BRIAN BRUSHWOOD: The techniques and hacks displayed in this program
are done by professionals under controlled conditions.
Attempt at your own risk.
You can't outrun a tornado.
And you can't out-drive it either.
If you don't have time to get indoors,
your best bet is to find the lowest area possible.
During a tornado, trees and cars
will be whipped right up
turning them into dangerous projectiles.
This is why you don't stay in your car.
By definition, emergencies happen
when you don't expect them.
Cut off from power, no water, limited resources...
and the knowledge I have might just save your life.
I'm Brian Brushwood, and I've picked up
the tools of scientists and spies,
of criminals and con-artists.
I've mastered incredible tricks
and dangerous stunts as a professional magician.
Now, I have an encyclopedia of shortcuts,
secret data, and helpful hacks
designed to help you make life easier
and give you the upper hand.
This isHacking the System.
For the vast majority of us, it's not a question of if
but when disaster touches our lives.
Earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes,
even a terrorist attack can keep you cut off
for days at a time.
[thunder rumbling]
BRIAN: In 2013, our planet experienced
some 880 major natural disasters.
According to estimates, the damages
for those catastrophes totaled 125 billion dollars
and took the lives of nearly 20,000 individuals.
Now, there's no alternative for planning ahead,
but if you do find yourself in a disaster
that you didn't prepare for, there are plenty of hacks
you could perform around the house
to help keep you and your family alive.
Knowing how to make the most out of what you have at hand
could mean the difference between life and death...
when catastrophe strikes.
I'm in this typical suburban home.
And for the next few days,
I'm going to deal with this emergency situation
using only stuff that's already on hand.
This house and its contents will be my lifeline.
When you're in an emergency situation,
you have to prioritize your needs.
The rule of three helps you make these decisions.
Your body can survive without oxygen
for about three minutes.
You could live three hours
in extreme weather without shelter.
You could go three days without water
and three weeks without food.
When you remember this rule,
you'll know where to focus your resources
during a crisis.
Well, it's already dark, so my top priority
is finding a source of light.
Speaking of which, if you've been hit
with a tornado or an earthquake,
make sure you do not strike a match
until you check for a gas leak.
Often times, the gas lines get damaged.
Something tells me this rinky-dink guy
is not gonna cut it for the night.
Luckily in the pantry are the parts
for a longer-term solution.
Perfect. Sardines.
Personally, I hate them,
but they're packed in fish oil,
which means we can make a long-burning oil lamp
just by cracking this open a bit,
we just need a wicking.
There we go.
I'm gonna take this piece of cotton wick
straight off of that mop.
I'm gonna mush it down, get that oil all over it.
And...
yeah!
The whole house is gonna smell terrible,
but at least we'll have light throughout the night.
Speaking of light, here's something interesting:
which fruit can be used to power an LED light?
Is it a coconut, a dragon fruit, or a lemon?
The answer is...
a lemon.
Citrus fruits generate their own electron-producing acids
that can actually be used to power LEDs.
Fire's an invaluable resource in an emergency.
From cooking your food to purifying your water,
you need the ability to start a fire,
and if you don't have matches or a lighter,
you might have a method in your pocket right now.
Your cell phone battery.
Remove your cell phone battery
and you're gonna touch these terminals
to some steel wool.
It should give you a spark.
If your cell phone doesn't have a removable battery,
check your junk drawer.
You might have a nine-volt, which will work even better.
Once you have that heat, a little bit of lint...
and you got an easy fire in no time.
Starting a fire is useful,
but if the temperature's dropping,
you might need to safely contain
that fire to keep warm.
In this case, we got a couple of paint cans.
Make sure one is small enough to fit inside the other.
A bottle of isopropyl alcohol
and, of course, toilet paper.
We're gonna start by taking the tube out of the toilet paper.
And this gives us one giant cotton sponge
that we can wedge inside the smaller of the two cans
Here's the crazy part, once you light it,
it's not the toilet paper that's gonna burn.
The toilet paper is there just to act as a wick.
Now, we'll pour this entire bottle of alcohol in there,
and it should soak it up almost as fast as you can pour it.
Finally, take the smaller can, put it inside the bigger can...
and light it.
It's not exactly a bonfire,
but it's portable, it'll keep you warm,
and it can burn for up to five hours.
Make sure you don't leave it unsupervised,
And to regulate the oxygen flow,
you can place the lid on
or you can put the flame out entirely just by covering it up.
[thunder rumbling]
[groans]
Twelve hours without power.
Now, I'm getting worried.
It's time to take inventory and find out
what resources we have at hand.
Well, this isn't good.
In a major disaster, your supply of clean water
can be cut off.
Obviously, water is essential to survival
and we need about a half-gallon per day to survive.
By the rule of three, after three days without water,
you risk serious injury or death.
Finding clean water just became my number one priority.
It may seem gross, but the water inside the tank of your toilet
can be totally safe to drink
as long as it's clear
and there's no cleaning chemicals in it.
A toilet can have up to five gallons of water in it.
Enough to keep somebody hydrated for a full week.
Since I have no idea how long I'll be without water,
it's important to collect more
before my situation goes from bad to worse,
so I've started to collect water from the trees.
Trees transpire water.
It evaporates right out of their leaves.
By tying a bag tightly around a branch,
you can collect a few ounces of water a day
This water can be filtered and the best part,
you can do it day after day,
and it won't hurt the trees.
If you have a large family
or if you're without water for an extended period,
you might have reserves and not even know it.
Check out your hot water heater.
Using your garden hose,
we can hook it up to the spigot at the bottom.
This unit has over 50 gallons of water.
That's enough to take care of a family of four
for up to thirty days or longer.
Whoo!
That's 50 gallons of crisp, clean,
lifesaving water.
But say you have a modern water heater
that doesn't contain water.
Then what?
It's the classic survivalist question.
In an extreme emergency,
can you, and should you drink your own urine?
The answer is yes...
and no.
If you're truly desperate,
it will buy you a day or two
but remember, while urine is 95 percent water,
it's also five percent waste.
After just a few days of returning the waste
your body is trying to excrete back into your system,
you could develop symptoms similar to kidney failure.
Lucky for me, they had some apple juice.
Now that I have water in place for the time being,
it's time to assess the food situation.
The power outage knocked out the fridge,
which means that several foods run the risk of spoiling.
We need to figure out which of these foods to eat now,
which to throw out, and which can be repurposed
for extended storage.
First and foremost, keep the doors
to your fridge and freezer closed
whenever possible.
If you have advanced warning of an emergency,
like with a hurricane,
turn them to the lowest setting possible
to build up a cold reserve.
Food in the freezer should stay
at least partially frozen for a day or two.
And get this,
the more cold food you have packed in your freezer,
the longer it will stay cool.
Check this out.
In 2006,
three Mexican fishermen were found adrift at sea.
How long do you think they survived?
Was it nine weeks, 19 weeks, or nine months?
The answer is...
nine months.
They drifted over 5,000 miles
surviving on raw fish, sea turtles, and rainwater.
Food-borne illness can quickly take a bad situation
and make it much, much worse.
And nothing's gonna spoil faster than uncooked meat.
If you have access to a grill,
cook that meat immediately.
If you don't have access to a grill,
you can make your own
using soda cans.
We'll cut the bottom out of one.
Now we need to add vent holes using an awl.
Making eight vents.
Beautiful. So we got eight vents here.
Now we need to cut this thing off.
We'll just match it to roughly the size of duct tape.
Now, we're gonna do the exact same thing
with the other can.
There we go.
Now, eventually, these two go together.
But first,
I need to make the dividing wall between the inner chamber
and the outer chamber.
Then you got to lock it in just by stapling it.
Gonna set this in there like so.
Finally, we're gonna take the vented top
and nestle it right inside.
[tapping]
Perfect.
We're gonna put some isopropyl alcohol in there.
Man, I'm so excited. I want to know if this works!
Now, you'll notice at first
it starts off very blue and dim,
but as everything heats up,
that vapor is gonna start heating up
and coming out of these vents,
and it should look just like your gas grill at home.
Yeah, it's just starting to reach on the side now.
Look at that, man!
Now that you have a way to cook your food,
your best options are to either eat it right away
or get it refrigerated below 40 degrees
within the next two hours.
This won't guarantee your food's safety,
but it will help reduce the risk.
A power outage starts a ticking clock
on your dairy items as well.
There's not much you can do about the milk
or the cottage cheese short of wolfing them down,
but you can preserve some of your cheese for later
by dipping them in wax.
You don't even need special wax.
You can use unscented candles
or I'm melting down crayons.
Be extremely careful around the hot wax.
It splashes easily, and it'll stick to your skin.
Now that it's sealed in wax, I've extended
the life of this cheese.
If I did my job right,
it can last for years without spoiling.
Good cheese can last a long time,
but what's the longest period of time
that cheese has aged?
Is it 3,600 years, 103 years, or 13 years?
The answer is...
3,600 years.
Researchers identified clumps of cheese on top of a mummy
buried in a Chinese sand dune.
Unfortunately, they didn't find any crackers
to go with the oldest cheese in history.
At this point in my ordeal,
my family would be gravely worried about me.
The power's out. I have a dead cell phone.
I need to figure out a way to charge this
so I could put a call out.
There's a bunch of different options
to charge your phone during a power outage,
but the best one is sitting in your driveway.
Your car has plenty of power to charge your phones
so you can make a call.
Just make sure to conserve your fuel and battery power
in case you need to flee the area.
But my favorite way to charge a phone
uses a car charger,
a nine volt battery, and a quarter.
Check this out.
You're gonna plug your phone
into the car charger,
place the tip of the car charger
onto the positive terminal,
then with the coin,
bridge the remaining connection...
[buzzing]
...and you're charging.
How cool is that?
All right, what was the deadliest natural disaster
in US history?
Was it Hurricane Katrina in 2005,
the Galveston Hurricane of 1900,
or the Johnstown Flood in 1889?
All three caused catastrophic damage,
but the Galveston Hurricane is believed to have taken
the lives of six to twelve thousand people
when it obliterated the Texan Island in 1900.
There's just no containing the power of mother nature.
Two days of being virtually cut off from society.
Fortunately, I found water
and was able to extend my food supply
but some of it's already starting to spoil.
This is exactly the kind of situation
where you need to consider the possibility
of leaving the safety of your house.
I've been without power now for 48 hours.
And there's no word on when it'll come back...
or what's happening in the outside world.
Time for me to leave my house in search of supplies.
There might be government aid...
or chaos and disorder.
If there's a run on supplies,
you might be looking at civil unrest,
and the authorities might need to control the masses.
We're talking tear gas, pepper spray, smoke bombs.
Amazingly, though, you can build
your own protective mask
using little more than two-liter bottles.
Start with a stenciled template in order to cut out
the part that will go on your face.
Then you're gonna line the sides with foam and duct tape.
This will make it more comfortable
and give a tighter seal.
Next up, we'll do the filter.
For the housing, I took an old soda can
and poked a bunch of holes in it.
On top of that, just put two or three cotton pads,
and to absorb the chemicals, we'll put a couple of spoonfuls
of activated charcoal in there.
You can find activated charcoal
in a bunch of different places throughout your house,
like the water filtration in your fish tank,
your medicine cabinet,
or even in your odor-protecting insoles.
Finally, a couple more pads to keep everything in place,
and then we'll seal it off with a bandage on top.
Finally, we take the top from another two-liter bottle,
seal the whole thing in tape, and if all goes well,
you have a chance of protection.
A word of warning: while these masks are popular
with political protesters,
there's no proven evidence of how well they work,
but if you ask me, I'd feel safer with this...
[voice muffled]: ...rather than nothing.
If you do happen to get sprayed
with tear gas during civil unrest,
what common items can you use to defuse the effects?
Is it antacid, toothpaste, or lemons?
The answer is...
all three.
Mixing equal parts antacid with water
and spraying it in your eyes
or smearing toothpaste underneath them
or even breathing through a lemon-soaked rag
will all help to neutralize teargas solution
and reduce any eye or breathing irritation.
When the situation gets desperate enough,
it is insane to see some of the improvised weaponry
people have come up with.
For light armor, sometimes people will take
phone books and tiles, tape them all together,
cover the whole thing in duct tape,
and then strap it onto your body.
I have no idea how well this would work,
and to be honest, I'd be scared to find out.
In a close quarter situation,
you might need to keep an attacker at bay.
For that, some people will take lumber connectors
and hot glue a bunch of nails in there.
People will even make a bow and arrow
out of the simplest stuff.
In this case, with just PVC pipe and a string,
you're good to go.
The arrows are made of just wooden dowels.
I wanna know if this actually works.
I've never actually done archery.
Whoa! [chuckles]
I'm a lousy shot,
but that would be terrifying in real life.
Of course I'm not advocating you take all this stuff
and go out on the streets during a riot
because, well, you'd look like this.
That really would be terrifying.
But I do have a practical hack
that could help you with unwanted intruders.
You just need a willing test subject.
-Oh, you're cooking. -[chuckles]
I guess there's a recipe involved.
So we know that pepper spray is an effective deterrent.
Turns out you can make homemade pepper spray
and with just stuff you'd find in the kitchen.
I'm not gonna share the recipe that we're doing here,
but it does use some oil, some vinegar,
and all the gnarliest peppers I was able to find.
I chopped them up super fine,
blended them right in here.
Take a whiff.
[sniffs] Oh, no.
-No, no, no. -[Brian laughs]
Now, let me state unequivocally
that it is inherently dangerous to mess around
making your own homemade pepper spray,
and nobody should make pepper spray
and test it on their friend's face.
-Ow! Oh! -Oh!
It's not... It's not as bad.
-Oh, it's sneaking up now. -JASON: No...
They say that if you get pepper sprayed,
you should remain calm, get to fresh air,
and you have to wash out your eyes, nose-- uh, nose.
God, I can't even talk.
And wash out
your eyes, nose, and mouth
with fresh water.
Ah!
Let's never do that again.
-Agreed. -[laughing]
BRIAN: You can see what just that little bit did.
This is not something to mess around with.
If you can stay in a place where people will know
where to find you, that might be the safest thing to do.
But how will they know that you're there?
Here's a hack that'll help you
alert them to your whereabouts
using stuff you'd find around the house.
We're gonna make homemade smoke flares.
I started by mixing plain sugar
with potassium nitrate, AKA saltpeter,
which can be made from stump remover
or a cold compress.
Mix the two together over heat,
and for a container, I used one of these cells
from a rechargeable drill battery.
Poured the mixture into the casing,
added a homemade fuse,
now this bad boy is ready to go.
Don't forget, handling potassium nitrate
is not without risks,
so make sure to exercise extreme caution.
Whoo!
Yeah, they are not gonna miss that.
Here's a disaster that was hard to miss.
How many people were affected
by the biggest power outage in recent history?
Was it six million, 60 million, or 600 million?
It was an incredible 600 million people.
On July 31st, 2012, a power failure in India
left half the country without power
causing a massive collapse in infrastructure.
In a severe catastrophe, medical supplies can be limited.
Now, picture this. You've raided your first aid kit,
you don't have the supplies you need,
and then you get a nasty gash.
You might have to improvise.
In a pinch, some doctors have used duct tape
to seal up a wound
and protect it from the outside elements.
Or even better, with the right kind of super glue,
you can actually reseal the wound.
Now it's not an ideal solution, and it can damage skin cells,
but in a severe situation, closing the wound could mean
the difference between living and dying.
Amazingly, this gives a rough seal in just seconds.
It's important to thoroughly clean the wound
before trying this.
It's not my first option, but in a disaster,
you go with what you can.
[siren wailing]
Hallelujah!
Almost 72 hours cut off
from water, gas, and electricity.
FEMA recommends that you have enough food, water, and supplies
to last your family through this crucial period.
I managed to kind of muddle my way
scavenging, hacking, and scrounging,
but I don't recommend it.
I think the lesson here is simple.
While you can muddle your way through a catastrophe,
you're much better off preparing for the worst.
Now, I got to check my email.
Captioned by Point.360