy work, just slip a thin magnets, 3⁄32" x 7⁄8" x 9⁄16" x 41⁄2" mounting Peg-Board, they’re completely
wood shim between the base Edmund 23⁄4" pole wood spacer screws
No. P 40,818 pieces adjustable. It takes 4 feet
and the bench. When the
of wall space to mount a
wedge is properly fitted, the H / Two I / 21⁄2"- J / Two K / Tap
flat-head square 1⁄8" x 1" x 10" for
standard ¼-inch-thick sheet
play will disappear and you
wood wood apron steel bars machine of Peg-Board, and the shelves
can glue it to the base to make screws screws
can be made out of 4-foot-long
the adjustment permanent.
1 x 4s supported by modified
1. A magnetized tool rack may hold those tools Peg-Board hooks. To re-
that do not easily fit on racks or other perforated- shape the hook, secure it in a
board hangers. Surprisingly heavy tools may be
held by such racks. metalworking vise, then use a
hammer to tap open the hook
so it’s bent at 90 degrees and
2. Use plywood projects horizontally. Next,
scraps to make bore two holes in the back
a stand for
edge of each shelf in which the
sheet magnets,
shown here. hooks will be mounted. Bore
these 1 ½ inch deep using a
13⁄64-inch bit. For a 4-foot-long
shelf, locate the hooks about
6 ½ inches from each end.
—Leonard Heiferling

MATERIALS LIST 3. Slip a key into a

KEY No Size and description small paper enve-
A 1 3⁄16" x 2" x 91⁄2" lope along with a
flat iron bar magnet and seal
with a paper clip.
B 1 4" thumbscrew Hide the key under
C 1 nut, welded to any metal shelf for
flat iron retrieval whenever
D 1 collar to suit nut you need it.
E 2 3⁄4" No. 7 flat-head
screws
F 1 3⁄4" x 8"–diameter
plywood disc

JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2018 057

 EDITOR’S NOTE

For much of Popular Mechanics’ history,

the typical reader had plenty of space for a
garden. But by 1980, with more and more
people in cities and suburbs, many households
didn’t have the space to feed a whole family
from their own land. Or so they thought.

String trellis D

Freestanding
trellis

Tomatoes B
5'

Bell peppers
Tomato
tower

Snap beans
Railroad tie,
gravel-side
up
1' 6"

Brickwork

Cabbage

Onions
5'

Carrots

Leaf lettuce
A
Radish

Melon
box

Rolling planter

I
Simple garden structures f you have a spot as small as
10 x 10 feet, you can grow and
can help you beat weeds and harvest luscious vegetables
high food bills. starting in a few weeks and con-
tinuing through the first fall frost.
BY D. X . FE NTE N Using a system called intensive garden-
ing, you can produce more in your small,
carefully regulated plot than most gar-
deners tilling much larger plots.
SELECT THE SITE
Choose a spot that can get a good water
supply and at least six hours of direct
sunlight each day. Be sure your site
is at least 15 feet away from any large
trees or shrubs whose roots will com-
pete with, and steal, vital moisture and
nutrients from your vegetables. Also
make sure it is not a low spot where

058 P OPULAR MECHANICS

water will collect and rot plant roots.
Once you’ve selected a location, put
8-inch-tall retainers around the area. Growing Aids

41⁄2"
If you don’t have a suitable space, make
one by building raised garden beds, A / PLANTER BOX
with walls 2 feet tall. A planter box is an
easy-to-move plant-
BUILD GROWING AIDS ing space. Melons and
squash should be grown
With the aid of some easily constructed
on a support. If the fruits
growing aids, your crop can grow up become heavy, suspend
instead of across, adding greatly to 1⁄2" x 11⁄2" them in old panty-hose
notch
the amount of growing space. Build legs.

Equal space
the aids out of wood. To avoid rot, you
should use pressure-treated lumber, 2x2
B / TOMATO TOWER
verticals A tomato tower pro-
or—if you’d rather avoid the chemi- and tects crops from pets
cals in a treatment—heart-grade cedar horizontals and wildlife, and offers
or redwood. On any structure that solid support around the
requires mesh, it’s a good idea to stay plant. Tomatoes should
away from metal. Instead, to avoid be staked.
burning plants, substitute meshes that
are made of string or plastic. A
PREPARE THE SOIL
5"

You can buy a garden soil formulated

for vegetables, or create a fertile mix-
ture from your own soil and a few
17"

additional ingredients. A local nursery

can test your soil and advise as to what 2 x 2 side
pieces
components it needs to power an inten-
sive garden, or you can use this recipe: 1 x 2 cleats
#9 wire
To ordinary soil, add large quantities hangers
of organic matter like compost or leaf Drain holes

mold (if not available, substitute peat 3⁄4" exterior-

grade plywood
moss), sand, and well-rotted manure— bottom
the compost and manure in equal

1'
amounts. Mix everything slowly and
evenly. Fill the retainers to just about
2 inches below the top. At this point,
the mixture has sufficient nitrogen
but still requires potassium and phos-
phates. Add fireplace (wood) ashes for
the potassium and bone meal or rock
phosphate for the phosphates. Give
4’

everything one last mix, then water B

thoroughly until the soil is soaked sev-
eral inches down (all the way to the 2 x 4 frame
bottom if using raised beds). After a
day or two, test the uppermost soil by 6 x 6 wire
mesh
compressing a handful. If it makes a
muddy ball, it’s still too wet. If it crum-
bles a bit, you’ll know that it’s ready.
#9 wire
1' 6"

hangers
PLANT THE GARDEN 4x4
post
Put a divider across the bed, right down
30"
the middle. Make it strong enough and
just wide enough for you to walk across.
Now you will be able to reach across

Continued on next page

JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2018 059

 from any side or in the middle without
walking on and compacting the soil.
When you have decided which veg-
etables to grow, determine the amount
of space each will require. Be as accu-
rate as possible. You can get a good idea
of the spacing from the seed packet,
but be careful. Seed packets usually tell
you to plant in rows, with large spaces
in between. Your mightily enriched
soil eliminates the need for those “wide
open” and wasteful spaces. For exam-
ple, if you were planting beans in a
“normal” garden, you would plant
seeds about 3 inches apart in rows 24
inches apart. In intensive gardens like
yours, you’ll plant those bean seeds
about 3 inches apart, with no rows,
over the entire area reserved for beans.
Your richly fortified soil has the capa-
bility to support all those beans and
assure you heavy harvests.
KEEP IT WORKING
Be very careful about the watering.
You must never allow the soil to dry
out. As soon as it appears that the top
several inches of soil have become dry,
start watering. Don’t trust your eye
entirely. Check to see if the soil is dry
to the touch.
The last secret of intensive gar-
dening is to keep it working. Just as
soon as you harvest one crop, put in
another. The soil mixture has been
formulated to support many crops
over a whole season. Keep it full and
you’ll have the most delicious, beau-
tiful vegetables you’ve ever seen or
eaten—and all of them from a trim
garden that itself eats up very little of
your lawn space.

2 x 3 wood
frame Growing Aids

Metal eye C / ROLLING PLANT BOX D / TRELLIS

hooks and Fill a rolling plant box to within
wire ties 2 inches of the top with a soilless
mix. Plant flowers, cherry toma-
2" wire toes, small cukes, and other light
mesh vegetables through the mesh; then
turn the unit to follow the sun. Your
crop will grow sideways, sticking
out through the mesh.
Trellises increase efficiency in
small plots, provide access to ripe
vegetables, and reduce weeding.
A string trellis is ideal for peas,
beans, and other light vegetables;
dowel trellises support toma-
toes, cukes, and other heavier
vegetables.

Line box with black

polyethylene
FREESTANDING
TRELLIS
3⁄4" plywood
2 x 4 foot
2" casters

frame

D
DOWEL
STRING TRELLIS
60" to 72"

TRELLIS
Lath
Frame Lath

1x2

Hinge
Lath
material

Double action hinges 6 horizontals

(3 required) (equal spaces)
Metal eye
(Stanley No. CD875)
hooks 2 verti-
cals (equal
spaces)

Wood dowel

Dowel may
project as
design detail Wood stakes

060 P OPULAR MECHANICS

 Roy’s First Story

out areas or ones that are

U-shaped or L-shaped.
Any design can have
decking (flooring) 90
can rotate it on the computer screen,
Popular Mechanics: You’d been at
the magazine a few years before
this story ran. What took so long?
Roy Berendsohn: Popular Mechan-
ics followed the apprenticeship
model—not unfamiliar to me from
my time as an apprentice cabinet-
maker. It was a given when you were
hired that you had a lot to learn
mechanically and journalistically.
PM: Planning a project with a com-

DESIGN examining it from above, below, or puter seems pretty advanced for
from any angle. You can focus on part 1989. Was this a big step forward?
RB: Yes, it was quite advanced then

CENTER
of the deck—its stairs, for instance—
and zoom in for a closer look, then
zoom back.
BY ROY BERENDSOHN When finished designing, you can
request a three-page computer print-
out that includes the following: a
and continues to be. On the other
hand, having a neatly drawn plan to
present to the building department
has always been important. That
was true before the computerized
Design Center, and is still true now.

A
s do-it-yourself projects go,
building a deck is among
the most complex. Weyer-
haeuser intends to make
the process less daunting with its com-
puterized Design Center. Poised in
front of the computer’s screen, home-
owners plot the deck’s outline and then
progress to a finished plan, requir-
ing only the help of a home center
employee trained in using the system.
You can save time and money by not
having to make repeated trips to the
lumberyard to buy or return materials
due to inadequate plans.
Do-it-yourselfers can quickly
perspective drawing of the deck with
the materials cost on the day the deck
was designed, a color-coded framing
plan that includes the length to cut
support posts (based on level ground),
and a materials list that includes lum-
ber, masonry materials, and hardware.
Most construction questions the
plans don’t answer can be resolved
with a Weyerhaeuser brochure for
prospective deck builders, titled,
naturally, “How to Build a Deck.”
Remember, municipalities often
require a building permit to build a
deck, the plans for which need to be
submitted for review.
PM: How have things progressed
in the last 30 years?
RB: Having a kiosk in every store
became a bit outmoded when the
internet came around. There are
free plans on the web you can print
and submit, along with cut sheets of
hardware and materials. Decks.com,
for example, has existing plans and
design software to help you create
from scratch. And there are sites for
other types of projects, too.
PM: So—does the story hold up?
RB: I think so. The notion that we’d
have more ways to explore project
designs before cutting any lumber
was on target. Plus the tone is polite
and informed. Treating the reader
politely never goes out of style.

Trex, a company that builds composite decking, continues on with this idea. Its Trex
Deck Starter Tool is a user-friendly means to approximate the cost of using Trex mate-
rials to build a deck (or just add Trex surfaces and railings). We used the tool to map out
a simple 12 x 12 deck and received, in minutes, a pdf that gave us approximate materi-
als pricing ($2,700, not including the pressure-treated posts over which the Trex railing
sleeves would fit) and data sheets that would simplify filing for a building permit. —R.B.

JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2018 061

 THE WISDOM of

Some of the magazine’s best advice, completely out of context.

> THE SUNROOF is nonsense. (February 2017)

> W E AMERICANS ARE convinced we can do most things better, and certainly much quicker than anybody else. (April 1907)
> STEP ONE: Scratch head. (November 1997)
> AMONG THE HUNDREDS of nail types available at any hardware store, only one size and shape is the best to use for a particular job.
Other nails may do the job, but the right one will do it better. (June 1968)
> ASSORTED RUBBER BANDS can be cut from worn-out rubber gloves. (March 1952)
> THE DIAMOND WAS once such a dull little pebble you wouldn’t even stoop to pick it up. (February 1950)
> FOR THE L AST TIME, there is no spinning in foosball. (February 2015)
> YOU THINK YOU’RE SAFE in sleep, you think you’re beyond fear, but the reeling mind is most vulnerable a few hours
after midnight. (September 2015)
> IN THE MAT TER of staining, all other furnishings in the room should be considered. (July 1911)
> TO MAKE REMOVING CONCRETE forms easier, use double-head duplex nails. (May 1997)
> ONE WAY TO HONE your instrument flying skills is to go out and practice in an airplane. But this takes time and fuel, and incurs
a certain risk. (May 1980)
> IN PAINTING, it is best to remove all the hinges. (March 1941)
> DON’T THROW AWAY your old garden hose when you get a new one; you can make a yard sprinkler out of it. (June 1946)
> IN THIS DAY and age of specialized power equipment, it’s refreshing to know that a human-powered tool like the bench plane is still
indispensable. (October 1984)
> KNOW ING W HAT YOUR CUE BALL will do after it makes contact with an object ball helps you avoid scratching (also, cursing and
throwing things). If you strike firmly in the center of the cue ball, it will slide along the felt rather than roll. When a sliding cue ball
makes contact with an object ball, the two will always separate at an angle of 90 degrees. (February 2015)
> THERE IS PROBABLY nothing that appeals to the average boy quite so much as a gun. (June 1923)
> A SMALL NUMBER OF TOOLS for space walks are like those special tools annoyingly called for in car manuals—designed from
scratch for a single purpose. (February 1986)
> MAYBE we’re overdoing things a bit in this modern generation. (April 1960)
> WHEN YOU HAVE the opportunity to witness modern American craftsmen plying their intricate trades, you gain a new apprecia-
tion for that portion of the human soul that cries out for excellence. Look at a craftsman as he labors over his wood, metal, glass, or other
material and, at first glance, your attention will be drawn to the hands. But you have to look deeper. The work of the hands is merely the
outward manifestation. True craftsmanship is a journey of the spirit. (May 1989)
> YOU’D BE SURPRISED how many people don’t bother to lock their cars. (December 1964)
> DON’T TRUST traffic lights totally. (August 1975)
> IF YOU WORK in wood, there’s a good chance that most everything you’ll ever build will be based on a 90-degree angle. (May 1999)
> A TRUSTED NEIGHBOR is invaluable. (September 1971)
> PU T A MEDIUM-SIZE MAN in the saddle of a midget-size motorcycle, and you have the ingredients of a whale of a time. (January 1965)
> W HEN NAILING TOGETHER two pieces of wood of different thicknesses, the general rule is to select a nail long enough that two-thirds
of its length will be in the larger piece. (April 1960)
> THERE ARE T WO VITAL FACTS necessary to know in order to obtain a bargain on a used car—when the car was built, and how far it
I L LU S T R AT I O N R O B E R T C . KO R TA

has been driven. (September 1926)

> BATHROOM REMODELS DEMAND the skills of all the major crafts. (May 1999)
> ONE SURE WAY to keep the peace in a bedroom shared by two active boys is to split the room in two. (September 1977)
> CREAM CHEESE usually contains one or more of a trio of ingredients—xanthan gum, guar gum, and locust bean gum—that help
thicken and stabilize it. Works wonders on eggs. (September 2014)
> CIT Y LIGHTS are a thrilling spectacle from the air. (June 1939)
> TAKING CARE of the shining exterior won’t do much to extend the car’s life if you ignore the greasy side. Most corrosion begins some-
where on the underside and works its way through to the top. (October 1984)
> TIME IS merciless. (August 1995)
> IF YOUR TOILET won’t shut off, try jiggling the handle. It might work. (December 2005)

JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2018 063

 EDITOR’S NOTE
In the early 1950s, with
powerful rockets developed
in the war effort, space travel
was a tantalizing possibility.
Naturally, PM reported on
how it might work. We got
pretty close.

I
n 1952, the article “Shall We Move to Another Planet?” high-
lighted what were, at the time, the most promising ideas about
how mankind might explore the universe beyond Earth’s atmo-
sphere. This was five years before the first Soviet satellite, Sputnik
1, would reach orbit; 17 years before Americans would reach the
moon; and 59 years before the NASA space shuttle program would be
shuttered. The article included predictions of the space shuttle and the
International Space Station, and more outlandish ideas, like that we
might use nuclear-fusion-powered jets to move other planets closer to
the sun and modify their sizes to be more Earth-like for colonization.
We asked astronaut Scott Kelly, who has logged 520 days in space
over four missions, to read the original 1952 feature and tell us how
actual space travel compares.

This diagram shows a rocket

with two boosters falling off.
That’s like the space shuttle. In
real life, rockets don’t go straight
up like that, but the concept is
correct. And transport rockets
200 feet tall, and carrying a
(Appearance 30-ton payload—those are
from space as space-shuttle-like numbers.
yet unknown)

I think it’s pretty cool they were think-
ing about this before we had all the
space junk we have to worry about
today. In the story they’re more worried
about meteoroids, but we have shields
now that protect from the man-made
objects left up in space. The space
station gets hit all the time with stuff.
An Update
LY
K E L
S C OT T
I THOUGHT the story was
entertaining. That headline
makes it sound like something
you could just do right then,
over the weekend.
My first comment is that
the future is a long period of
time. So for me to say all of this
or some of this is just complete
B.S.—I don’t think I would ever
go as far as to say something will
never happen. But with current
understandings of physics and
technology, moving a planet, or
taking a planet and stripping
off some of its mass so its grav-
ity is more Earth-like, seems a
little bit far-fetched.
As far as space travel goes,
there’s a line in the story that
JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2018
says astronauts in zero gravity
will have the sensation of falling
all the time, which they seemed
very concerned about. Yeah, ini-
tially you feel like you’re falling,
so their concern is warranted,
but in reality people get used
to the feeling pretty quickly. I
got used to it in a few minutes.
I have heard of people on the
shuttle flights who felt like they
were falling for the whole week
or two they’re up there, though.
There’s also talk in the story
about how ventilation will be an
issue. In reality it is a big con-
cern. We have procedures where,
if we’re going behind a panel
or a rack on the space station,
we’re supposed to have an oxy-
gen sensor to make sure there’s
enough oxygen, because the
ventilation isn’t good. So they
There’s a lot of
concern about keep-
ing the spacecraft
warm, but a much
larger issue is how
you reject heat, from
both your electron-
ics and the sun.
The story posits an
orbital station at
350 miles altitude
that would have to
move 16,200 miles
per hour to maintain
its position—those
numbers are pretty
close to reality, from
definitely had that figured out. what I understand.
At the end, there’s a great line As for inflatable por-
that talks about how it took 100 tions of spacecraft
that could be col-
million years for aquatic animals
lapsed in transport
to transition to land, and it only and inflated once in
took 1 million years for man to space: On the ISS,
make it to space. I’d say you can we have the BEAM,
take it one step further: For us the Bigelow Expand-
able Activity Module,
to venture away from Earth, to
which creates an
live off Earth or out of our solar inflatable habitat.
system permanently, it might
take 100 million years. I like the
idea that it took us a long time to
get to where we are now, and it
might take just as long for us to
get to another planet.
—As told to Lara Sorokanich
Scott Kelly’s book Endurance,
about his year in space, is
available now.
065
1
THE JEEP
vehicle that’s still a world-beater.
NOVE M B E R 19 42
Miracle on Wheels 1
“Army men call the jeep a miracle
on wheels. Engineers at the huge
4 Willys plant, where thousands are
rolling down assembly lines devoted
to automobiles, believe the jeep’s
uses are still relatively unexplored.
After the war, its designers see it
as a prime farm tool. Right now,
however, it has a wartime job to do
alongside the fighting men. They’ll
do it, too, these jeeps and Yanks.”
FE B RUARY 19 4 8
Jeep Posse 2
“While overseas, thousands of GIs
dreamed of the day when they
would be turned loose with a jeep
and a tankful of gasoline. Today
that overseas dream has come.”
AUGUST 1955
Uranium Hunt by Jeep 3
“Old-time prospectors are some-
what startled when they see the
latest uranium-mining equipment
whiz by. Atop the cab of his pilot
Jeep, Francis K. Campbell of Hous-
5 ton, Texas, has installed a detecting
device that not only reports radio-
activity but whether the rays are of
the type produced by uranium. The
findings are recorded on a moving
graph beside the driver’s seat.”
NOVE M B E R 1985
4 you explain ‘It’s a Jeep thing’ to
2
strip to Eugene the Jeep in 1936,
‘a wonderful animal who could do
most anything.’ Others credit
an anonymous sergeant at
the Holabird testing facil-
ity, who transposed the
word jeep for a more
colorful expletive.”
NOVE M B E R 199 6
Wrangler on the Rubicon 5
“When we decided to test the
mettle of Jeep’s new TJ Wrangler,
there was only one place we con-
sidered—the legendary Rubicon.
Right off the bat we’re impressed
at how our Wrangler just soaks up
the bumps and jolts.”
JAN UARY 2 01 8
It’s a Jeep Thing 6
I was at a stoplight in New York
City recently when a black
late-model Wrangler pulled up
next to me. My girlfriend, in the
passenger seat, told me the
driver had his window down to
talk. I rolled down mine. “That’s
the last real Jeep,” he told me,
admiringly. My Jeep is a 2005. In
2007 Chrysler redesigned the
Wrangler top to bottom, soften-
ing the boxy lines and replacing
the AMC straight six that had
been under the hood for four 6
decades. “By the way,” he said,
“as long as I have you here, can
her?” He nodded toward the
woman in his passenger seat.
My girlfriend laughed; she was
always mocking me for throw-
ing a Jeep Wave when I passed
other Wranglers. “I can’t,” I
said, and the light turned green.
—Kevin Dupzyk
P OPULAR MECHANICS
 EDITOR’S NOTE

Camper vans are heavily

associated with the ’70s, but
Rooftop Rack and there’s still a place for a vehicle
with the functionality of a small

Pop-Up Shelter home that’s not the size of one. So

here’s a way to add closet space.
BY G E N E R APP

W
ITHOUT THE
pop-up shelter,
this platform
serves as an overhead lug-
gage rack to carry supplies
and camping gear. Even
with the lean-to-type pop-
up top installed, there is
still a forward luggage space
the width of the car and
about 43 inches long avail-
able for stowage. Since the
shelter hinges to the roof
rack with removable pins,
it is easy to convert the plat-
form from elevated sleeping
porch to luggage carrier or
spectator deck.
The starting point in the
construction of the roof-
top carrier is the placing
of 2 x 6s across the roof’s
width at the rib-support
points of your vehicle.
Sketch an outline of the
roof contour on each 2 x 6
and then cut on a band saw.
Next cut the ½-inch ply-
wood deck sections, whose
exact dimensions will be
determined by the width
of your vehicle. These sec-
tions are screwed to the ribs
and edged with 1 x 10 white-
pine rails.
For the pop-up top,
1 x 10s form end pieces,
and ribs and side pieces
are of 1 x 4. Stiffeners made
of 1 x 2 lumber run the
length and are covered with
1⁄8-inch hardboard. Suitcase
latches hold down the aft
edge of the top.
To finish the rack, white
duck canvas strips are glued
to the underside of the rib
supports to prevent scratch-
ing the van roof. Trailer skin
sheeting covers the side rails
and the pop-up top; edge
everything with aluminum
trim. Eyebolts or loose-pin
butt hinges are placed on
the deck forward of the shel-
ter top; more eyebolts or pad
eyes provide anchor points
for lines securing gear boxes
and equipment. Turnbuck-
les snug the platform to
hooks that catch under the
van’s drip rails.
The roof platform is
light enough to allow young-
sters to mount it. Add on the
pop-up top, tilt it up, and
rig curtains, and the kids
have their own compart-
ment. Without the top, it’s
a front-row box for specta-
tors at sporting events. Once
the race or game begins,
the roof platform, complete
with sun umbrella and deck
chairs, becomes an ideal
vantage point.

JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2018 *For today’s equivalent, try .030 beveled aluminum skin from Mirage Trailer Parts. 067
 EDITOR’S NOTE

This may have been the most controversial

story we ever did. It certainly garnered the
largest response. Hundreds of letters came in
after we debunked many prevalent conspiracy
theories surrounding the 9/11 attacks. Thirteen
years later, we still get letters.

DEBUNKING the
MYTHS
PM examines the evidence and
consults the experts to refute
the most persistent conspiracy
theories of September 11.
F R O M T H E M O M E N T the first airplane

F crashed into the World Trade Center on the

morning of September 11, 2001, the world
has asked one simple and compelling ques-
tion: How could it happen?
Three and a half years later, not everyone is convinced
we know the truth. Go to Google.com, type in the search
phrase “World Trade Center conspiracy,” and you’ll get
links to an estimated 12,300,000 websites. Thousands of
books on 9/11 have been published; many of them reject
the official consensus that hijackers associated with
Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda flew passenger planes
into U.S. landmarks.
To investigate 16 of the most prevalent claims made by
conspiracy theorists, Popular Mechanics assembled a team of nine No Stand-Down Order
W TC : P H OTO G R A P H BY R O B H O WA R D

researchers and reporters who, together with PM editors, consulted
more than 70 professionals in fields that form the core content of
this magazine, including aviation, engineering, and the military.
In the end, we were able to debunk each of these assertions with
hard evidence and a healthy dose of common sense. We learned
that a few theories are based on something as innocent as a report-
ing error on that chaotic day. Others are the byproducts of cynical
imaginations that aim to inject suspicion and animosity into public
debate. Only by confronting such poisonous claims with irrefutable
facts can we understand what really happened on a day that is for-
ever seared into world history. —The editors
No fighter jets were scrambled from any of the 28 Air
CLAIM:
Force bases within close range of the four hijacked
flights. “On 11 September Andrews had two squadrons of fighter
jets with the job of protecting the skies over Washington, D.C.,” says
the website emperors-clothes.com. “They failed to do their job.”
“There is only one explanation for this,” writes Mark R. Elsis of
StandDown.net. “Our Air Force was ordered to Stand Down on 9/11.”
On 9/11 there were only 14 fighters on alert in the con-
FA C T :
tiguous 48 states. No computer network or alarm
automatically alerted the North American Air Defense Command
(NORAD) of missing planes. “They [civilian Air Traffic Control, or

068 P OPULAR MECHANICS

Though dozens of witnesses
saw a Boeing 757 hit the
building, conspiracy advo-
cates insist there is evidence
that a missile or a different
type of plane smashed into
the Pentagon.
ATC] had to pick up the
phone and literally dial
us,” says Maj. Douglas
Martin, public affairs
officer for NORAD. Bos-
ton Center, one of 22
Federal Aviation Admin-
istration (FAA) regional
ATC facilities, called
NORAD’s Northeast Air
Defense Sector (NEADS)
three times: at 8:37 a.m.
EST to inform NEADS that Flight 11 was hijacked; at 9:21 a.m. to
inform the agency, mistakenly, that Flight 11 was headed for Wash-
ington (the plane had hit the North Tower 35 minutes earlier); and
at 9:41 a.m. to (erroneously) identify Delta Air Lines Flight 1989
from Boston as a possible hijacking. The New York ATC called NEADS
at 9:03 a.m. to report that United Flight 175 had been hijacked—the
same time the plane slammed into the South Tower. Within minutes
of that first call from Boston Center, NEADS scrambled two F-15s
from Otis Air Force Base in Falmouth, Massachusetts, and three
F-16s from Langley Air National Guard Base in Hampton, Virginia.
None of the fighters got anywhere near the pirated planes.
Why couldn’t ATC find the hijacked flights? When the hijackers
turned off the planes’ transponders, which broadcast identifying
signals, ATC had to search 4,500 identical radar blips crisscrossing
some of the country’s busiest air corridors. And NORAD’s sophisti-
cated radar? It ringed the continent, looking outward for threats,
not inward. “It was like a doughnut,” Martin says. “There was no
coverage in the middle.” Pre-9/11, flights originating in the States
were not seen as threats and NORAD wasn’t prepared to track them.
Puffs of Dust
As each tower collapsed, clearly visible puffs of dust and
CLAIM:
debris were ejected from the sides of the buildings. An
advertisement in The New York Times for the book Painful Ques-
tions: An Analysis of the September 11th Attack made this claim:
“The concrete clouds shooting out of the buildings are not possible
from a mere collapse. They do occur from explosions.” Numerous
conspiracy theorists cite Van Romero, an explosives expert and vice
president of the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology,
who was quoted on 9/11 by the Albuquerque Journal as saying “there
were some explosive devices inside the buildings that caused the
towers to collapse.” The article continues: “Romero said the collapse
of the structures resembled those of controlled implosions used to
demolish old structures.”
Once each tower began to collapse, the weight of all the
FA C T :
floors above the collapsed zone bore down with pulver-
izing force on the highest intact floor. Unable to absorb the massive
energy, that floor would fail, transmitting the forces to the floor
below, allowing the collapse to progress through the building in a
JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2018
chain reaction. Engi-
neers call the process
“pancaking,” and it does
not require an explosion
to begin, according to
David Biggs, a struc-
tural engineer at
Ryan-Biggs Associates
and a member of the
American Society of
Civil Engineers team
t hat worked on t he
FEMA report.
Like all office build-
ings, the WTC towers
contained a huge volume
of air. As they pancaked,
all that air—along with
the concrete and other debris pulverized by the force of the collapse—
was ejected with enormous energy. “When you have a significant
portion of a floor collapsing, it’s going to shoot air and concrete dust
out the window,” National Institute of Standards and Technology
lead investigator Shyam Sunder tells PM. Those clouds of dust may
create the impression of a controlled demolition, Sunder adds, “but
it is the floor pancaking that leads to that perception.”
Demolition expert Romero regrets that his comments to the
Albuquerque Journal became fodder for conspiracy theorists.
“I was misquoted in saying that I thought it was explosives that
brought down the building,” he tells PM. “I only said that that’s
what it looked like.”
Romero, who agrees with the scientific conclusion that fire trig-
gered the collapses, demanded a retraction from the Journal. It
was printed September 22, 2001. “I felt like my scientific reputa-
tion was on the line.” But emperors-clothes.com saw something
else: “The paymaster of Romero’s research institute is the Pentagon.
Directly or indirectly, pressure was brought to bear, forcing Romero
to retract his original statement.” Romero responds: “Conspiracy
theorists came out saying that the government got to me. That is the
farthest thing from the truth. This has been an albatross around my
neck for three years.”
Flight 77 Debris
Conspiracy theorists insist there was no plane wreck-
CLAIM:
age at the Pentagon. “In reality, a Boeing 757 was never
found,” claims pentagonstrike.co.uk, which asks the question,
“What hit the Pentagon on 9/11?”
Blast expert Allyn E. Kilsheimer was the first struc-
FA C T :
tural engineer to arrive at the Pentagon after the crash
and helped coordinate the emergency response. “It was absolutely
a plane, and I’ll tell you why,” says Kilsheimer, CEO of KCE Struc-
tural Engineers PC, Washington, D.C. “I saw the marks of the plane
wing on the face of the building. I picked up parts of the plane with
the airline markings on them. I held in my hand the tail section of
the plane and I found the black box.” Kilsheimer’s eyewitness
account is backed up by photos of plane wreckage inside and outside
the building. Kilsheimer adds: “I held parts of uniforms from crew
members in my hands, including body parts. Okay?”
069
 EDITOR’S NOTE

We’ve always had a thing for big trucks and big

engines—especially when they’re used to crush
stuff. Bigfoot had been through twelve iterations
when we first published this story. Twenty-six
years later, they’re up to number 21, which is still
destroying old cars and making crowds cheer.

foots, representing three generations keeping the 10,000-pound truck on an even

BY CLIFF GROMER
firestorm of exploding glass
fractures the light in a blaze
of brilliant sparkles. This is
car abuse at its most spec-
tacular—monster trucks dive-bombing a
squad of sacrificial automobiles, pouncing
and bouncing crazily over roofs and hoods,
and bashing them pancake-flat. It’s the
“Monster Mash,” and it’s a box-office smash.
Bulldozer brawn is just the beginning.
The public eventually tired of a pack of sin-
gle-purpose monsters whose whole act was
simply pounding cars into scrap. So the
event’s promoters had to come up with new
forms of monster truck madness—mud
racing, sand drags, hill
climbs, and more. And
as the madness evolved,
so did the trucks. Today’s
monster trucks are faster,
absorb more stress, and
require more control.
They have to stay in their
lanes over bouncy, twist-
ing obst a cle courses,
where the obstacles are
junk cars. That’s no small
feat when you’re bounding
along on four huge tires
that ride like beach balls.
To get an idea of what
goes into a modern mon-
ster ma sher, we went
to St. Louis, Missouri,
home of the most famous
big-wheeler of them all—
Bigfoot. All told, there
are no fewer than 12 Big-
of development.
Peeking under the skin of one of the new-
est versions, the first thing you notice is the
skin itself. The entire Ford pickup body is all
fiberglass, with door handles and headlights
painted on. The frame uses chromoly steel
tubing, similar to the frames used in sta-
dium race trucks. Driver comfort, believe it
or not, was also a major concern. The older
trucks were bashing the drivers around
inside their cabs almost as much as they
bashed the cars underfoot. Easing the shock
loads finding their way into the cab helps the
driver maintain better control, and also cuts
down on the medical bills.
Extra-generous suspension travel is the
key to going faster, jumping higher, and
keel. It is achieved by using a four-link setup.
Four bars extend from the pivot point at the
center of the frame to pivot points on the
axles. Two huge nitrogen-charged shocks at
each corner help maintain ride height and
jounce and rebound characteristics. Ini-
tially, the shocks move two inches for every
inch of wheel movement. But as the shocks
compress into their last stage, the damping
ratio stiffens to 1:1.
While many of Bigfoot’s parts—such as
driveshafts and tie rods—are handmade,
some are adapted from agricultural and
industrial applications. The new trucks
run Rockwell F106 axle housings (nor-
mally used in school buses). Mechanics
cut the ends off the housings and weld on
special flanges. The axle
itself comes with a plane-
tary gear reduction on the
end of the shaft. This setup
allows additional 3.56:1
gear reduction to ease the
torque load on the axle.
C u s t om-m a de one -
piece r ims (sa fer a nd
lighter than t wo-piece
rims) carry 66x43x25 Fire-
stone Terra tires. In the real
world, these tires support
30-mile-per-hour liquid fer-
tilizer spreaders. Inflated to
between five and 11 pounds
per square inch, the tires,
about $2,000 apiece, com-
press right to the rims on
jumps. Shaving the tread
on new tires cuts another
200 pounds—per tire—off
the truck’s weight.
P H OTO G R A P H BY B I G F O OT 4 X4 I N C .

070 P OPULAR MECHANICS

 Pumping big power to Bigfoot’s big feet
starts off with a Ford Motorsport high-
nickel-content cast-iron 460 cylinder block
that’s bored and stroked to 500 cubic inches.
The engine, fed by Crower fuel injection and
boosted by a 30 percent overdriven Blower
Drive Service 8-71 supercharger, seems to
provide more than enough muscle.
In case you’re wondering what the third
“4” is in Bigfoot 4x4x4, it’s for four-wheel
steering. Hydraulics, borrowed from vari-
ous agricultural and industrial jobs, turn the
steering knuckles on front and rear axles.
The front system uses a conventional belt-
driven power-steering pump. Rear steering
uses electric-driven hydraulic pumps con-
trolled by a switch mounted on the shifter.
Tie rods, front and rear, connect the steer-
ing knuckles to keep the wheels parallel
in case the truck comes off a jump on one
wheel. They prevent the pressure from forc-
ing the hydraulics on one side from turning
the wheel in.
The front-steering hydraulic sys-
tem uses a relief valve to blow off excess
pressure. Without the valve, a one-point
front-wheel landing could generate enough
back-force in the hydraulics to whip the
steering wheel with such violence that it
could break a driver’s fingers and wrists.

Bigfoot No. 8 sports the latest

in monster truck technology. FIBERGLASS CAB
Computer-designed chassis with AND BED
four-link suspension and smaller-
size tires gives this Bigfoot more
speed, stability, durability, and
comfort than its ancestors.

CHROMOLY
STEEL-TUBE CHASSIS

ROLL CAGE HYDRAULIC

STEERING ARM
ENGINE RADIATOR

C-6 AUTOMATIC
TRANSMISSION FUEL CELL

REAR-STEERING
BDS 8-71 SOLENOIDS
SUPERCHARGER

500-CU.-IN. FORD
MOTORSPORT ENGINE

DUAL-NITROGEN
SHOCK ABSORBERS

12-IN.
DISC BRAKE

4-LINK
SUSPENSION TRANSFER
CASE
I L LU S T R AT I O N BY D O N M A N N E S

66x43x25 TERRA TIRE

CUSTOM ONE-PIECE RIM

TIE ROD DRIVESHAFT

ROCKWELL F106 STEERING KNUCKLE

AXLE HOUSINGS

PLANETARY GEAR-
DIFFERENTIAL REDUCTION HUB
(6.20:1)
071
 Clippings
In 116 years, very few topics have escaped the notice of
PM editors. Here, excerpts of some of the current staff’s favorite
reporting from throughout the magazine’s lifetime. BREAD
SLICER
CUTS AND
WRAPS
THOUSAND
L OAV E S
WHILE YOU AN HOUR
Bread that comes to the

DRIVE
housewife ready-cut is
now on the market in
many cities, a slicing and
wrapping machine doing
the cutting and packing
the cut loaf in a waxed
container to keep it fresh.

T
hink of finding hot dogs or ham-
burgers ready when you stop
driving at noon, or having a stew
sizzling and savory at the end of a long
day’s drive. By placing foil-wrapped pack-
ages of food atop the engine exhaust
manifold you can prepare a hot meal
as you travel. When you stop, just lift
the hood and dish out the meal. Make
sure you place the foil package atop the
exhaust—not the intake—manifold. The
latter doesn’t get hot enough for cooking.
On V-8 engines, the package goes atop the
block, between the cylinders. Hot dogs
take about 25 miles to cook; hamburg-
ers, 50 or 60. For a trip of several days,
a number of complete
foil-wrapped meals
can be prepared before
departing and carried
inside a small ice chest.
The machine cuts 29,000
slices an hour from
1,000 loaves. The bread,
ready for using when
unwrapped, is particularly
adapted for sandwiches,
RECIPE:
because it is evenly and
BEEF STEW À L A MANIFOLD smoothly cut.
The serious car-engine chef quickly discovers it takes
at least three hours to cook a full meal, even a stew. MARCH 1930
1. Cut into one-inch cubes enough lean beef to sat-
isfy those end-of-the-trip appetites. Place this meat
atop three layers of foil.
2. Drain a can of mushrooms and add the contents.
Automobile Hat
Also add half a package of dry onion soup mix and a
tablespoon each of barbecue sauce and butter.
3. In the same package, place carrots and small pota-
toes. It is best to parboil vegetables before your trip
to ensure cooking and to retain moisture: the car-
rots for ten minutes, the potatoes for five.
4. Put the foil package on the exhaust manifold and
twist a couple short lengths of wire around them to
prevent slipping from engine vibration.
5. Drive.

TORQUE MANAGEMENT 2001 Motor millinery.

Millinery has not here-

Back in April 1988, we were dreaming of the hybrid future and conceived our own concept car— tofore been considered
the creatively named “PM”—to show how things might work in the distant year of 2001. Our sufficiently mechanical
to find mention in these
idea was to use a three-cylinder gas engine driving one end of the car, with electric motors at
columns. But the lat-
the other end to provide all-wheel drive. “Batteries would supplement the underpowered gas est Parisian conception,
motor for bursts of acceleration and brief bursts of four-wheel drive,” we said. “Vehicle could worn at the recent auto
also be driven as pure electrical drive, with gas motor switched on briefly to provide power for show in that
acceleration.” If any of that sounds familiar, it’s because that’s exactly how the three-cylinder city, seems FEB
to deserve an 1906
hybrid BMW i8 works. It took 26 years (the i8 debuted in 2014) and
some of the details are different, but still: We called it. —Ezra Dyer APRIL 1988 illustration.

Racing Sheep-Killing Sharks Energy Pacific Ocean Half Brain

OUT OF Motor Car Parrots Are Expended Not Big as Good as
CONTEXT Literally Escape into Cowards in Speaking Enough to Hold Whole One,
Flies America M AY Found of the Moon Surgery Finds
Through Air DECEM BER 1927 Little Value NOV EM BER DECEM BER
J U LY 1911 1917 M AY 1932 1932 1939

072 P OPULAR MECHANICS

 FIRST
LEARNING TO FLY:

IN AMERICA
America’s first speed law was passed by the board
THE SOL O
of selectmen in Boston, in 1757, and limited traf- BY JOSHUA FER R IS
AUGUST 1983
fic to a foot pace on Sundays. This ordinance
recited that “coaches, sleighs, chairs, and other I still can’t explain why I
carriages” were being driven with great rapidity decided to solo any more
Callers to a dial-your-match system are first given
through the streets, and interfering with the Sab- than I can understand why
a secret password. Then they are asked to fill out a
short questionnaire. The questions ask such things bath worship. If the walking pace were exceeded, I agreed to learn to fly, unless
as height and weight, and may also get into astro- the ordinance exacted a fine of ten shillings from it is to say that I could solo,
logical signs and sexual preferences. The caller’s
“the master of the slave or servant so driving.” just as I could learn to fly,
questionnaire is computer matched with all the and like the man who looks
others. The caller can then read the answers given D EC E M B E R 193 0
at the bird and senses the
by those the computer has picked as compatible.
possibility of human flight,
Everything from casual dating to marriage has
resulted. So, if you’re ready for it, on the other what is possible is often sim-
side of your modem, people like Lynn 432, Jill 490, ply what is done. That is the
Janet 418, Clark 201, Tony 765, and many more are human record, to the world’s
just dying to meet you. delight and the world’s
dismay.
I don’t want to oversell
WRENCH FALLING FROM PLANE CAUSES it, but if I needed any reas-
surance that year that I was
JUNE not dying as my father had
1957
died and that I had things
A farmer near Philadelphia recently heard a roar, to live for despite his pain-
a whistling sound, and then saw something hit the ful absence, I found it that
ground in a cloud of dust. A mineralogist hurried day in front of the double
Thomas Siemons of Wenatchee, Washing- lines of the runway waiting
to the spot when the farmer telephoned that he
ton, guarantees a perfectly level “flattop” cut.
believed a meteorite had fallen. Search showed that He uses a horizontal, swinging iron bracket for clearance from air traf-
something had fallen, but the object was nothing but equipped with two swivel arms that hold a fic control, when I knew that
a wrench that had been dropped from an airplane clipper blade in level position. With clipper despite being hobbled and
flying at high altitude. attached, Siemons moves the apparatus in despite being anguished,
sweeping arcs to produce a haircut in five min- I had prevailed over my
JANUARY 1931 utes less time than for the usual trim. grief and my fear and over-
come a not inconsiderable
EARTH CURVE TABLE SHOWS HOW FAR AIRPLANE PILOTS CAN SEE amount of technical chal-
Pilots of a Flying Fortress cruising at 25,000 feet can see right into Germany before they are out of sight of lenge to prove to myself that
England’s Channel coast, according to a formula worked out by Pan American Clipper captains. By elevating I was still mentally sound
yourself, you can look right over the curvature of the earth. Given clear skies, the chart below shows the dis-
and ticking. I was in Six-Two
tance in miles that a pilot can see at varying altitudes.
Romeo absent all expertise
and guidance but my own,
and I took her up in the air
by myself without reserva-
tions or second thoughts,
and as I circled the pattern,
I whooped with happiness
and pumped my fist in vic-
tory and failed to repress
a smile so insistent that it
began to hurt my face.
SEPTEMBER 2015

Novel
Dutch Boy Rings “Passengers” Licking Antarctic to Wastebaskets Surgery for
Holds Your Aid Over Cliff at Our Missile Flee Women Eat Trash Detached
Pipe with African Supersonic Speed Fizzle? but Have Problems and Like It Heads
Both Hands Courtships JA N UA RY M AY Just the Same M A RCH J U LY
M AY 194 0 M AY 1947 1955 1961 NOV EM BER 1961 1975 1999

JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2018 073

FEB R UA RY
JA N UA RY
P 74

How
Popular
Mechanics
inspired
the most
famous
escape in
history.
BY
JA C Q U E L I N E
DET W I LER A B
 E

@POPULARMECHANICS
F

The November 1960 issue

of Popular Mechanics, one
of two that inspired the
escape (A); an investigator
finds a tunnel (B); Alcatraz
today (C); the article (D) that
helped Alcatraz prisoners
Frank Morris (E), John Anglin
(F), and Clarence Anglin (G)
brave San Francisco Bay.

C D
76 JA N UA RY
FEB R UA RY
2 01 8

I. “Like insurance,
lifesaving devices
are hard to value.
If you don’t need
them, they’re use-
less, even a bother.
If you do need
them, they’re A

priceless.” —POPULAR MECHANICS, 1962

December in Chicago and there’s some loon pre-
tending to drown in the Sheraton Towers Hotel pool.
It’s an indoor pool, but still. This guy is floating in
there in a white T-shirt and jeans, upright, with his
head lolled back and his eyes closed, sneakers just
grazing the bottom. An inflatable plaid life vest
barely holds his face out of the water. Later, he grabs
for a floating cushion, but that slips out of his hands
and he sinks up to his forehead reaching for it.
This man’s name is Bayard Richard, and you
shouldn’t worry about him. He swam backstroke
for the University of Wisconsin, and could make
B C
it to the edge of the pool and climb out whenever
he wants. Richard is thirty years old and works at
Popular Mechanics in the promotions department.
Mostly he comes up with ideas to get companies
interested in buying ads—mailers, meetings, stuff A Ten days after the con- name. In fact, Richard doesn’t think about the arti-
like that. It’s a great job: He makes about $5,000 a victs disappeared, the cle again for forty-five years, until his grown son
Coast Guard found a home-
year, and the office, on East Ontario Street, has a Paul is drinking a cup of coffee and turns on a doc-
made life vest off Angel
coffee cart and two secretaries. Besides, if you offer Island in San Francisco
umentary about the 1962 escape from Alcatraz on
yourself up to help the editors execute some scheme Bay, but no bodies. the History Channel. The host talks about the frigid
like testing life jackets in a hotel swimming pool, B The March 1962 issue of
waters of San Francisco Bay, a major deterrent to
you get paid a dollar. Popular Mechanics con- potential jailbreakers—and how the infamous 1962
Richard climbs out of the pool to try another taining Bayard Richard’s escapees found a solution in an edition of Popular
device. He’s testing them one at a time—a vest, a life-vest test. Mechanics in the prison library. The host holds a
second vest, a belt, a floating jacket, that useless C A few of the 80-plus copy up to the camera. There in the grainy photos,
cushion. Each time, the outdoors editor pushes tools Frank Morris and the recognizable from the crew cut everyone in the fam-
Richard into the pool and watches to see how he Anglin brothers made or ily jokes about and the nose Paul and his brother
stole while building their
comes up. Richard plays it up for the camera, clos- David share, is a thirty-year-old Bayard Richard.
escape supplies.
ing his eyes, holding his breath for a second or two, Paul nearly chokes on his coffee. As David remem-
flopping back, playing dead. bers it, “Paul’s looking at the television going, wait
The shoot takes about two hours, and then Rich- a minute, that’s my dad!”
ard changes into dry clothes and a warm jacket and
gets his dollar from petty cash. He takes the train
home to the house he just bought in Park Forest,
and that’s the end of it. He doesn’t see the article,
II. “I just thought
“Your Life Preserver—How will it behave if you need
it?” when it comes out in March 1962. He doesn’t
to myself, that’s
even realize the editors used (and misspelled) his one of the most

D
incredible stories
I’ve ever heard.”
—RICHARD TUGGLE, screenwriter, Escape From Alcatraz
Once the Chicago-based editorial department
completed the life-jacket article, it went with the
rest of the March 1962 issue to a printing pro-
duction facility in midtown Manhattan. Just one
copy made it from there to Alcatraz’s dedicated
post office at 7th and Mission Street in San Fran-
cisco (no zip code, as these did not exist until July
1, 1963). A mail vehicle brought the magazine to
Pacific Street Wharf, where it boarded a steam-
ship that ran to Alcatraz twice a day, every day
except Sunday.
Inside the prison, the issue would have gone
straight to an administration office, where cen-
sors removed any content that might help convicts
escape. But the story on life jackets, with the photos
of Richard, survived, and the magazine reached the
library intact. There, it was added to a delivery cart
that a prisoner pushed from cell to cell.
77
POPULARMECHANICS.COM
@POPULARMECHANICS
Like all Alcatraz residents, Frank Morris had
about four hours of free time until lights out after
dinner. That’s likely when he saw the issue for the
first time, sitting in his dank cell, about the size of
a pool table. He may have lain on his bed and put
his feet up on the toilet, listening to the seagulls
and the sounds of life floating across San Fran-
cisco Bay from the city, and imagined how he
himself would float over the bay like a seagull, to
drink in bars and meet a girl and procure a car
to drive to Mexico. And then, looking at Bayard
Richard there in that pool in Chicago, Frank Mor-
ris had an idea.
The story of the escape is legend, thanks in
part to the 1979 movie Escape From Alcatraz star-
ring Clint Eastwood as Morris. What happened:
Morris (imprisoned for bank robbery), along with
John and Clarence Anglin (two brothers, also
bank robbers) and Allen West, a fourth coconspir-
ator who ended up staying behind, chipped out the
disintegrating concrete around the air vents at the
back of their cells, expanding the holes until they
were large enough to accommodate a person. They
crawled through the holes into a utility corridor,
then established a secret workshop above their
own cellblock, hanging blankets to hide them-
selves from patrolling guards. Over time, using
more than eighty tools they created or stole, the
four men made dummy papier-mâché heads to
fool the guards into thinking they were still in
their beds. Then, on June 11, 1962, Morris and the
Anglins climbed a broken utility shaft, ran across
the roof, and left. They were never seen again.
Even people who have studied the escape for
years will never know if Popular Mechanics gave
D Frank Morris requested
five magazines before
Morris the idea to attempt it or whether the mag-
azine simply provided a method. It certainly
his escape. The FBI didn’t
seem to think Chess
Review was relevant.
contributed to the likelihood of success. Even the
FBI and the Federal Bureau of Prisons seemed to
think so. Screenwriter Richard Tuggle noticed
references to this publication in both agencies’
files while researching the screenplay that would
become the Eastwood movie. “I think it’s safe to
say that if those guys had not had Popular Mechan-
ics, they never would have tried to escape,” he says.
“The magazine gave them the final key that they
needed to be able to try this crazy thing.”
In the movie, Tuggle included just one line
to explain how Popular Mechanics might have
inspired the convicts. In the lunchroom with the
Anglins, Morris (Eastwood) whispers his plan to
tunnel through the concrete at the back of his cell,
then build something to carry them through the
frigid, roiling bay to the mainland.
“You’re gonna steal some raincoats, some con-
tact cement,” Eastwood-as-Morris says. “We’ll
make a life raft and some life preservers out of it. I
read how to do it in Popular Mechanics.”
78 JA N UA RY
FEB R UA RY
2 01 8

III. “When you “Vulcanizing takes about 15 minutes, and welds

the nine cut-out sections into an airtight shape.”

have all the time By March 1962, the raft was nearing completion,
but the prisoners weren’t ready to leave just yet. A

in the world, like new issue of Popular Mechanics had just arrived.
And wouldn’t you know it, there was a life-vest dem-

these fellas did, it’s A A page from the origi-

onstration inside.

amazing what a nal Escape From Alcatraz

script, featuring the scene
IV. “Alcatraz sells.”
person can do.”
—JOHN CANTWELL, Alcatraz ranger
in which Frank Morris
first gets his hands on Present day. A park ranger named John Cantwell is
—DON EBERLE, FBI agent in charge of 1962 Alcatraz Popular Mechanics. opening the gates to the Anglin brothers’ cells so a
escape investigation

There are actually two issues of Popular Mechanics

in the Alcatraz file at the Park Archives and Records
Center in San Francisco’s Presidio National Park,
and both are in remarkable condition considering
how many prisoners, law-enforcement officers, and
historians have pawed through them over the years.
The corners are ruffled, the paper gone soft, as if it’s
been conditioned by sea breeze. But the covers are
still bright—headlines promising a PM jet and a
Go-anywhere boat and All the ’61 cars in color! over
photos of Chevys and speedboats in washed-out tur-
quoise and red and yellow. If they weren’t marred by
the signatures of FBI agents, you could frame the
covers and hang them on a wall.
The other issue is from November 1960. In it is
an article about a hunter who builds his own goose
decoys out of found rubber, using a technique called
vulcanizing. To people who think about vulcanizing
at all—which is to say, almost nobody—this is a fairly
boring process by which sulfur or other curatives cre-
ate water-resistant links between rubber molecules.
To Morris and the Anglins, though, it was informa-
tion worth its weight in government pardons.
“Step one—cut the pattern from an old rubber
inner tube.”
It was a common belief at Alcatraz that if any-
body beat the prison’s escape-proof reputation, the
government would close the facility. So when Mor-
ris and the Anglins came asking for raincoats, lots
of convicts obliged, happy to play even a small part
in shutting down the Rock. They wore their own
rubber coats out to the yard, then dropped them so
the would-be escapees could casually pick them up
and carry them back to the secret workshop. Mor-
ris, the Anglins, and West amassed at least fifty
raincoats this way.
“Step two—seam edges are buffed and spread
with solvent, then vulcanized with thin raw rub-
ber strips.”
Over several months, the four prisoners secreted
rubber cement (many varieties of which include
vulcanizing agents) from Alcatraz’s cobbling and
glove-making shops, then spread it on the seams
of the raincoats to join them into a raft. A

TV journalist can stick her head into the enlarged
air vent. The fifty-fifth anniversary of the escape
is coming up, and she needs a teaser shot for a seg-
ment she’s producing. “I got an inside look at the
infamous cells,” she says in an on-camera jour-
nalist voice, “which are normally off-limits to the
public.” Tourists crowd around, many of them fam-
ilies with young boys who, for the moment, have put
away their video games and cellphones and even
removed the headphones that come with the audio
tour to stare into the concrete boxes where bad men
lived squalid little lives. The boys jockey for posi-
tion. “Did they leave from there?” one asks. “Did
B
C D
B Clint Eastwood as
Frank Morris in Escape
From Alcatraz.
C A dummy head made
with hair stolen from the
barbershop fooled the
guards into thinking the
prisoners were still in bed.
D Today, cells on the
official Alcatraz tour
contain old copies of Life,
Sports Illustrated, and
Popular Mechanics.
79
POPULARMECHANICS.COM
@POPULARMECHANICS
they make that hole?”
“Can we see the raft?”
No one looks bored. Even the dads, in their shorts
and ball caps and performance fleece, have ques-
tions for Cantwell. It’s been this way since soon after
Tuggle’s movie was released. “I think Don Siegel told
me that Paramount spent $1 million, which was a
lot of money back then, in fixing up the prison to be
what it was in the old days,” Tuggle says. “The movie
really changed the physical site, and then gave pub-
licity to the escape. And people started going.”
Today, more than 1.7 million people visit the
prison every year, peering into cells stocked with
period-specific reading materials—Life, Sports
Illustrated, and many copies of Popular Mechanics.
They listen to the audio tour, which urges them to
imagine eking out day after miserable day there. To
imagine the creativity and dedication it would take
to escape. Cantwell has watched many thousands
of them, and he sees their emotional states trans-
form as the tour brings them deeper and deeper
inside the prison walls. “People are fascinated with
the macabre,” he says. With irony, and hubris, and
wrestling with the fat thumb of institutional power.
When you take the tour of this lonely buoy in the
middle of San Francisco Bay, part of you feels like,
just maybe, Morris and the Anglins earned their
freedom. Maybe even deserved it.
And that’s a strange feeling.
“That’s the difficulty in being a writer of a true
event,” says Tuggle. “In reality, Morris and the
Anglins were probably bad guys...But for a movie,
you can’t have that. I wanted to show what these guys
did, and the only way to have the audience behind
them was to make the characters nicer than they
were in real life.”
As for Bayard Richard—whose one-off stunt in
a hotel pool launched a butterfly effect that led to a
prison escape, a movie, and the revitalization of a
historic landmark—does he feel he played a part in
creating a cult of personality around a trio of dudes
you wouldn’t want to encounter in a San Francisco
alley? “No,” he says. “It’s just the kind of thing you
do when you’re in the magazine business.”
Popular Mechanics tells its readers how to make
things. Always has, since 1902. When that informa-
tion gets used illegally, there’s not much we can do
about it. On one hand, the magazine doesn’t con-
done prison escapes. But there’s something about
the way Morris and the Anglins went about it—they
were nonviolent offenders who broke out of the most
notorious prison in the world without harming so
much as a seagull—that seems in the spirit of the
magazine: decent, almost charming lawlessness,
more Ocean’s 11 than Scarface. We’d rather hear a
story about how that life-jacket article kept a whole
family safe during an afternoon boat ride, but who
would make a movie about that?
 EDITOR’S NOTE

There’s an old saw about not wasting

your time on tools that are only good for one
thing. The pleasure of this project comes
from looking at a car’s bottle jack and realiz-
ing it has more uses. And from realizing that,
forty years later, a jack is still only $20.

Hydraulic
Press You
Can Build
A simple frame and
hydraulic auto jack
make a powerful press
for bending jobs.
Left: Use a
band saw
to cut a
two-part
wood form
for curved
bends. Right:
A V-block
and angle
iron make
right angles.

BY M O RTO N E . M I LLI KE N

A
hydraulic press is expensive
ready-made, but you can make
one from a few dollars’ worth
of structural iron and a $20 hydraulic
auto jack. My press uses a 3-ton jack; do
not use a larger one. The base and top
parts of the press are 10-inch lengths
of 4-inch channel; the movable jaw is
made of two 10-inch lengths of 2-inch
angle. The two rods are the result of cut-
ting a 3-foot length of ½-inch-diameter
threaded rod in half.
Weld together the pieces of 2-inch
angle to create a box—the moving plat-
form. (For a wider platform, bolt an
extra length of angle to the platform,
as pictured.) Then create a cardboard
template to help locate ½-inch-diam-
eter holes 7 inches apart, center to
center, on the platform and both pieces
of channel. Assemble the frame by
threading the rod through one piece
of channel, then the moving platform,
then the other piece of channel, using
one nut and washer on either side of
each channel hole. When the frame
parts are assembled, the platform
should drop to the base without bind-
ing. Put the jack in place and the press
is complete.
Center the jaw and the work to pre-
vent snagging. Neat right-angle bends
in mild steel are easy with a V-block
and angle iron as a form. A two-part
form band-sawed in 2-inch oak block
will produce curved work.

080 P OPULAR MECHANICS


Winch Mired Car to Firm
Ground with Spanish
Windlass
The windlass is used to winch the car to
firm footing as illustrated. To do this,
a small log is placed upright in a shal-
low hole dug next to a tree to which it is
linked with a rope as shown. One end
of a tow rope is then tied to the car and
the other end is wound on the log, after
a loop is tied on the end. A stout pole
inserted in the loop is used as a lever to
operate the windlass. —Contributed
by E.V. Reyner, Salinas, California
JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2018
E A S Y W AY S
TO DO
HARD THINGS
AVOID CUPPING BY
ALTERNATING
When tabletops and other wide pan-
els are built of random-width boards,
the heart grain of the boards should
change direction from board to board
and bar clamps should be placed on
alternate sides of the work.
Playing Cards Serve
as Template to Copy
Irregular Work
Accurate fittings for moldings, cor-
nices, etc., can be cut using two decks
of playing cards to form a template of
the work to be copied. Just stack the
cards and then press one end over the
contour of the work as shown. After
squeezing the stack tightly to avoid
slipping, remove it and trace the con-
tour on the piece to be cut.
HOMEMADE LEVEL
Jas. Morton Jr., Dunn, Tennessee
081

PROJECT
Use a router and edge guide to cut
1 the mortises in the easel legs. Then,
readjust the bit depth and rout the panel
grooves. Use a table saw to cut the ten-
ons on the rails.
082
Cut ¼-inch maple plywood to
2 size for the easel panels. Cut the
1⁄8-inch-thick cork a few inches oversize,
and apply spray adhesive to secure it to
one panel.
EDITOR’S NOTE
This easel combines a
dry-erase board with a cork
board, offering a creative
(and erasable) outlet for your
children. Build it for them, or,
better yet, build it with them.
Easel
TEX T AN D PHOTOGRAPHS BY
NEAL BARRETT
We all want the best for our children—
even when their creative endeavors
seem to overtake every surface in the
house. How do you know when it’s
gone too far? Well, when you start
writing checks with a Day-Glo pen or
get the cold shoulder for accidentally
sitting on your finger-painted portrait,
it’s time to bring some of your own
skills into the act. To help out, we’ve
designed an easel to help focus your
kids’ expressive energy. It features a
dry-marker board on one side and a
corkboard on the other.
Press the cork in place and trim
3 excess with a utility knife. For the
white marker board, we bought a framed
board from a home center and removed
the frame.
P OPULAR MECHANICS
 1
FINISHING J

We finished A

PROJECT
the easel with
three coats of
McCloskey Water B
Base Polyure- D F
thane in a satin
finish. To do the
job, first remove
all hardware and H D E
sand the wood
with 120-, 150-,
and 220-grit L
sandpaper. Then
apply each coat C 2-1 /2"
according to the K
manufacturer’s
instructions. I
When the final G
17˚
coat is dry, rub
the surface with
4/0 steel wool
1
and buff with a
soft cloth. H 13/32" 17˚
C 1-1 /8 "
CL 17˚
73˚ G

CUT WITH AMANA BIT

L
1/4"-DIA. HOLE 1/2" NO. 45986 IN ROUTER

MATERIALS LIST

KEY QTY. SIZE DESCRIPTION KEY QTY. SIZE DESCRIPTION

A 4 13⁄16" x 21⁄2" x 431⁄2" maple (leg) G 2 13⁄16" x 23⁄4" x 24" maple (tray)
B 2 13⁄16" x 21⁄2" x 23" maple (rail) H 2 13⁄16" x 11⁄4" x 127⁄8" maple (bracket)
C 2 13⁄16" x 35⁄16" x 23" maple (rail) I 4 1⁄4"–20 threaded insert2
D 2 1⁄4" x 161⁄4" x 22" plywood (panel) J 2 back-flap hinge
E 1 1⁄8" x 161⁄4" x 22" marker board K 4 1⁄4"–20 threaded knob3
F 1 1⁄8" x 161⁄4" x 22" cork1 L 8 11⁄2" No. 8 flat-head screw

1. No. 15108; 2. No. 31872; 3. No. 70003; available at Rockler Woodworking and Hardware; 800-279-4441; rockler.com.

Bore pilot holes for the ¼-inch
4 threaded inserts in the outer edge
of each leg. Use a 6mm Allen wrench
to drive the inserts into the holes until
they’re flush.
Bore screw holes for attaching the
5 trays. We used an angled block as
a guide for accurate hole position and
angle. Rout recesses in the trays and
secure them to the frames.
Support the easel frames so they
6 lie flat, and install the hinges at the
frame tops. Then, cut the brackets to size,
bore holes for the knobs, and install the
brackets.

JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2018 083

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POPULAR MECHANICS (ISSN 0032-4558)
is published monthly except for combined
January/February and July/August, 10
times a year, by Hearst Communications,
Inc., 300 West 57th Street, New York, NY
10019 U.S.A. Steven R. Swartz, President &
Made in USA Chief Executive Officer; William R. Hearst III,
Chairman; Frank A. Bennack, Jr., Executive
Vice Chairman; Catherine A. Bostron,
Secretary. Hearst Magazines Division:
David Carey, President; John A. Rohan, Jr.,
Senior Vice President, Finance. ©2018
by Hearst Communications, Inc. All rights
reserved. Popular Mechanics is a registered
trademark of Hearst Communications, Inc.
Periodicals postage paid at N.Y., N.Y., and
For Canadian Customers For European Customers additional entry post offices. Canada Post
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no. 40012499. CANADA BN NBR 10231
0943 RT. POSTMASTER: Send all UAA to
CFS. (See DMM 707.4.12.5); NON-POSTAL
AND MILITARY FACILITIES: send address
corrections to Popular Mechanics, P.O. Box
6000, Harlan, IA 51593. Printed in U.S.A.
EDITORIAL & ADVERTISING OFFICES:
300 West 57th Street, New York, NY
10019-3797. SUBSCRIPTION SERVICES:
Popular Mechanics will, upon receipt of a
complete subscription order, undertake
fulfillment of that order so as to provide the
first copy for delivery by the Postal Service
P ROMOT I ON or alternate carrier within 4 to 6 weeks.
>>> Subscription prices: United States and
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and all other countries: $40.00 for one year.
>>> Should you have any problem with your
subscription, please visit service.popularme-
chanics.com or write to Customer Service
Department, Popular Mechanics, P.O. Box
6000, Harlan, IA 51593. Please enclose your
mailing label when writing to us or renewing
your subscription. >>> Popular Mechanics is
not responsible for unsolicited manuscripts
or art. None will be returned unless
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opt out of receiving marketing offers by
email. AS A SERVICE TO READERS, Popular
Mechanics publishes newsworthy products,
techniques, and scientific and technological
developments. Because of possible variance
in the quality and condition of materials and
workmanship, Popular Mechanics cannot
assume responsibility for proper application
of techniques or proper and safe functioning
of manufactured products or reader-built
projects resulting from information
published in this magazine.
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Would a 1960s-era designated “Fallout Shelter”
help me in a nuclear attack today?
e’ve all seen those yellow and black signs, embla-
zoned with three triangles, announcing the
presence nearby of a fallout shelter. These are, at
this point, antiques, vestiges of a more innocent
time; a time when we liked to cling to the notion that a nuclear
attack was readily survivable, sort of like a tornado, but with
more gamma rays and fewer flying cows.
Truthfully, fallout shelters were never
all they were cracked up to be. Rolled out
in the early 1960s by the now-defunct
Office of Civil Defense, they were never as
well-equipped or funded as originally envi-
sioned, which, frankly, didn’t much matter.
The advent of thermonuclear warheads—
high-yield hydrogen bombs much more
powerful than those dropped on Japan
during World War II—rendered them
moot. Fallout shelters were often spaces
like concrete-walled basements that could
be retrofitted with air filtration systems,
intended to protect occupants from the
radioactive byproducts of a modest nuclear
detonation. They’d have been superflu-
ous under a genuine onslaught of commie
megatons. “You wouldn’t really have to
deal with fallout,” says Jeff Schlegelmilch,
deputy director of the National Center for
Disaster Preparedness at Columbia Uni-
versity. “Because you would just be dead from the initial blast.”
Kind of a good news/bad news scenario, we suppose.
As to whether these shelters “still work,” one first has to con-
sider whether they “still exist.” Suppose that, rattled by Kim
Jong-un’s latest rhetoric, or perhaps concerned at the pros-
pect of leaky X-ray machines in your dentist’s office, you were
Do you have unusual questions about how things work and why stuff happens? This is the place to ask them.
Don’t be afraid. Nobody will laugh at you here. Email greatunknowns@popularmechanics.com.
88 JANUARY/FEBRUARY _ 2018
BIG QUESTIONS.
A N S W E R S YO U
CAN’T FIND ON
T H E I N T E R N E T.
lured by one of those old signs to seek shelter. “Spoiler alert,”
says Schlegelmilch, “there is most likely no fallout shelter in the
building.” At least not in the sense you might imagine. “Build-
ings probably have repurposed those shelters in the past few
decades,” says Nancy Silvestri of New York City’s Emergency
Management Department. “They probably turned them back
into laundry rooms and things like that.”
You will undoubtedly get some strange
looks when you crouch behind the dry-
ers, screaming “duck and cover!” at your
bewildered audience of Tide-slinging
housekeepers and homemakers.
That’s not to say that they’re any less
effective at shielding you from radiation
now that they’re more likely to contain
Maytags than MREs. “These locations
were chosen because they either already
were or could be easily retrofitted into
rooms that could block the radiation,”
says Schlegelmilch. “There may not be
supplies. I don’t know if the ventilation
systems would still be functional, but
theoretically they could provide some
protection from radioactive fallout as is.”
The ultimate irony, Schlegelmilch notes,
is that such shelters might be more useful
today than they were in their prime. “With
the kind of threats we would see from ter-
rorist organizations—even some weapons that North Korea has
demonstrated capacity for—you are looking at weapons that
would take out many blocks but throw radiation much farther
through the mushroom cloud.” So maybe it’s worth noticing
those old signs after all—and packing some laundry in a go-bag
to pass the time while you wait for the dust to settle, so to speak.
P O P U L A R M E C H A N I C S.CO M
 Discover what lies beyond.

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powersports.honda.com ALWAYS WEAR A HELMET, EYE PROTECTION AND PROTECTIVE CLOTHING. NEVER RIDE AFTER CONSUMING DRUGS OR ALCOHOL, AND NEVER USE THE STREET AS A RACETRACK. OBEY THE LAW AND READ
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Bluetooth® headset is necessary. Apple CarPlay™ is a trademark of Apple Inc. Bluetooth® is a registered trademark of Bluetooth SIG, Inc. Gold Wing® is a registered trademark of Honda Motor Co., Ltd. ©2018 American Honda Motor Co., Inc.