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 reader feedback
You talk , we listen! Here’s what you had to say about previous issues
of iD. Thanks for your feedback and suggestions. Keep ’em coming.
questions@ideasanddiscoveries.com
CRY LIKE AN EAGLE
When I read “The Mighty Marvel of the Skies” in the
March issue, it called to mind a rather unexpected sort of
“fun fact” about bald eagles. I’ve had the opportunity to
observe them in the wild, and it turns out the sound they
make is nothing like what most of us have come to think of
it as. That distinct cry as the majestic bird swoops down
from the sky is not real! Of course the fierce raptors are
still impressive nonetheless, and hopefully knowing this
doesn’t diminish anyone’s enjoyment of them.
Sam Pellerton, Fairbanks, AK
Letters to the editor may be edited for clarity and length.
It’s true, and it may be disappointing when people hear what
a bald eagle actually sounds like: Rather than the well-known
screeching call we associate with them, they utter more of
a peeping chirp. It’s actually kind of an adorable sound for
such a formidable bird to make, though sometimes they do
PHOTO: Frank Trapper/Getty.
also make a call that has a haunting quality. Whenever eagles
are heard on TV and in movies, the mighty characteristic cry
is actually the overdubbed call of another bird of prey such as
a red-tailed hawk instead.
CURSE OF TUT’S TOMB
I’ve always been fascinated by all things ancient
Egypt. It had a very advanced culture that existed
such a long time ago, with so much knowledge—
and drama, as evinced by the stories of both
the gods and the mortals. While reading “The
Discovery of the World’s Greatest Treasure” in
the last issue and thinking about the moment
Howard Carter first opened King Tut’s tomb, I
www.facebook.com/ideasanddiscoveries
had to wonder: What about the curse of the mummy that’s
supposed to afflict anyone who opens a tomb? Is it real?
Alice Burns, Crescent Springs, KY
“The curse of the pharaohs” is thought to befall anyone who
disturbs mummified remains, in particular those of a pharaoh.
In the culture of ancient Egypt, the condition of the corpse was
thought to be firmly tied to the deceased person’s chances of
successfully navigating the afterlife. The Egyptians regarded
a properly preserved body as a home for part of the soul
while another part journeyed to the entrance to the afterlife.
When it comes to Tutankhamun, arguably the most famous
of Egypt’s rulers even though the boy king was meant to be
confined to obscurity by the priests of his day, there was
no actual curse inscribed in the tomb. But in the 10 years
after the tomb’s discovery there were 11 notable deaths,
beginning with the death of Howard Carter’s patron, Lord
Carnarvon, about four months after the tomb was opened.
He had been bitten by a mosquito and then accidentally
slashed the bite while shaving, which lead to an infection
that soon did him in. Some of the deaths, such as that of the
radiologist Sir Archibald Douglas-Reid, who had performed
an X-ray of Tutankhamun’s mummy, seemed to result from
a mysterious illness. Carter himself passed away in 1939
(well over 10 years after the discovery of the tomb in 1923) of
Hodgkin’s disease, though some still suspect his death was
the work of a curse.
RECOMMENDED VIEWING
In honor of the March issue’s article on “The Immutable Laws
of Time,” we’re recommending a flick we found fun: Time Trap
(2017), available on Netflix, a sci-fi adventure that takes place
in a very strange cave where time
is much more relative than any
of the people who venture into
it could have possibly imagined.
After a group of young people go
in search of a missing professor,
who had set out on a search of
his own, the adventure begins in
earnest as things quickly start to
get increasingly bizarre. All in all,
an entertaining romp through the
concept of chronology.
ideasanddiscoveries.com 3 May 2020
 contents
COVER
STORY COVER
STORY

Millions of years of evolution have endowed frogs with When it comes to the state of our planet and its urgent
amazing attributes and abilities that enable them to climate problem, action is imperative, because time is
successfully straddle two realms. PAGE 10 of the essence. PAGE 18

Sometimes chaos rides roughshod through history and Talk about the allure of the islands: An enchanting isle
culture. But the monuments of civilization can live on entices a family man to embark on a hunt for forbidden
for the sake of posterity. PAGE 34 buried treasure… PAGE 44

COVER
STORY

It seemed he would stand the test of time upon mighty Drones are used for many applications. Thanks to their
legs of marble. But the statue of David has developed speed and maneuverability, it was only a matter of time
an Achilles’ heel… PAGE 62 before people started racing them. PAGE 66

May 2020 4 ideasanddiscoveries.com


The key to the fate of the world can be found in a small
briefcase that accompanies the president everywhere.
Just how much power lies therein? PAGE 28
COVER
STORY
A master agent of the FBI explains how to interpret body
language cues to get a glimpse into what your opponent
is really thinking and feeling. PAGE 50
COVER
STORY
Sometimes things seem certain to end in a certain way,
and then an unexpected reversal of fortune transpires.
The prelude to Napoleon’s last stand… PAGE 74
“An
investment in
knowledge pays the
best interest .”
—Benjamin Franklin
To our readers:
This issue overflows with existential threats, from global warming to nuclear winter.
So many things are imperiled, from the monuments of history and invaluable works
of art—to the very planet itself, whether due to climate change’s fearsome effects
or an equally fearsome nuclear option due to a grave lapse in peace and diplomacy.
The specter of a desert wasteland appears again and again. Yet again and again,
so too does the notion that what’s important can be preserved through effort and
sacrifice. Acts of preservation start with the belief that something is worth doing.
Faith can move mountains. And hope springs eternal.
NATURE
10 A Day in the Life of a Frog
Why these multitalented amphibians are so successful
SCIENCE
18 The 100 Companies That Are Destroying Our Climate
The report that names the names
62 How Do You Earthquake-proof an Icon of Art History?
An artistic treasure may be on its last legs
TECHNOLOGY
28 Could This Briefcase Destroy the World?
A double-edged sword of Damocles
66 The Drone That Takes Less Than 1 Second to Go from 0 to 90
Kicking the sport of racing into a higher gear
HISTORY
34 The Monument That Wouldn’t Die
What would you give up to save history?
74 400: How a Small Band of German Soldiers Defeated Napoleon
A surprising turnaround in a famous battle
CURRENT EVENTS
44 The Treasure of Cocaine Island
A suburban legend becomes an irresistible siren call
BODY & MIND
50 The Body Language Code Used by FBI Profilers
Your body is talking even when your mouth isn’t
IN EVERY ISSUE
6 A Photo and Its Story
Fascinating pictures and the story behind them
38 Questions & Answers
Marvels that can change our perception of the world
82 What Counts in the End
The Real Ruler of the Desert
Volume 10, Issue 5 Cover stories marked in red
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COVER PHOTOS: Sankai/Getty; DRL; andriano_cz/Getty; DPA; RapidEye/Getty; GSinclair Archive/Contributor/Getty.
iD (Ideas & Discoveries) (ISSN 2161-2641) Published bimonthly (once every two months)
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 A photo and its story

T
he barren, lifeless landscape
with its arid, parched ground
rolls on for as far as the eye
can see. The last inhabitants
of the small village of Humbo
in Ethiopia have been living
in the desert—and struggling to survive.
The last tree was cut down years earlier,
and replanting trees in the bone-dry soil
seemed impossible. The villagers had
long since abandoned all hope. Their dire
expectation: If the burning heat didn’t kill
them, they’d all die of thirst as the region
continued to dry out. But Humbo did not
die—quite the contrary: Only a few years
later the area had changed so drastically
that it was unrecognizable. The wasteland
had turned into a flourishing forest.
CAN YOU SAVE THE WORLD
WITH A POCKET KNIFE?
The name of the man who brought back
the forest is Tony Rinaudo. The Australian-
born farmer and agronomist has learned
to transform dry wasteland of the kind he
found in Humbo into a thriving forest—and
he does so with a simple method: farmer-
managed natural regeneration (FMNR). It
takes advantage of the root systems that
remain in the ground after the trees are
gone. When Rinaudo first saw the small
bushes, he thought they’d grown on their
own in the desert. Then he realized they
were sprouting from the roots of trees that
had been cut down. The root systems were
still alive. Was it possible to regrow the
trees from them? “It changed everything,”
he recalls. “We didn’t need to plant trees
on a multimillion-dollar budget. Everything
we needed was already there.” Pruning
the bushes to only the strongest shoots
made them regrow as trees. “If you do it
correctly, the trees will come back even
in dry regions. And where the trees grow,
you can raise millet and sorghum as well,”
says Rinaudo, now 63.
He discovered the method almost by
accident. In a desperate attempt to revive
an area of Niger, a landlocked country in
Western Africa, he’d planted 6,000 trees,
but soon they had all died. Then he made
his breakthrough discovery: green shoots
emerging from a dried-out tree trunk. That
meant the roots of the tree were still alive.
All it would take, he hoped, was to prune

CAN ONE MAN

DEFEAT
A DESERT?
Few threats to human civilization are as serious as the rapid spread of the world’s deserts.
So far research offered few solutions. But now an Australian agronomist has come up with
an effective one all on his own, and it requires only a simple tool…
the tree into shape and protect it for half
a year from grazing animals. Thanks to his
care and its deep roots, the tree grew back.
CAN YOU REAWAKEN A FOREST?
A World Vision International study of FMNR
has called this method “the largest positive
environmental transformation in Africa in the
past 100 years.” While some governments
might spend millions every year to plant
trees (and see much of the money vanish
into politicians’ pockets), FMNR requires
nothing more than time, effort, and a knife.
Initially it was difficult to get governmental
approval for the FMNR endeavor in Niger.
Regulations prohibited some aspects of it,
and the farmers themselves were unsure
of its wisdom and practicality. Rinaudo
says FMNR really took off there when the
farmers “stopped seeing trees as weeds
and started seeing them as assets.” One
study showed that the adoption of FMNR
could restore arability to infertile land in a
single season as the debris from the trees
was incorporated into the soil by termites
that at the same time loosened it up. Over
five years, fields planted with trees saw a
threefold increase in grain production. The
African regions that have adopted FMNR
now produce surpluses of grain that they
sell for profit. And reforestation has also
mitigated chronic drought in the region—
all because someone figured out how to
get to the root of the problem.
ideasanddiscoveries.com 7 May 2020
 A photo and its story
CAN A FOREST CONQUER
A WASTELAND?
All Australian agronomist Tony
Rinaudo needs to transform a
dry desert landscape into a flourishing
forest is a small pocket knife. In the
same way a gardener prunes roses to
encourage proper growth, Rinaudo
cuts back the growth sprouting from
old stumps to encourage it to regrow
into tree form. In the first 20 years
after its introduction to Niger, FMNR
spread across 12 million acres, which
is about 50% of the nation’s farmland.
By now FMNR has been introduced to
almost 20 countries in Africa and in
Southeast Asia as well as to Haiti.
WHEN I CAME HERE
THE FIRST TIME, THERE
WAS HARDLY A TREE.”
PHOTOS: World Vision.
TONY RINAUDO,
agronomist and expert in the reforestation of wastelands and deserts
Forests now stand where livestock
grazing, burning, and harvesting for
fuelwood had previously prevented
the trees from regrowing. Sometimes BEFORE
seemingly bare fields may contain
hundreds of root systems per acre.
According to a World Vision report,
the reintroduction of trees to farming
systems creates “greater abundance
of beneficial soil organisms” and also
improves moisture retention as well
as availability of nutrients. Rinaudo’s
program resulted in 18 trees per acre
instead of the previously recorded 1.6
(compare the photos at right). AFTER
THE RAINMAKERS
Researchers have found greater rainfall in areas of Haiti
that have been reforested. The reason: The roots of trees
draw moisture from the ground, and the leaves release it
into the air. Thus more moisture leads to more rainfall.
Other advantages: The cooler microclimate under a tree
canopy reduces exposure to heat stress and provides the
aesthetic pleasure of a greener landscape.

FOREST LOSS
For a long time Haiti was one of the
world’s most severely deforested
countries. Newly planted trees had
only a 30% chance of survival.

LIFESAVERS
Reforestation has brought insects, birds,
and other animal life back to Haiti. The
trees’ roots also prevent erosion and help
preserve the fertile topsoil.

FROM WASTELAND TO WOODS

After significant success in Africa and Asia, agronomist
Tony Rinaudo has launched a project in Haiti (satellite
photo) to re-create the kind of miracle he achieved in
Niger. The new trees in Haiti are starting to flourish
(on the right side of the image).

ideasanddiscoveries.com 9 May 2020

 Nature

Over the past 250 million years, frogs have spread to almost every corner of the world—outliving the
dinosaurs and surviving ice ages and meteorite impacts. Their success is due not only to their superb
hunting skills, but also to the fact that their habitat is not limited by water or land…

May 2020 10 ideasanddiscoveries.com

 CROWN OF
CREATION
Frogs come from a proud lineage. The
oldest known frog fossil is from a creature
that lived in what is now Madagascar during
the Early Triassic Period, about 250 million
years ago. It probably spent at least part of
its life on land and could breathe air. Today
there are more than 4,800 known species
of frogs. While some are as tiny as a third
of an inch, the Goliath frog can grow to a
length of more than a foot and weigh
more than 7 pounds.
 LITTLE
MIRACLES
IN THE POND
Frog larvae are called tadpoles.
Among their remarkable qualities
is their ability to regrow a tail or
lost limb with the help of a gene
that’s no longer present in
warm-blooded animals.

WHY STOP AT
ONE?
A frog seldom comes alone—and that applies
especially to the common frog (Rana temporaria),
which is native to Europe and Asia. One reason
is the species’ incredible fertility: The female
deposits a large clump of eggs that may be up
to 4,500 strong. The eggs are surrounded by a
gelatinous mass that in addition to providing
protection also works like a magnifying
glass to increase the sun’s warmth,
helping the eggs hatch.

May 2020 12 ideasanddiscoveries.com


ALWAYS THE SAME CROAK?
Frogs can ribbit, croak, cluck, bark, grunt, whistle, and peep.
“Over the course of evolution, every frog species has developed
its own characteristic mating call,” says amphibian expert Tom
Kirschey. The wide variety of different rhythms and sounds is an
indication of the fierce territorial competition in a given pond.
Male frogs typically vocalize by squeezing their lungs with their
nostrils and mouth shut. Air flows across their vocal cords and
HOW DOES A FROG
WIN THE
HEART
OF HIS BELOVED?
What ignites passion in a female frog?
Two things, for starters: the male’s
powerful voice and his shiny green
skin. An obstacle to love at first sight:
Frogs will change color depending on
their location. It takes direct sunlight
to turn a male the glossy green that
the ladies love.
into their vocal sacs, which inflate like a bubble-gum balloon.
Frogs may intentionally sound off in order to attract a mate or
mark their territory or because they’re hurt or frightened. And
in case you’re wondering—no, all frogs don’t “speak” the same
language: The same frog species that says “ribbit” in English
says “cru-cru” in Spanish, “quaak-quaak” in German, “guo guo”
in Chinese, and “bre-ke-ke” in Hungarian.
 ALL-SEEING
EYES
Frogs’ bulging eyes give them a panoramic,
almost 360-degree view. When they’re in the
water they’ll use their eyes like a periscope
and keep their body hidden under the surface.
Frog eyes come in an astonishing range of
colors. Researchers have discovered that the
coloration is, in part, a protective measure:
Potential predators are often distracted just
long enough for the frog to leap to safety.

LUNCH IN A SPLIT SECOND

There’s no way the tiny gnat flitting around in the grass saw it
coming. How could it? A frog’s tongue can snatch an insect in
less than 0.07 seconds—about three times faster than a human
eye can blink. During capture, the speed of its tongue can reach
12 times the acceleration of gravity—about four times as great
as the acceleration during a rocket launch. And then there’s
the stickiness factor: A frog’s sticky tongue is able to lift nearly
twice the amphibian’s own weight. Small frogs eat gnats and
mosquitoes while larger species prefer small snakes, mice, and
baby turtles—as long as they’re fresh: Researchers have found
most frogs would rather starve than eat a dead insect or other
animal. The efficiency of frogs’ tongues means they use their
powerful hind legs mostly for leaping. Although frogs with short
legs can hop only limited distances, tree frogs can jump up to
50 times their body length. If we had the same ability, a 6-foot
human could leap 300 feet in a single bound.
 30 MILLION YEARS OF
EVOLUTION IN 12 WEEKS
While it took prehistoric fish some 30 million years to emerge
from the sea and start the evolutionary process that has made
us the rulers of the Earth, frogs usually complete the transition
from water to land in about 12 weeks, going through the three
stages of egg, larva, and adult. The female first lays clumps
of eggs that the male fertilizes. As the eggs mature, each yolk
divides repeatedly and begins to take on the form of a tadpole.
The eggs will start hatching about one to three weeks later.
Once the tadpoles are old enough to swim on their own, they
feed on algae and other vegetation as they develop legs and
an appetite for larger plants and insects as they grow. By the
time 12 weeks have passed, the tadpole’s tail and gills have
entirely disappeared and it has become an adult, now ready
to venture onto dry land.

BETWEEN TWO
WORLDS
How long a frog will spend as a tadpole
depends on the species. While many make
the transition in about 12 weeks, bullfrogs
can take more than a year. Environmental
factors such as water temperature and
the degree of crowding also play
an important role.

ideasanddiscoveries.com 15 May 2020

 GIVE ME A
BREAK!
Producing multiple “ribbits” per second
for hours on end takes a lot of energy when
the sound can be as loud as 90 decibels
(almost as noisy as a motorcycle engine).
Generally it is the males that make the
calls, in the hope the females are listening:
Frogs’ ears are called tympana and are
located behind the eyes, resembling flat
circles. Frog ears are essentially tuned
to hear the calls made by members of
their own species.

FROGS AS BIOWEAPONS
Not all frogs flee when they’re threatened. The golden poison
arrow frog (Phyllobates terribilis), which is endemic to the Pacific
coast of Colombia, employs a more effective defense strategy.
Within their skin glands the brightly colored creatures store
an extraordinarily lethal toxin that is powerful enough to kill
practically any predator. The milligram of toxin in an average
frog is enough to kill 10,000 mice, or 10 to 20 human beings,
or two African elephants. Hunters from some of the indigenous
cultures in Colombia tip their arrows with this poison and use
them when they are stalking their prey. Interestingly, golden
poison arrow frogs are only dangerous in the wild and lose
their toxicity when held in captivity. That’s because they do not
produce the toxin themselves but rather acquire it by eating
small beetles of the genus Choresine.
AVOID THE BURN SOCIAL CLIMBERS
As amphibians, frogs are cold-blooded animals: Climbing affords tree frogs a better view.
They don’t produce their own body heat or have In addition to having panoramic vision, frogs
mechanisms such as sweating to cool off. Thus are able to see better at night than any other
they will change locations throughout the day animal and can perceive color in darkness
to maintain a relatively constant temperature, so extreme that we would be unable to see
staying in the sun to warm up and heading off anything at all. Color vision is useful when
to the water to cool down. searching for a mate or hunting for food.

T
he sun has just set, and down at the
pond things are still relatively quiet.
Then a voice calls out from the reeds,
and the first “ribbit” is quickly joined
by an entire enthusiastic choir. There
will be no peace at the pond tonight…
Though an army of frogs croaking
may sound disorganized, there is, in
fact, a system. Each frog has its own
“ribbit” that’s unmistakable to other
members of its species. One of the
With such a sense of purpose, it’s no
wonder a pond full of frogs can croak
at deafening levels. The coqui frog
can produce almost 100 decibels of
sound at a distance of 20 inches. The
“co” and the “qui” serve two different
purposes: The “co” is a territorial call
to warn other males, and the “qui” is
intended to lure females for mating.

LIVING LEGEND
Some people would rather not hold
a frog, but many find them appealing.
Perhaps deep in our genes we sense
that we owe them a debt of gratitude.
Fossil records indicate that they made
the transition from water to land some
250 million years ago. If it weren’t for
this pioneering evolutionary effort,
we might still have gills and a tail and
be confined to living in murky waters
There’s a species of wood frog (Rana
sylvatica) with a range extending from
the U.S. state of Georgia to Canada
and up into the Arctic Circle, that can
freeze, thaw out, and continue to live.
Telmatobius macrostomus (the Andes
smooth frog) is found at altitudes of
up to 14,000 feet in the mountains of
central Peru, and the Sahara frog is
found across North Africa from the
Western Sahara to Egypt.
You’d think frogs need incredibly
strong leg muscles to jump the way
they do. However, research with a
high-speed camera has shown that
the secret lies in their tendons. They
use their muscles to stretch their leg
tendons as far as possible before a
jump. When the tendons recoil, the
spring action propels the frog up to
50 times its body length. Compared
PHOTOS: NaturePL (3); Bios; DPA; Rike_/Getty; Thorsten Spoerlein/Getty.

main purposes of male croaking—in ourselves. Frogs can be found in and with frogs we’re doing it backwards,
addition to establishing the territory around most bodies of fresh water which may explain why we can’t leap
of an individual—is to attract a female. on every continent except Antarctica. hundreds of feet in a single bound.

ideasanddiscoveries.com 17 May 2020

 THE 100
COMPANI
THAT ARE
DESTROYIN
OUR CLIMATE

100 companies are responsible for more than
70% OF ALL CO2 EMISSIONS. But who are they?
What secrets have they been keeping from us?
And what can we do to stop them?
orporations are killing
C
people day after day,
without having to fear
prosecution or other
consequences. That
might sound drastic—
but the situation itself
ES
is even worse. If we cannot learn to
live in a carbon-neutral environment
by 2035 and hold global warming to
less than 1.5°C (2.7°F), our children
will not inherit the world that we’ve
been able to experience. And their
children could encounter a planet
E
so hostile to human existence that
civilization as we know it may cease
to exist. To halt the climate change
that imperils our world, it is far from
enough to recycle, or ride a bike to
work, or vacation closer to home.
Even if everyone in the world were
NG
to cooperate in such endeavors, we
would reduce carbon dioxide (CO 2)
emissions by no more than 30%.
The reason: The world’s biggest
producers of CO2 are 100 companies
among the 200 million enterprises
that are operating across the globe.
E
This means only 0.00005% of the
world’s companies are responsible
for about 70% of all CO 2 emissions.
That is the conclusion of a study
called the Carbon Majors Report.
Its authors point to the true villains
in this saga: corporations that must
change their behavior if we’re going
to save the Earth. At the same time,
Science
the list is a source of hope because
it shows precisely where the most
pressure needs to be applied.
But those 100 companies are not
going to make this endeavor easy:
The cold hard truth about human-
induced climate change threatens
not only their business practices,
but their very existence.
On the following pages we lay out
a pathway to the goal of mitigating
climate change by 2035 while at the
same time illustrating how these 100
companies have sought to conceal
the truth about their activities. One
important method: discrediting their
critics. They will try to do the same
thing with articles such as this by
disparaging sources and motives.
But the facts are clear, as confirmed
by thousands of climate studies, the
expertise of tens of thousands of
climate scientists, and the results of
massive amounts of data collected
worldwide. This is a battle against
the most powerful syndicate in the
world—and it will do everything it
can to fight back. Corporations are
not just working to maximize profits
regardless of the consequences,
which they see as their duty to their
shareholders. Their motto when it
comes to climate change is “Après
nous, le déluge”—in essence: “We
don’t care what happens after we’re
gone.” But make no mistake about it:
The deluge is coming!
ideasanddiscoveries.com 19 May 2020
JUST HOW DANGEROUS
IS GLOBAL WARMING?
ur climate is heating up— For an individual, CO2 poisoning occurs hold more moisture and energy, resulting

O
not of its own accord but
rather as a result of the
greenhouse effect: the
warming of the Earth’s
surface. As the amount
of carbon dioxide in the
atmosphere continues to
increase, the gas traps
more and more solar radiation, resulting
in more heat. Carbon dioxide is around
1,000 times more prevalent than the other
greenhouse gases and is considered to be
a major threat to our continued existence.
But is that really the case?
when the concentration of the gas in the
air rises to 10% or more. This can cause
unconsciousness and ultimately death
due to ventilatory failure. Under normal
circumstances that’s not a problem: The
CO2 concentration in the air is ordinarily far
lower, though people who work in confined
spaces are vulnerable to CO2 poisoning.
The effect of CO2 on the climate is far
more insidious. Studies show that global
warming has resulted in more frequent
instances of extreme weather—and higher
numbers of deaths are often the result.
When air temperatures are warmer, clouds
in higher levels of precipitation along with
more frequent storms and flooding. Other
climate-related events are droughts and
heat waves: During Europe’s summer heat
wave of 2003, record high temperatures
resulted in at least 30,000 deaths. And in
recent years annual wildfires have raged
out of control, in places such as Southern
California and currently in Australia.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration says the global mean sea
level has risen about 9 inches since 1880,
with a third of that occurring in the last two
decades, leading to more extreme weather.

200
million or more people will be displaced
by climate change by 2050. According to
the United Nations, that’s “one out of
every 45 people who will be alive at
the time.” This is an enormous
increase over the already
appreciable numbers
affected today.
 THE SHAPE OF
THINGS TO COME
Outbreaks of bushfires in the
southeast portion of Australia
were significantly more severe
in 2019 than those of previous
years. The inferno ravaging the
country since September has
claimed two dozen lives and
decimated wildlife in addition
to many homes, destroying
an area larger than Maryland.
1,000s
of years is how long a molecule of CO 2 can
potentially remain in the atmosphere, after
up to 80% of CO 2 is dissolved by the oceans
in about 20 to 200 years’ time. In contrast,
chemical reactions remove most of the
methane from the atmosphere in
about 12 years’ time.
HOW MUCH HAS
INDUSTRIALIZATION
ALREADY WARMED
THE EARTH?
B
efore the Industrial Revolution began,
the global average CO2 level was about
280 parts per million. By 2018 it was
407 ppm, an increase of 45%. Throughout
that period the Earth has become warmer
by approximately 1°C (1.8°F). Warming is
now occurring at a measurably faster rate:
The 20 warmest years have occurred during
the past 22, and the World Meteorological
Organization says that the trend continued
in 2019. Researchers warn that we are fast
approaching a tipping point (some put it at
a 2°C or 3.6°F increase), which can set off a
chain reaction that would make it impossible
to reverse the dire changes to the climate.
WILL CLIMATE
CHANGE DESTROY
THE EARTH?
N
o. Climate change is altering Earth, but
there have been cataclysmic changes
to the climate in the past. Earth survived
them, although they drastically affected the
kinds of life-forms the planet supports, and
scores of species were driven to extinction.
Humankind is highly susceptible to climate
change, so the question is not whether we
will destroy the Earth but rather whether we
will make it uninhabitable. In reality we are
still living in an ice age, the Late Cenozoic
Ice Age, which began 33.9 million years ago.
In the grand scheme of things, it’s actually
unusual to have ice at the poles: For most of
Earth’s history the poles were ice-free—but
sea levels were also up to 200 feet higher.
HOW MANY
PEOPLE HAVE
BEEN KILLED BY
CLIMATE CHANGE?
A
ccording to one UN report, “More than
600,000 lives were lost, and 4.1 billion
people were injured, left homeless, or
in need of emergency assistance as a result
of weather-related disasters between 1995
and 2015,” which accounted for 90% of the
major disasters occurring during that time.
The WHO estimates up to 250,000 people a
year could be killed by climate change by
the year 2030. According to a British study,
heat-related deaths in the UK will rise 257%
over the next 30 years due to climate change.
ideasanddiscoveries.com 21 May 2020
 i
Just three countries were
responsible for half of all
the CO2 emissions in 2015:
30% China
13.7% USA
6.6% India
4.7% Russia
3.6% Japan
2.15% Germany

IN ALL, THERE
ARE TRILLIONS
OF TONS
of CO2 on Earth, almost all of it stored
inside of rocks (such as limestone).
Only 0.05% of it is dissolved in water,
0.002% in the soil, and about 0.001%
in living creatures and in the air.

WHO IS RESPONSIBLE
FOR CO2 EMISSIONS?
n order to answer that question, became part of the equation, the system approximately half of the world’s forests

I
first it’s important to understand
that most of the carbon dioxide
that’s present in the world today
existed long before the human
race appeared. About 97% of CO2
emissions are of natural origin,
released, for example, by forest
fires, the activity of volcanoes,
and cellular respiration. However that CO2
is part of a closed carbon cycle—dissolved
by the oceans, converted by plants to
create oxygen, and stored as carbon in
various life-forms. Before human activity
was in equilibrium, and atmospheric CO2
concentrations remained almost constant
for several thousand years. But since we
began releasing gigantic quantities of CO2
into the air by burning fossil fuels (such as
oil, gas, and coal [seen here being mined]),
much more CO2 has been released every
year than the Earth can store. The result:
Atmospheric levels of this most prevalent
of the greenhouse gases have been rising
fast. The dimensions of this additional CO2
release are enormous. Over the course of
human history, we had already destroyed
(an area that’s about four times the size
of Europe), before we’d started burning
large amounts of lignite and coal (close to
8 billion tons per year) as well as oil (more
than 33 billion barrels per year). The latest
figures show the CO2 in the atmosphere
has been rising to more than 37 billion
tons each year as the result of industrial
activity and the burning of fossil fuels.
A host of other human activities, including
agriculture and land use, add even more,
for an estimated annual amount in excess
of 43 billion tons.
THE SECRET WHICH COMPANIES
CLIMATE KILLERS ARE RESPONSIBLE
Just 100 companies are
responsible for more than FOR 71% OF ALL
CO2 EMISSIONS?
70% of all CO 2 emissions. But
few people realize that there
are other climate killers that

T
he main culprits when it
operate under the radar… comes to causing climate
change are the producers
of electric power and the
WHICH BUILDING MATERIAL oil companies. That’s the
DOES MORE CLIMATE conclusion of the Carbon
Majors Report published
DAMAGE THAN AVIATION? by the non-profit Carbon
founded the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change (IPCC) —100 companies
have produced 71% of global emissions
of greenhouse gases. According to the
Carbon Majors Report: “Almost a third
[32%] of emissions come from investor-
owned companies, 59% from state-owned
companies, and 9% come from private

W
hen the world is in a building boom,
no other business profits as much as
the concrete industry, and no country
uses more of it than China, which produces
and consumes about 60% of global output.
According to Microsoft founder Bill Gates,
China consumed 6.6 gigatons of concrete
between 2011 and 2013, which is more than
the U.S. used during the entire 20th century.
But this product with its key ingredient of
limestone has a darker side: According to
the BBC, “World cement production in 2016
generated around 2.2 billion tons of CO2,
or 8% of the global total.” That’s twice as
much as the entire global aviation industry.
Nevertheless, the EU allocates emissions
certificates free of charge for concrete in
the belief that the material is irreplaceable,
despite the fact that material such as fiber-
reinforced concrete, for example, is lighter
and drastically reduces CO2 emissions.
Disclosure Project (CDP).
Its database is “the most comprehensive
dataset of historic company greenhouse
gas [GHG] emissions ever compiled,” and
it singles out the responsible companies
by name. Governments should ultimately
be responsible for regulating emissions of
CO2 in their respective territories, but the
emitters tend to be giant corporations that
are resistant to national regulation.
The report provides a list of targets
for those who are seeking to reduce the
global CO2 emissions in a meaningful way.
Since 1988—the year the United Nations
investment.” More than half of emissions
produced since 1988 can be traced to
just 25 state and corporate producers.
The report says the greatest polluters
are: “investor-owned companies such as
ExxonMobil, Shell, BP, Chevron, Peabody,
Total, and BHP Billiton, and state-owned
entities such as Saudi Aramco, Gazprom,
National Iranian Oil, Coal India, Pemex,
CNPC, and the China National Coal Group.
The operations of the fossil fuel companies
have released more emissions in the last
28 years than the total of the previous 237
years combined.”

HOW DIRTY IS THE

CRUISE SHIP INDUSTRY?

A
t the end of 2018, there were 314 cruise
ships operating worldwide carrying a
total of 26 million annual passengers.
The largest operator is Carnival and all its
subsidiaries, with 103 ships and 12 million
passengers. The problem: Each day a cruise
ship emits as much particulate matter as a
million cars. Marine expert Bill Hemmings
says: “Even when they burn low-sulfur fuel,
these ships are 100 times worse than road
diesel.” Large ships burn at least 150 tons
of fuel per day, emitting more sulfur than
several million cars and the CO2 of almost
84,000. And: Most cruise ships burn heavy
fuel oil. Generally considered a “worst-case
substance,” it contains 3,500 times more
sulfur than is permitted in diesel fuel. The
Brussels-based Transport & Environment
group says: “Air pollution from international
shipping accounts for approximately 50,000
premature deaths per year in Europe alone,
at an annual cost to society of more than
$65 billion.”

ideasanddiscoveries.com 23 May 2020

HOW LONG HAVE THESE COMPANIES KNOWN
THE TRUTH ABOUT THE CO2 CRISIS?

T
he U.S.-based oil and gas company
ExxonMobil has an annual turnover of
$279 billion, which makes it one of the
world’s largest companies by revenue
(comparable to the entire economy
of Finland), and it is also among the
top 10 producers of CO2 emissions. A
comprehensive peer-reviewed study
by Harvard University researchers has
shown that ExxonMobil spent decades misleading the
public about climate change and the risks posed by
fossil fuel emissions. With its own in-house climate
models the company confirmed the global warming
consensus in the early 1980s but publicly denied it.
While ExxonMobil may dispute the data, the facts
speak a clear language: The study has reviewed the
company’s internal deliberations, scientific research,
and public rhetoric. The conclusion: “On the question
of whether ExxonMobil had misled non-scientific
audiences regarding climate science, our analysis
supports the conclusion that it did.” There was also “a
systematic discrepancy between what ExxonMobil’s
scientists and executives discussed about climate
change privately and in academic circles and what
it presented to the general public.” When the CO2
contamination of the atmosphere reached a record
high in May of 2019, climate researchers reviewed
ExxonMobil’s projections and found the company’s
predictions made 37 years earlier were right on the
mark. The company knew that the polar ice caps were
going to melt. But while 83% of peer-reviewed papers
written by company scientists acknowledged that
climate change is real and caused by humans, only
12% of company ads acknowledged those facts
while more than 80% expressed doubt.

WHICH NATIONS ARE

MOST RESPONSIBLE
FOR CLIMATE CHANGE?
O
nly one U.S.-based corporation (ExxonMobil, ranked
#5) is among the top 10 worst polluters, ahead of the
Netherlands’ Royal Dutch Shell (ranked #9). But the
biggest emitter by far is China for coal, followed by Saudi
Arabian Oil and Russia’s Gazprom. Other top-10 polluters
are based in Iran, India, and Mexico. The only German
polluter in the top 100 list is the electric utility RWE AG
(ranked #41), however seven of the biggest offenders in
the EU are based in Germany, making this country the
biggest polluter in the EU and putting it in sixth place
worldwide. But Germany has been making huge strides:
The share of electricity from renewable sources rose from
just 3.4% in 1990 to more than 50% in March of 2019.
By way of contrast, solar and wind still provide less than
10% of the total energy generation in the United States.
Given the progress Germany has made, iD interviewed
one of the country’s top climate scientists.
 Interview:
How can we halt
climate change,
Prof. Quaschning?
Volker Quaschning is a professor of
renewable energy systems at the
University of Applied Sciences for
Engineering and Economics in Berlin.
WHAT TECHNOLOGY DO
WE NEED IN ORDER TO
MAKE THE TRANSITION?
We’ve had the appropriate technology for
a long time. To make the German economy
climate-neutral by 2035, we will have to
quadruple the output from wind power and
increase solar power by a factor of 10. The
challenge for the U.S. is far greater because
relatively little has been done.
DOESN’T MANUFACTURING
SOLAR PANELS PRODUCE
A LOT OF CO2?
The technology has advanced so much that
even in areas with relatively little sunshine,
solar panels recover the energy that was
needed to make them after only two years
of operation. Modern solar equipment has a
life expectancy of up to 35 years—the same
as coal-fired power plants. But in the case
of solar, the cost of producing and setting
up the equipment is recovered in the first
10 years—after that, everything is savings.
THERE IS SUNSHINE ONLY
DURING THE DAY, AND
THE WIND DOESN’T BLOW
CONSTANTLY. WON’T
WE CONTINUE TO NEED
COAL-FIRED POWER
PLANTS TO MAKE UP
THE DIFFERENCE?
That’s a question the conventional power
producers like to raise, however the answer
is a firm “no.” Renewable energy is already
delivering approximately half of Germany’s
energy needs. That’s an average of course,
and the figure is indeed higher in the daytime
and lower at night. But we use the excess
energy we produce during the day to create
climate-neutral hydrogen, which is used to
fire calorific power plants and make up the
deficit. The best thing about it is: We already
have sufficient gas-fired plants and storage
facilities because we have been importing
natural gas from Russia [editor’s note: this is
supplied by Gazprom, which is ranked third-
worst in the world for its CO2 emissions].
Because Russia has also been known to
use its natural gas as a political weapon,
we have to be aware of the threat that the
Russian state could simply turn off the gas.
Thus we store a three-month supply, and
we also have the space we need to store
the gas we create from renewable energy
sources. The goal is to make Germany not
only climate-neutral but also independent
of foreign sources.
WHAT ABOUT OTHER
COUNTRIES? CHINA’S
COAL-FIRED POWER
PLANTS PRODUCE MORE
CO2 THAN ANYONE ELSE.
China will take a lot longer than we will
to become climate-neutral because their
energy needs are so much greater. But at
the same time, the Chinese are far ahead
of us when it comes to electromobility and
photovoltaics. China will soon be reaching
its maximum consumption of coal because
most of it will already have been exhausted.
This milestone will cause a huge reduction
in the Chinese coal consumption. And oil-
producing countries such as Saudi Arabia
are also investing heavily now in renewable
energy sources. When it comes to natural
resources, the Saudis have a lot more than
just petroleum—namely, sunshine.
HOW ARE
RENEWABLE
ENERGY SOURCES
BEING SABOTAGED?
W
hen the International Energy Agency
(IEA) publishes its studies on energy
security and economic development,
governments often take them at face value.
But for a number of years now, the IEA has
been systematically underestimating the
growth of renewable energy and thus the
potential of climate-neutral power plants.
For example, the IEA has projected global
photovoltaic production to be 200 gigawatts
in 2030, but, in fact, the figure for 2017 was
already considerably higher. Nevertheless,
governments continue to base their political
decisions on these faulty estimates, and the
large energy producers take advantage of it:
Because as long as the output coming from
sources of alternative energy appears to
be lagging behind, there will be very little
political pressure on the energy companies
to clean up their act.
HOW MANY
JOBS WILL BE
LOST BECAUSE
OF THE TRANSITION
TO RENEWABLE
ENERGY?
N
o other country in the world uses as
much brown coal (lignite) as Germany:
This combustible rock that is formed
from the natural compression of peat has
been responsible for approximately one-
fifth of the country’s total CO2 emissions.
(The heat content of lignite is also relatively
low, as compared with other varieties.) In
signing the Paris Climate Agreement, the
German government made a commitment
to cut its CO2 emissions by more than half
by the year 2030. But the implementation
of that goal is progressing at a slow pace.
One of the arguments made in favor of a
slowdown is that the implementation would
endanger jobs. Some 20,000 people work
in Germany’s lignite industry. But compared
with the almost 340,000 jobs available in
renewable energy, that is a relatively small
number, and halting the implementation
threatens those very jobs. Climate expert
Volker Quaschning says: “The contribution
of China’s competition in renewable energy,
which along with political uncertainty has
resulted in an 80 percent reduction in the
domestic photovoltaic industry, has caused
a loss of 80,000 jobs. In addition, more than
40,000 jobs in the wind power industry are
acutely threatened.”
ideasanddiscoveries.com 25 May 2020
 HOW EXPENSIVE
IS IT TO FIGHT
CLIMATE CHANGE?
N
umerous studies over the decades have
explored that question. Germany has
a clear answer: A study by the Federal
Industrial Agency estimates it will take total
investments of $2.56 trillion by 2050—which
breaks down to almost $85 billion per year.
The situation in the United States is far more
nebulous. In the spring of 2015 the Obama
Administration had formally committed to
reducing greenhouse gas emissions by up
to 28% below 2005 levels by the year 2025
as part of a laudable objective of reducing
climate-devastating emissions by 80% or
more by 2050. The current administration,
however, has announced that the U.S. will
officially withdraw from the Paris Climate
Agreement on the day following the 2020
election if President Trump is re-elected,
which puts any meaningful action in doubt.
In 2006 the UK government released the
Stern Review on the Economics of Climate
Change, a 700-page report on the effects
of global warming on the world economy.
The report stated that the cost of reducing
emissions could be as little as 1% of global
GDP if immediate action were taken. But in
the absence of action, that could rise over
time to more than 20% of GDP. If that’s true,

HOW BIG A THREAT

the worldwide cost in 2020 terms would be
more than $17 trillion annually.

HOW DO COMPANIES
PROFIT BY DENYING
TO CLIMATE DOES
CLIMATE CHANGE? AVIATION POSE?
E
“ mitting CO2 has to become expensive,”

says Joachim Wenning, chairman of the
board of management of the Munich Re
Group, one of the world’s largest reinsurers.
Munich Re has been investigating the cost
and repercussions of climate change since
the 1970s. Wenning confirms environmental
agency estimates that a ton of CO2 causes
damage of around $200. That is far more
than corporations currently pay in carbon
taxes in the countries that impose them. (At
present Germany charges only $25 per ton,
while Switzerland charges $90 for each ton.)
In addition, the exploitation of fossil fuels is
still subsidized in many countries. According
to conservative estimates, the U.S. directly
subsidizes the fossil fuel industry to the tune
of $20 billion per year (“your tax dollars at
work”), while the European Union subsidies
are estimated to total more than $60 billion
annually. The subsidies make the continued
extraction of fossil fuels more feasible and
attractive. Munich Re’s Wenning would like
to see corporations having to pay a carbon
tax of at least $128 per ton—a figure that
might encourage them to seriously consider
the transition to renewable energy.
L
eading climate scientists
agree: If we intend to halt
climate change and stave
off the catastrophic effects
that are sure to accompany
it, we must reduce our per
capita emissions of CO 2
to no more than 2 tons per
year. The problem: In 2016
the United States emitted about 15 tons
of CO2 per capita—a level of emissions
that’s almost 70% higher than Europe’s
worst emitter, Germany, and more than
three times higher than the world average.
Air travel weighs heavily on our personal
CO2 emissions burden, though a private
car produces about a pound of CO2 per
passenger mile while air travel produces
half that and commuter rail only a third
as much. Nevertheless, airlines have a
significant impact on the environment.
According to data from the European
Union, the Irish low-cost carrier Ryanair
is among the 10 biggest polluters in
the EU. The airline emitted more
than 10 million tons of carbon
dioxide in 2018—an increase
of nearly 8% over the previous
year. It was outstripped only
by coal-fired power plants.
Among 20 airlines that were
studied by the London School
of Economics, those that have
the best emissions records are
EasyJet, Alaska Air, and Qantas.
The worst three are Korean Air,
Lufthansa, and Singapore Airlines.
The report also commended Delta
and United for “taking a strategic
approach to the problem of climate
change.” Among the factors that
contribute to airline fuel efficiency
are the average age of aircraft (efficiency
has improved by around 10% in recent
years), the number of passengers who
are being transported at once (the more
the better), and the balance of long-haul
and short-haul flights (long-haul flights
burn a bit less fuel per passenger mile).
Fortunately, the study has discovered a
downward trend in fuel consumption for
all the airlines studied.

May 2020 26 ideasanddiscoveries.com

 HOW CAN I
PRODUCE MY
OWN ELECTRICITY?
F
or a long time, photovoltaic equipment
was considered by many consumers to
be too complicated and inconvenient.
Only if you owned your own home could you
hope to install the expensive equipment on
the roof of your house. But is that really the
case? Solar panels have become much less
expensive. Small ones can be mounted on
a balcony, and the electricity they produce
can be fed into the home’s power supply or
into the grid. According to the U.S. Energy
Information Administration, on average each
residential customer in the U.S. uses about
11,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity per year.
So it would take 28 to 34 panels to generate
enough solar energy to power a whole home.
The lowest electric usage is found in Africa,
where the average kilowatt consumption per
household can be in the low double-digits.

WHY MUST WE
STOP THE HUGE
POLLUTERS NOW?
C
limate science speaks an unmistakable
language: If we want to prevent disaster,
the average temperature must not be
allowed to rise above preindustrial levels by
even 2°C (3.6°F) by the year 2100. Otherwise
the permafrost that underlies 20% of Earth’s
land surface will thaw, releasing billions of
tons of CO2. That would mark a fatal tipping
point from which there would be no return.
Northern soils are estimated to hold more
PHOTOS: cosmin4000/Getty; John Crux Photography/Getty; djedzura/Getty; Patrick Foto/Getty; Getty Images; nielubieklonu/Getty; Imago.

than 2 trillion tons of organic carbon—five

times the total amount thus far emitted by
human activity and around twice as much
as is found in the atmosphere. Most of the
G20 nations are far from meeting the climate
goals they set for 2035. Climate scientists

IS IT POSSIBLE say nations will have to triple their efforts

in order to prevent the worst-case scenario
from becoming reality, and the time to act

TO CAPTURE CO2?
is now. “We are approaching potentially
irreversible thresholds earlier than we had
previously thought,” says Johan Rockström,
the co-director of the Potsdam Institute for
Climate Impact Research. Theoretically the
goal of 2°C is still within reach, and thanks

Y
es. Nature is doing it all take advantage of that is reforestation.
the time and is our best “If we would plant about 3 million square to the Carbon Majors Report we know the
ally in the battle against miles of forest, we’d be able to reduce names of the greatest climate killers. The
climate change. Around the Earth’s temperature by about a third report “shows how a relatively small group
half of all CO2 emissions of a degree Fahrenheit by the end of the of fossil fuel producers holds the key to a
are captured by natural century,” says Julia Pongratz, a research systemic change in CO2 emissions,” says
means—by the oceans scientist at the Carnegie Institution for Pedro Faria, technical director of the non-
and plants of the world. Science’s department of global ecology. profit environmental group CDP, publisher of
However that means the The problem: Not enough land is available the report. A large percentage of industrial
more we damage the oceans and the to plant 3 million square miles of forest. greenhouse gas is being subsidized by the
more trees we cut down, the less nature Researchers hope that we can improve taxpayers. So it’s up to us to compel these
can help us. Plants store about 30% of farming methods enough to make more companies to accept responsibility for their
all the CO2 we emit, and the best way to farmland available for growing forests. actions and become part of the solution.

ideasanddiscoveries.com 27 May 2020

 COULD
Technology

THIS
BRIEFCASE
DESTROY
THE
WORLD? It has an inconspicuous black leather exterior, a weight of about 45 pounds,
and it’s always within reach of the U.S. president : The NUCLEAR FOOTBALL
has the potential to annihilate civilization. And it’s surprisingly easy to use…

May 2020 28 ideasanddiscoveries.com


THE ROOM WHERE
THE FATE OF
HUMANITY
IS DECIDED
The president usually communicates
with the military Situation Room at
the Pentagon from the Situation Room
in the White House, the president’s
residence. The nuclear football is
intended for use outside the building,
such as here at CIA headquarters in
Langley, Virginia.
THERE IS NO SEPARATION OF
POWERS IN A NUCLEAR STRIKE
Washington, D.C., January 20, 2017: On Inauguration Day,
there was a transfer of power from the outgoing president,
Barack Obama, to his successor. The ceremony began at
noon, and a short time later the Chief Justice of the Supreme
Court John Roberts swore in the new president, Donald Trump,
making him commander in chief of the nation’s armed forces.
At the same time, a black briefcase officially changed hands:
the “nuclear football” that contains the codes that give the
THE CODE FOR
1,000s
OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS
On the day he or she is sworn into
office, the U.S. president receives the
world’s most powerful ciphers. Called
the Gold Codes, they are printed on a
plastic card similar to a credit card that
is known as the “biscuit.” They allow
the president to identify him- or herself
as the authorized user of the football.
Presidents carry the biscuit on their
person day and night.
commander in chief the ability to send human civilization
back to the Stone Age. From that moment on, Trump had the
power to order the deaths of hundreds of millions of people.
If the president were to order a nuclear strike, there would
be no separation of powers—no vote in Congress, no veto
from America’s generals: It would take about as much time
to trigger a nuclear holocaust as it takes to tweet a message
from the White House.
 THE MAN WHO

NEVER LEAVES
The nuclear football is carried by one of a series
of rotating military aides who are always with the
president, traveling in the same vehicle, taking
the same elevator, and staying on the same floor
of a hotel. These five aides are all high-ranking
military officers, drawn from all five branches of
service, and they have undergone the country’s
most stringent background check (Yankee White)
as well as extensive psychological testing.

THE BRIEFCASE
THAT CONTAINS A

MENU FOR
DOOMSDAY
The football doesn’t have a trigger or a “big red button.”
It is a communications device for contacting the Joint
Chiefs of Staff and the National Military Command
Center. In the event of nuclear war, a president would
review a menu of preset plans to decide the targets
and dimensions of the attack. To ensure continuity
of the nation’s defense, the vice president has a
duplicate of the nuclear football.

ideasanddiscoveries.com 31 May 2020


W
henever the president of the United
States leaves the White House, he is
shadowed by one of five aides. Drawn
from each branch of the military, they
hold a rank of major or higher as well
as a Yankee White security clearance,
and they hold the fate of the world in
their hands in the form of the nuclear
football that gives the U.S. president,
as the nation’s commander in chief,
the ability to obliterate his enemies.
In March of 2019, the Federation of
American Scientists estimated that
the United States has an inventory of
6,185 nuclear warheads. Meanwhile,
the government stated that 1,365 of
them were deployed on 656 ICBMs,
SLBMs, and strategic bombers.
IS THERE REALLY A
“BIG RED BUTTON”?
The nuclear football is actually a Zero
Halliburton aluminum briefcase that’s
contained in a black leather “jacket.”
Although its official appellation is the
“president’s emergency satchel,” the
football gets its informal name from
an early version of America’s plan for
nuclear war that was code-named
“Dropkick.” In contrast to numerous
characterizations by Hollywood, the
football does not contain a “big red
button.” The contents are designed
to identify the holder as an authorized
user and to communicate with the
Joint Chiefs of Staff and the National
Military Command Center. Inside the
football, the president would see a
number of military options with preset
war plans for choosing targets and
setting objectives, from “selective
destruction” to a full-scale attack.
Former senior military aide Colonel
Buzz Patterson has compared the
documents to the menu of a fast food
restaurant: “It’s like picking one from
Column A and two from Column B,”
he says. Moscow plus Pyongyang
and Tehran, for example.
The “menu” system was devised
under Jimmy Carter, the 39th U.S.
president, who was a Naval Academy
graduate selected for the nuclear
submarine program and did graduate
work in reactor technology as well as
nuclear physics. He thought that the
instructions in the football were too
complicated: If America were really
being attacked with rocket-borne
nuclear weapons, there would be no
time to waste. The president would
have to quickly decide whether he
trusts the technology and judgment
of his intelligence services and then
respond immediately to protect the
American people. The psychological
pressure of such a moment is very
hard to imagine, but President John
F. Kennedy got to experience some
of the high drama in the fall of 1962…
That year, in the early morning of
October 16, America’s 35th president
was shown images of Soviet missile
bases that were nearing completion
on the nearby island of Cuba. Armed
with nuclear missiles, Cuba would’ve
had the ability to destroy America’s
capital city and most of its important
industrial cities in a matter of minutes.
“WHAT WOULD I SAY TO
LAUNCH A NUCLEAR STRIKE?”
The “Cuban Missile Crisis” was the
hottest moment of the Cold War—and
it also marked the birth of the nuclear
football. Although the U.S. had a huge
advantage in terms of the number of
nuclear warheads and the means of
delivering them, the full-scale use of
these weapons would have led to the
annihilation of both the attacker and
the defender (a result of the doctrine
of mutually assured destruction, or
MAD). But were the Soviets planning
to commence a preemptive attack to
destroy America’s ability to respond?
With nuclear weapons now being
installed on the country’s doorstep,
the generals were extremely anxious.
And Kennedy had several important
questions regarding the release of
America’s nuclear weapons: “What
would I say to the Joint War Room to
launch an immediate nuclear strike?”
In addition: “How would the person
who received my instructions verify
them?” The answers he heard were
troubling: The system lacked control
mechanisms to prevent mistakes and
misunderstandings that could result
in the destruction of the entire world.
Up until the Cuban Missile Crisis, the
most frightful weapon ever invented
was not securely protected against
misuse, though almost all presidents
from Harry S. Truman on down to the
current titleholder were aware of the
“nuclear taboo” conditioned by the
horrific effects, ethical concerns, and
the repercussions of global opinion
if nuclear weapons were used again.
Tensions continued to rise, and a
week after the Cuban Missile Crisis
began, the alert level of the Strategic
Air Command that’s responsible for
the nation’s nuclear air defenses was
raised to DEFCON-2, for the only time
in our history. That put 3,000 nuclear
weapons on alert, readying the total
power of 7,000 megatons—roughly
450,000 times the energy of the atomic
bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima.
Coming that close to the very brink
of nuclear war led to a rethinking of
weapons control and the invention of
the nuclear football. But even today,
if the American president decides to
use nuclear weapons, the first launch
could come just minutes later…
HOW MANY LETTERS DOES IT
TAKE TO SPELL APOCALYPSE?
Once the president has successfully
identified himself (or herself), there is
a brief authentication by the Pentagon
before an encrypted message of some
1 VESSEL,
100s OF WARHEADS
Nuclear weapons travel to their targets
aboard either a bomber or a missile.
Airports and missile silos are immovable
targets and thus vulnerable to an attack.
Therefore the majority of America’s nuclear
arsenal is carried aboard nuclear-powered
submarines on the world’s seas. The U.S.
Navy has 14 ballistic missile submarines
(SSBN) and four cruise missile submarines
(SSGN), all of the Ohio class—the world’s
third-largest submarine. Extremely quiet,
they are very hard for an enemy to detect.
Each Ohio carries 24 Trident II missiles,
each with multiple individually targeted
warheads. Together they could destroy
thousands of targets, but maintenance
schedules and arms-reduction treaties
considerably reduce that potential.
150 characters (about half the length
of a tweet) gets transmitted through
the Nuclear Command and Control
System. This message specifies the
prescribed plan of action as well as
its timing and also supplies the codes
to unlock and launch the missiles and
warheads. Procedures are in place
to ensure the message will reach all
forces, even under the most extreme
of circumstances.
At the end of the chain of command
the order to launch is authenticated
by at least two people using codes
that are stored in a safe. An ICBM
launch requires four people to turn
keys simultaneously. The launch of
submarine-launched ballistic missiles
(SLBM) also requires participation of
four people: the submarine’s captain,
navigation officer, missile officer, and
launch-control officer.
ROCKETS THAT ARE
LAUNCHED
UNDERWATER
U.S. Navy submarines fire their
Trident II missiles from a depth of
around 165 feet. A small motor
propels the missile from the sub.
Then a series of three different
propulsion systems take over,
each one being jettisoned before
the next one ignites. The third-
stage motor is ejected as the
missile reaches its target area.
The president’s order to attack
has to be verified by the secretary
of defense, but the secretary has no
veto power and must comply with the
order. Should he or she refuse to take
action, the president is able to issue
the order to a more compliant person.
And once the missiles are launched,
there is no going back. The power of PHOTOS: Wally McNamee/Contributor/Getty; Getty Images; Historical/Contributor/Getty.
a Trident II SLBM’s engines propels
the missile to 20 times the speed of
sound in less than two minutes.
While the 45-pound briefcase never
leaves the president’s side, the codes
got lost for several months during the
Clinton administration. The incident
was revealed years later when former
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Henry H. Shelton mentioned it in his
autobiography. Had the codes fallen
into the wrong hands, the world might
be a very different place today…
ideasanddiscoveries.com 33 May 2020
THE

THAT

Roman commercial center, cultural melting pot, symbol of peace :

Among the historic places in the Middle East, the ancient oasis
city of Palmyra is one of the most impressive. For that very reason
ISIS demolition squads were determined to wipe it off the map.
What they were not expecting: a handful of dedicated archeologists
determined to impart immortality to this priceless cultural site…
 History

WOULDN’T DIE

ideasanddiscoveries.com 35 May 2020

 B
E
F
O
R
E

A
F
T
E
R
DIGITAL RESCUE A LIFE FOR ARCHEOLOGY ISIS fighters
Roger Michel is For more than 40 years, destroyed
the founder of the Khaled al-Asaad oversaw a large part
Institute for Digital the archeological sites in of Palmyra
Archeology (IDA) in Palmyra. He gave his life with several
Oxford. Thanks to his trying to protect them from explosions.
initiative, Palmyra was ISIS when its fighters began
digitally preserved. destroying them in 2015.

M
uffled explosions
echo throughout
central Syria. For
weeks now, the
fi ghters who are
trying to establish
the Islamic State
have been engaged in a bitter battle
against the Syrian Army. Their target:
the metropolis of Homs. The pathway
there leads through the ancient city
of Palmyra, and it is only a matter of
time before the fighting reaches the
ruins of the age-old oasis, with all its
magnifi cent cultural monuments. A
handful of residents have been trying
to brave the impending assault, and
one of them calls himself Jamal. His
true identity remains secret. Jamal is
here for a special reason, and if ISIS
were to get wind of it, it would be his
death sentence. He frantically paces
off the historic sites, from time to time
taking out a small camera to record
what he sees. It’s no regular camera:
This one was custom-built to capture
three-dimensional images. Jamal
takes a deep breath before pointing
the camera at the towering Arch of
Triumph and snapping a photo. His
hand clenches into a frustrated fist.
He is well aware that soon little will
remain of these glorious monuments
apart from dusty rubble, and there’s
nothing he can do to prevent it. But
with these photos he’s making sure
that the Arch of Triumph will soon be
“standing” somewhere else…
Jamal is one of hundreds of Syrian
volunteers who’ve been working to
preserve the country’s great cultural
heritage. They’re the very last line of
defense against the ISIS demolition
squads. They can’t prevent the acts
of terror, but they can help undo some
of the damage. The work has been
made possible by the UK’s Institute
for Digital Archeology (IDA) in Oxford.
Established in 2012 by archeologist
Roger Michel, the IDA is building up
a digital archive of historical places.
In conjunction with imaging experts,
Michel developed a 3-D camera that
transmits the digital images it takes
to the IDA’s server. In late 2014 the
camera was still being tested, but the
reality of the events in the Middle East
forced the institute to take immediate
action. The civil war that was raging
in Syria increasingly threatened the
country’s historical monuments, and
it seemed likely that many of them
would be destroyed in the fighting.
Michel made the decision to launch
the mass production of his camera
in order to preserve as many cultural
sites as possible in virtual form before
they could be obliterated in real life.
“I didn’t want to have people saying:
‘Gee, why didn’t you begin in 2015,
when ISIS controlled only 3 percent
of the sites,’” says Michel. He started
distributing 5,000 3-D cameras to
activists in the Middle East, hundreds
of them in Syria. A secret network of
local volunteers began photographing
threatened cultural sites and sending
the photos to the institute’s server.
 THE SAVIORS OF
SYRIA’S MONUMENTS
The IDA sought to protect the identity
of its numerous volunteers just as an
intelligence agency shields its agents.
Every contact was kept anonymous,
and the institute’s archive was closed
to public view in an effort to prevent
people from drawing any conclusions
about where the work was under way.
Time was of the essence for all those
working to save the monuments: They
sometimes had just a few hours after
arriving at an endangered site to take
photos of the most crucial structures
and vanish before anybody noticed.
Not all of them survived.
The militias of ISIS were not just
destroying Syria’s cultural treasures
for ideological reasons; they were
also plundering archeological sites
in order to sell the looted objects on
the black market and finance their
struggle. The work of those trying to
capture images of the monuments
threatened this illegal activity: The
photos are marked with GPS data
and the date. Thus, even years later,
the specific origin of an object can be
identified, so the information creates
a nightmare for the black marketeers.
ISIS put a bounty on the heads of the
IDA volunteers, but still they were not
deterred. In only a few months’ time
the IDA server contained more than
10 million photos of endangered ruins
and art treasures. When ISIS finally
reached Palmyra, the full importance
of the project became evident.
IN THE FACE OF TERROR
Jamal has been pacing the ruins of
Palmyra for almost three hours and
has taken photos of most of the site.
Now exhausted, he sits down in the
shadow of a column as he checks
the display on his camera: “Upload
PHOTOS: Getty Images; Laif (2); PR (2).
86% complete.” Then he sees a white
pickup approaching. After taking
another quick glance at the display
(“91%”), Jamal stows his equipment
away. The truck stops nearby, and
four hooded men with Kalashnikovs
jump down from the back. Could they
be ISIS fighters? Jamal’s blood runs
cold. If he can’t complete the upload,
Palmyra may be lost forever. It’s clear
to him that ISIS intends to demolish
the monuments. The men approach
him. “What are you doing out here?
You’ve got to leave. ISIS is getting
close,” yells one of them. Jamal is
in luck: These are soldiers from the
Syrian Army who are trying to defend
the city. Jamal takes one last look at
his camera: “100%.” He breathes a
sigh of relief. Palmyra will live forever
on the IDA server.
Palmyra was named a UNESCO
World Heritage Site in 1980 as “one
of the most important cultural centers
of the ancient world. Standing at the
crossroads of several civilizations,
Palmyra married the Greco-Roman
techniques with local traditions and
Persian influences.” And that history
made the city a thorn in the side for
the fundamentalist ISIS militias. “The
true intention of such destruction is
to deprive the Syrian people of its
knowledge, its identity, and history,”
says former UNESCO Director-General
Irina Bokova. “This destruction is an
immense loss for the Syrian people
and for humanity.”
ISIS reached the city in May of
2015, driving out Syrian government
forces. However, in their search for
antiquities to loot and sell, they soon
realized some of the most important
ones were no longer there. That was
thanks to the efforts of archeologist
Khaled al-Asaad, head of antiquities
in the city of Palmyra, a position he’d
held for more than 40 years. As ISIS
approached the city, al-Asaad helped
evacuate and hide the contents of its
main museum. After he was captured
by ISIS militants, he refused to reveal
the hiding place despite having been
interrogated and tortured for a month.
An ISIS executioner then beheaded
the 83-year-old scholar, and his body
was hung up from a pole for public
display. ISIS had murdered Palmyra’s
custodian and destroyed much of the
historic city. But what they could not
destroy was the cache of 3-D images
on the IDA server.
HOW DO YOU REBUILD A
WORLD HERITAGE SITE?
When Roger Michel and his team at
IDA heard of the horrific murder and
destruction, they’d sought to send a
clear message to ISIS: “Your barbaric
action is meaningless. We will rebuild
what you have destroyed!” In April of
2016, IDA erected a scale model of
Palmyra’s Arch of Triumph in London’s
Trafalgar Square. Two-thirds the size
of the original, it was based on IDA
photos of the original monument.
Using 3-D printing technology, it was
made of Egyptian marble by an Italian
company. Thus less than a year after
militants had destroyed the original,
people could once again admire the
ancient structure. Later in the year it
was erected in New York City before
traveling to other destinations around
the world. Until peace returns to Syria
it will be too dangerous to take the
replica to its original home, but there
are plans to rebuild the Arch along
with the Temple of Baalshamin and
the Temple of Bel using the surviving
remains. IDA’s director of technology,
Alexy Karenowska, says: “The arch is
not a physical replacement, but when
cultural monuments are destroyed in
a wanton act, it is vital to reconstruct
them.” A French company called Art
Graphique et Patrimoine, which has
worked on 2,000 or so monuments in
18 countries, has scanned the rubble
of Palmyra to create a plan for partial
restoration. Some archeologists and
historians have suggested leaving
Palmyra as it is now, as a memorial
to the brutality of the civil war. Others
would like a rebuilt Palmyra to stand
as a monument to Khaled al-Asaad
and the others who risked and lost
their lives trying to protect the city.
But regardless of what Syria decides
to do about Palmyra in the end, the
ancient oasis city will remain alive on
the server of the IDA.
ideasanddiscoveries.com 37 May 2020
 questions
Ask a simple question, get a simple answer? Think again! Scientists often have to work meticulously to come up with explanations
for basic processes—and sometimes they inadvertently discover marvels that can change our perception of the world.

SECRETS OF
STONEHENGE
When was
STONEHENGE BUILT?
The enormous standing stones near
Salisbury, England, have been attracting
visitors for millennia. Archeologists working
there have discovered human artifacts more
than 8,000 years old. The first sandstone ring,
Stonehenge I, was built in prehistoric times,
starting around 3100 BC. This original ring
was used for some 500 years before the site
reverted to scrubland. Stonehenge II was built
of bluestone pillars circa 2100 BC to create a
second concentric circle. Work on Stonehenge
III began around 2000 BC, and the complex
remained in use for another thousand years.

Why were the

STONE CIRCLES BUILT?
“How grand! How incomprehensible! How
wonderful!” That’s how British archeologist
Sir Richard Colt Hoare described Stonehenge in
Volume I of his The Ancient History of Wiltshire
(1812). The structure was long considered one of
history’s great mysteries. Surprisingly, Geoffrey
of Monmouth’s 12th-century story that Merlin had
magically transported Stonehenge from Ireland to
Salisbury Plain was long accepted. While there is
still little evidence as to what rites may have taken
place there, modern analysis has shown that great
care was taken to align the monument with the
movements of the Sun. So it may have been the site
of ceremonies connected with the summer and winter
solstices, when the Sun’s apparent path is farthest
north and south, respectively, from the Equator.

How did the

GIGANTIC STONES GET THERE?
Standing upright in the barren landscape like a
group of pious pilgrims, Stonehenge’s largest
stones weigh an average of 25 tons. For a long time it
remained a mystery where the stones came from and
how they got to the site. In its present form, Stonehenge
consists of an outer ring of huge sandstone blocks and
an inner ring of much smaller blocks of bluestone. The
sandstone occurs naturally about 20 miles away. But
some of the bluestones match a rocky outcrop in Wales,
160 miles from the Stonehenge site. The sandstone blocks
were most likely moved on sleds that slid across rollers.
The bluestones probably traveled by river on rafts.

May 2020 38 ideasanddiscoveries.com

&answers
DO YOU HA VE A QUES TI ON FOR OUR TEAM OF EXPE
Just send us an email!
RTS?

overies.com
questions@ideasanddisc

Were there
RULERS OF STONEHENGE?
Excavations near Stonehenge in 2002 resulted in an
exciting archeological find: a small Roman cemetery
with two graves that did not appear to be Roman. Bronze Age
pottery indicated the two graves were more than 2,500 years
older than the others. The first contained a man’s bones along
with almost 100 burial objects, some made of copper and
gold, making this the richest known burial of that era. The
man in the second grave was probably related to him and
had also been buried with gold. Analysis of the teeth
indicated that the first man may have grown up
near the Alps. What was he doing in Britain?
We’ll probably never know.

Have all the

SECRETS OF STONEHENGE
BEEN REVEALED?
Many generations of researchers have sought to unravel the
mysteries of Stonehenge, but new questions continue to arise.
Aerial photographs taken in the 1920s identified Woodhenge,
which consists of six concentric oval rings of postholes where
a timber circle monument was built about 2 miles northeast
of Stonehenge as early as 2500 BC. The relationship between
Woodhenge, Stonehenge, and Durrington Walls—another
nearby henge enclosure—remains unclear.
 questions&answers
The door to the cabin slides open, and you
take your place on one of the five seats just
in time for the door to close again. Powered

WOULD by hydrogen fuel cells, the six rotors begin

to spin, and the Skai air taxi lifts off. It’s all
very much like any normal helicopter ride,

YOU FLY 400

with one important difference: There is no
pilot. The six-motor aircraft was developed
by BMW’s Designworks studio and the
aviation startup Alaka'i. Skai is designed to

IN THIS fly for about four hours and has a range of

400 miles—enough to avoid the traffic when
traveling from Boston to Washington, D.C.
liters (106 gallons) of
hydrogen is the maximum

DRONE?
capacity of Skai’s fuel tank.
Refueling at a hydrogen station takes just
10 minutes. The biggest hurdle that Skai Depending on the load and
will have to overcome: gaining the trust of speed, that can power
its prospective users. According to various the aircraft for up
surveys, only about a third of consumers to four hours.
would consider traveling in an unmanned
aircraft. Therefore Skai’s makers plan to
focus on emergency services and cargo
before trying to launch an air-taxi service.

Each of Skai’s six

electric motors has
an output of 136 HP,
and there are multiple
redundant systems
for safety.

In the unlikely event of a complete

power failure, Skai can land with
the help of an airframe parachute.

May 2020 40 ideasanddiscoveries.com

CAN YOU
GROW
DIAMONDS
IN THE LAB?
Most natural diamonds are billions of years old, but Chinese to produce a 1-carat gemstone with a purity comparable to a
researchers have shortened the process to a single week in the natural diamond. The stones can be sold for jewelry but can
laboratory. Their method uses a methane molecule to deposit also be used in precision instruments such as lasers and radar
a carbon atom on a seed diamond. The growth rate is said to equipment. The price is only about one-sixth of that of a natural
be 0.007 millimeters per hour. Thus it takes only seven days diamond, which can cost up to $25,000 for a 1-carat stone.

Brainteaser
The solution will appear in the next issue, on stands May 8, 2020.

The matchstick cat shown here is
walking toward the left side of the
page. Which two matches would
have to be moved so the cat looks
toward the right side of the page?
Guideline: The tail of the cat should
not be altered, so it will continue to
point diagonally upward.
Solution from the March 2020
issue: After the four ships left the
harbor at the same time and then
returned to port at varying intervals
(the first every 4 weeks, the second
every 8, the third every 12, and the
fourth every 16), it took 48 weeks
for all four of the ships to return to
port simultaneously.
 What does
a cat think
when you
call its name?
As all cat owners know, when you call your
pet cat by its name, it tends to ignore you.
But Japanese behavioral scientist Atsuko
Saito has discovered that—just like dogs—
domestic cats are able to recognize their
own name and can discriminate between
their owner’s voice and that of a stranger.
This may be because an owner’s utterance
of a cat’s name is usually associated with
some reward, such as food, play, or petting.
Other research shows cats are somewhat
sensitive to the emotions of their owner and
may be influenced by their human’s mood.
In other words, your cat can recognize your
vocal cues and gestures but may well be
choosing to ignore them.

Can the world’s hearing

impaired understand
one another?
Sign language developed in a way
that’s similar to spoken language
but is probably even older. Thus
almost every country has its own
sign language and some have more
than one. Sign language has been
used for communication between
speakers of mutually unintelligible
languages in many of the regions of
the world. In Asia for example, the
Chinese and Japanese are able to
communicate by spelling out on the
palm of the hands the characters
the two languages share. And some
Native American tribes have used
a sign language to converse when
their spoken languages were too
distant to be mutually intelligible.
SIGN OF THE TIMES
A system that’s sometimes called
More than 10,000 students and teachers at
International Sign Pidgin is used at China’s Changchun University set a new Guinness
multinational events and is closer to World Record for most people performing sign
a full language than most pidgins. language simultaneously to the same song.

PHOTOS: Getty Images; BMW; Mevans/Getty; Tasakorn Kongmoon/EyeEm/Getty; Dusica Paripovic/500px/Getty; China News Service/Contributor/Getty.
May 2020 42 ideasanddiscoveries.com
 ANNIVERSARY TRIBUTE
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THE TREASURE OF

CRIME
STORY

When a respectable American family man hears of a secret cache of drugs on a Caribbean island,
he decides to go for broke. But he takes off on his search for 70 pounds of buried cocaine without
considering the possible consequences— and the result is a true story that’s hard to believe…
 Current Events

ISLAND

“IF YOU KNEW WHERE

$2 MILLION WAS BURIED,
WOULD YOU DIG IT UP?
OF COURSE YOU WOULD!”

ideasanddiscoveries.com 45 May 2020


merican stories often start in one of
two ways: Fairy tales typically begin
with the words “Once upon a time.”
But tales from the Deep South are
more likely to begin: “You’re not going
to believe this one!” That’s the more
appropriate opening for the story of
Julian Howell, a man who moved with
his wife to Archer, Florida, after living
for years on Culebra, a tiny island off
the coast of Puerto Rico. A group of
Archer locals frequently
gathered at the edge of
town on Friday evenings,
drinking and swapping
stories. On one Friday in FLOATING RICHES
July of 2004, there was a Some 70 pounds of cocaine
appeared to be stashed in a
new listener to the tale Julian Howell plastic-wrapped bale the size
had recounted many times before: of a suitcase when it washed
One afternoon when he was living on ashore in Puerto Rico. Not
knowing what else to do, the
Culebra, he had found an object the finder buried it in the ground.
size of a suitcase at the water’s edge.
He’d pulled it ashore for a closer look
and saw that it was a bale wrapped in
waterproof plastic and rubber. What
was inside? Money? He didn’t know,
but he pulled the bale onto the beach,
dug a shallow hole, and covered it
 “YOU SHOULD NEVER
RELY ON SOMEONE ELSE
FOR SOMETHING YOU
CAN DO YOURSELF. AND
IF YOU CAN’T DO IT,
YOU LEARN HOW.”

over with leaves. Several weeks later
curiosity got the best of him, and he
hauled the parcel home in his pickup,
discovered what looked like cocaine
inside, and then decided to bury the
70-pound bale in his garden. For the
next decade or so, Julian and his wife
worked on a sea turtle preservation
project. Then they’d moved to Florida,
leaving behind their buried treasure…
As the men sat laughing and joking
around the campfire on that July night
in 2004, the newcomer stayed silent,
pondering the tale he had just heard.
Up until that point, Rodney Hyden
had been the successful owner of a
construction company, doing up to
$20 million in business every year
with a staff of 80 employees. He built
a nice large house for his family in
Gainesville and he had another one
in Crystal River. But then in 2008 the
real estate market crashed. Rodney
drastically cut back his staff and lost
both the river house and his office.
“I had a couple million in the bank,
but then the market collapsed,” he
recalls. He kept attending the Friday
night gatherings in Archer, hearing
Julian’s story over and over again,
and there came a time when he just
couldn’t get it out of his head.
Then a drug addict named Danny,
who was also familiar with the story,
approached Rodney, offering to help
recover the drugs from Puerto Rico.
He said he knew someone who could
dig them up and bring them back to
Florida, where someone else could
sell them. By 2012 Rodney was ready
to take the plunge. After meeting with
potential drug runners and a pilot, he
got the coordinates of the hiding
place from Julian, drew a map, and
set out for Puerto Rico, telling his
family he was going on a fishing trip.
RAIDERS OF
THE LOST NARK
Arriving on Culebra, Rodney found
the site where Julian’s mobile home

ideasanddiscoveries.com 47 May 2020

 had previously stood and located the
cistern where the drugs were buried. “I DID
He’d expected to dig with his hands
SOMETHING
but found the ground had hardened
to nearly the consistency of concrete.
Rodney came back with a shovel, REALLY
but after several hours of fruitless
digging, he had to give up. Before the STUPID,”
flight home, U.S. Customs inspected
all of the luggage on the flight with
SAYS THE
sniffer dogs, and Rodney decided it
WOULD-BE
was prudent to abandon the hunt.
But then his home telephone rang,
and he heard the voice of Carlos on
TREASURE
the other end. Carlos said he was a
Florida drug dealer and had heard of
HUNTER.
May 2020 48 ideasanddiscoveries.com
the recovery plan. He promised that
if Rodney would give him the map,
he would take care of everything else.
PHOTOS: Danny Lehmann/Getty Images; Netflix (6); SLRadcliffe/Getty; ballyscanlon/Getty;
Rodney initially resisted, but the offer
was too attractive to refuse. And that
was the moment when the dream of
a respectable American family man
turned him into a potential criminal.
Rodney waited to see what would
come of the plan, hoping all the while
for a better life for himself and his
Yulia Buzaeva/Getty; Eivaisla/Getty.
family. And then Carlos sent him an
email with a photo of bricks wrapped
in plastic and rubber. Several days
later Carlos called to say the cocaine
had been brought back to Florida and

MILLION-DOLLAR DREAM
Having lost almost everything,
Rodney Hyden saw the buried
drugs as his last chance.
OFF TO TREASURE ISLAND!
Rodney told his wife he was going on
a fishing trip when he headed off to
Puerto Rico to find the hidden drugs.
“I HAD A COUPLE MILLION IN THE
BANK, AND THEN IT WAS GONE.
WHAT WAS I LEFT WITH?”
urged Rodney to pick it up the same
afternoon. They arranged to meet in
the parking lot of a sporting goods
store a half hour later. Rodney found
Carlos inside the store and got the
keys to his car, a Chevrolet Cavalier.
Approaching the vehicle cautiously,
he opened the trunk to find a duffle
bag that felt like the correct weight. The charge against Rodney Hyden
It all seemed so easy. was attempted possession of more
than 10 pounds of cocaine, which
THE DEATH OF A DREAM carried a minimum 10-year sentence.
Rodney didn’t notice the approaching The jury quickly convicted him, but
footsteps until he saw the light of red the judge, apparently troubled by the
laser beams dancing across his shirt. government’s role in planning out the
Moments later he was on the ground sting, sentenced him to 60 days in jail
in handcuffs watching Carlos being and five years of community service.
welcomed by the sheriff’s deputies “I was very angry at myself for doing
and the Homeland Security officers. something so stupid,” says Rodney
It began to dawn on him: Carlos was Hyden today. He still lives in Florida,
not a drug dealer at all but had been where he and Julian continue to tell
using Rodney to locate the drugs for their story around the campfire.
the law. Officers had been tracking
Rodney from the moment he’d first This tale is told in the Netflix documentary
sought contact with a drug dealer. White Tide: The Legend of Culebra.
 Body & Mind HOW
“ RE TO CAN YOUR NECK REVEAL
ANO AD ” THAT YOU’RE HIDING
PER THER SOMETHING?
SON

THE If someone is relaxed, the neck and shoulders

show it. But if a person is under pressure, the
body tenses up and the person begins to raise
the shoulders and tilt the head in an unnatural
fashion that’s plain to see.

BODY LANGUAGE
CODE USED BY

FBI PROFILERS
Joe Navarro worked for the Federal Bureau of Investigation
for 25 years. His job was to catch spies. In a documentary
for WIRED, Navarro explains how body language reflects
our thoughts and feelings and how it can be deciphered.

May 2020 50 ideasanddiscoveries.com

 WHAT DOES YOUR
FOREHEAD REVEAL
ABOUT YOUR LIFE?
Navarro considers the forehead to be a highly
revealing part of the body. Few things can tell
us more about a person’s life than the furrows
found on the forehead. “The things that we’ve
gone through in life are often etched there,”
says Navarro.

CAN SOMEONE TELL

FROM OUR HANDS THAT
WE’RE TROUBLED?
When something’s worrying us, we tend
to stretch out our hands, interlace our
fingers in the shape of multiple Xs, and
slowly rub them back and forth in an
effort to calm down. In a confrontation,
we tend to put our hands on our hips in a
territorial gesture called “arms akimbo.”

CAN MY LIPS REVEAL

THAT I’M WORRIED?
“We tend to compress our lips whenever
something is bothering us,” says Navarro.
If something is really troubling us, we may
rub our tongue back and forth against the
inside of our cheeks. Only others notice:
“We don’t know what our own lips look
like,” says Navarro.
 t’s his job to get inside the heads of
people—even if he never exchanges
a word with them. During his 25 years
with the FBI, Joe Navarro was in great
demand. It would have been a waste
of resources to allow him to remain a
simple agent: His instincts were sure,
and he had an outstanding ability to
create a new identity for himself and
make it his own as he penetrated the
secrets of a suspect. Navarro is able
to interpret even minute gestures to
understand the thoughts, emotions,
and motives of a person.
“Our needs, feelings, thoughts, and
even our intentions are processed by
the limbic brain and expressed through
our body language,” explains Navarro.
The limbic lobe of the brain is the part
of the cerebral cortex that’s concerned
with a person’s emotional responses.
“Limbic reactions are hard-wired in us.
They are immediate, time-tested, and
honest, and they apply to all of us,”
says Navarro. The FBI made him an
instructor so that he could teach his
method of behavior analysis to other
agents. Over the years that followed,
Joe Navarro, former FBI agent
“EVERYONE IS
CONSTANTLY
TRANSMITTING
INFORMATION.”
May 2020 52 ideasanddiscoveries.com
he taught agents how to recognize
foreign spies in the U.S. and he was
involved in the unmasking of many of
them. He believes anyone can learn
to interpret body language. One of the
best training grounds: a poker game.
Navarro has analyzed the behavior of
professional poker players and has
even beaten some of them, including
world champion Gus Hansen.
BODY SIGNALS GALORE
Although some professional poker
players can suppress up to 90% of
their body language, the remaining
10% of cues is enough for Navarro.
In the game he won against Hansen,
his opponent was trying to bluff with
a hand that held a jack and a seven
and had less than a 6% chance of
winning. Nevertheless, Hansen’s
face remained expressionless as
he took both hands, shoved all his
chips to the center of the table,
and called “all in.” But then to his
surprise Navarro called his bet,
risking $60,000 of his own cash.
Two signals he had seen in the
seconds before Hansen made
his final bid had told him what
he needed to know: Hansen
held his breath for a fraction
of a second and curled his
fingers about an inch closer
to his palms. To Navarro,
both reactions indicated
that he was acting under
duress. And yet, these
motions were only two
of the many thousands
that Navarro is able to
recognize and interpret.
On the following pages
iD explores some of
the signals that each
of us is always putting
out without our even
realizing it, and how
we might interpret
them when we
observe them
in others.
 MAKE YOURSELF
HARD TO READ
DON’T FURROW
YOUR BROW

KEEP YOUR MOUTH

CLOSED AND YOUR
LIPS RELAXED

LOOSEN UP
YOUR NECK
MAINTAIN REGULAR
BREATHING

RELAX YOUR HANDS

MASTER AGENT
Joe Navarro’s career at the FBI spanned a
quarter of a century—first he worked as
a special agent and then as an instructor.
Over the course of the years, he perfected
the art of reading body language to draw
conclusions about a suspect’s thoughts,
feelings, and intentions.
 HOW TO CA
IS THE PERSON
WELL-GROOMED?
It’s a short video: A man in a suit steps out of a
flower shop with a bouquet in his hand and gets
into a car. “We were watching the video and
everyone was saying, ‘Well there’s not much to
see there,’” is the way Joe Navarro recalls an
espionage case he investigated for the FBI.
Another country had warned the agency about a
man they thought was posing as a U.S. citizen
but working for a foreign intelligence service.
“They told us he’d somehow entered the United
States and was working as a mole.” Suddenly
Navarro called out: “Stop the film right there!”
The body language expert noticed that as the
man left the shop, he turned the bouquet so the
flowers were pointing down with the stems up.
May 2020 54 ideasanddiscoveries.com
PAY CLOSE ATTENTION
“That’s how they carry flowers in Eastern Europe,”
he told his team members. “Americans hold them
the other way around.”
Navarro was certain, but rather than openly
accuse the man during interrogation, he simply
asked him: “‘Would you like to know how we
know?’ When I told him it was the flowers, he
confessed.” Such a detail might have eluded the
average investigator, but Navarro is anything but
average. For many years his job was to catch
spies, and he learned a lot from it. In the case of
the flower bouquet, a seemingly small error had
brought the spy’s carefully constructed house of
cards crashing down. It took Navarro only a few
seconds to demolish it.
ATCH A SPY
WHAT ABOUT THE
FACIAL EXPRESSION?

SUSPICIOUS BEHAVIOR FAMILIAR IMAGE

Experience is an excellent
teacher for those who pay
attention: Joe Navarro knew
people from Eastern Europe
typically carry a bouquet
of flowers differently than
Americans do, with blooms
held down rather than up.
In the U.S. people typically
carry a bouquet of flowers
the way that Joe Navarro is
demonstrating here, with
their hand around the stems
so the blooms point upward.
 1
WHY LIARS
HAVE AN
ITCHY NOSE

6 8
HOW WE CAN WHY TRUTH
LITERALLY BE CAN SOMETIMES
“SCARED STIFF” BE ELUSIVE
May 2020 56 ideasanddiscoveries.com
 3. HOW DO I SIT WHEN
FACIAL I FEEL UNTOUCHABLE?
EXPRESSIONS, TRIGGER: arrogance
GESTURES,
CONSEQUENCE: When we seek to
AND ATTITUDE demonstrate dominance and show
REVEAL an interview partner that our position
is unassailable, we lean back. Such
OUR TRUE a posture has an intimidating effect,

INTENTIONS reflects a low opinion of our partner,

and conveys the feeling of (possibly
unfounded) superiority.

2. CAN MY TONGUE REVEAL
4. DOES MY FOREHEAD
REVEAL MY DEGREE
OF SINCERITY?
TRIGGER: empathy and concern
CONSEQUENCE: “If you want to
know whether someone is actually
empathetic or just pretending to be,
observe the forehead,” says body
language expert Bernhard P. Wirth.
You can see this on the face of any
TV news anchor: When newscasters
are personally moved by a story, you
can detect horizontal furrows across
the brow. If the story is less gripping,
there are no furrows.
7. HOW DO I STAND
WHEN I’M TRYING
TO EXPRESS
DOMINANCE?
TRIGGER: threatening gestures
CONSEQUENCE: In a confrontational
situation, we tend to put our hands on
our hips to communicate our sense
of dominance. This posture makes us
appear wider than we really are. Such
space-filling stances are a result of
evolution, and analogous postures
can be observed in many animals.

THAT I THINK I’M GETTING

AWAY WITH SOMETHING?
TRIGGER: the expectation of not
getting caught
CONSEQUENCE: Whether it’s during
a poker game, business negotiation,
or an FBI interview, people who think
they’re getting away with something
tend to briefly run their tongue across
their lips. This happens because the
high degree of vigilance we exercise
when we’re trying to hide something
often makes our lips dry out.
5. WHAT DO I DO WITH
MY TOES WHEN I’M
FEELING DELIGHTED?
TRIGGER: happiness
CONSEQUENCE: One indicator that
a person is genuinely happy about
something is found in the toes. When
people are happy, they turn their toes
up. “Our feet often reflect emotions
more accurately than our faces,” says
body language expert Joe Navarro.
 11
A HAND GESTURE
TO CONVEY
SELF-CONFIDENCE

9
HOW OUR EARS HELP
US TO SEE BETTER

17
13 WHY IT’S SO
DIFFICULT
HOW YOU PREPARE TO HIDE A
TO FLEE WHILE BAD MOOD
YOU’RE SITTING

15
WHAT NARROW LIPS
ARE CONCEALING
May 2020 58 ideasanddiscoveries.com
 12. WHY DO I GET
“HAPPY FEET” WHEN
I’M OVERJOYED?
TRIGGER: a joyful occurrence

CONSEQUENCE: “The legs and feet

CONSEQUENCE: When a person
grasps an earlobe, it’s a sign that he
or she seeks to see things better. The
reason: There’s an acupuncture point
on each earlobe that stimulates the
eyes. Rubbing the earlobe is a signal
that you want a better view of things.
10. CAN THE WAY
I HOLD MY HEAD
SIGNAL INTEREST?
TRIGGER: interest or indifference
CONSEQUENCE: When involved in a
can provide some of the most reliable
nonverbal signals because they’ve
been essential for the fight-or-flight
response since day one,” says Joe
Navarro. “One example is the happy
feet you see when something really
exciting is just about to happen to
someone or the person is very excited
about what has just happened.”
16. CAN A FINGER
13. HOW DO I SIT
INDICATE THAT I
WHEN I’M READY
DISLIKE SOMEONE?
TO GO?
TRIGGER: a feeling of antipathy for
TRIGGER: impatience or the your opponent

discussion, if someone tilts the head
to the left, it indicates skepticism and
doubt. Titling the head to the right, on
the other hand, indicates willingness
to discuss things and to set personal
interests aside.
11. DO MY HANDS
REVEAL MY LEVEL OF
SELF-CONFIDENCE?
TRIGGER: the feeling of
self-confidence
13
impulse to flee
CONSEQUENCE: Placing your hands
on your knees is a clear signal that
you want to get up and leave. The
reason: This movement is the first
one we undertake when we want to
stand up. “Pressing down on your
knees with your hands helps lift your
upper body,” says Navarro.
14. HOW DO I WALK
WHEN I’M AFRAID?
TRIGGER: indecision
CONSEQUENCE: In various studies,
body language experts have found
that if we’re seated at a table with a
disagreeable or dislikeable person
and there is an object lying in front
of us, we will shove it away with our
middle finger.
17. DOES MY NOSE
MOVE IF I DISLIKE
SOMETHING?
TRIGGER: dissatisfaction

CONSEQUENCE: Taking small steps

is often a sign of fear and caution. It
signals indecision and is the way we
tend to move in a situation that makes
us feel uneasy or even apprehensive.
Lengthening your stride, on the other
hand, expresses confidence.
 INTERVIEW WITH JOE NAVARRO
Joe Navarro worked as an FBI agent and instructor for 25 years.
Today he writes books on the topic of nonverbal communication,
advises investigators, and teaches university courses.
HOW CAN I
“WHEN HIS PUPILS NARROWED, WE
ANALYZE AN
KNEW WHO HIS ACCOMPLICES WERE.” OPPONENT?
WHAT SIGNALS DO MY FACE AND BODY SEND
WHEN I LIKE SOMEONE OR SOMETHING?
When we like something, our pupils dilate; when we don’t, they
constrict. We have no control over it. It is the brain’s automatic
response to allow more light to enter the eyes whenever we see
The players’ respective
something we like. I once had to debrief a spy who refused to
postures reveal how
name any coconspirators. I made a set of index cards, each with nervous they are.
the name of a potential accomplice written on it. When he saw two
names in particular, the man’s pupils constricted, so we brought
those men in for questioning. It turns out he had recruited them.

WHY DO OUR FACES REVEAL SO MUCH

ABOUT WHAT WE ARE THINKING?
PHOTOS: From the documentqry Former FBI Agent Explains How to Read Body Language, WIRED USA/Condé Nast, source: You Tube; MVG-Verlag; Getty Images (7); Tatiana/Getty.

The face is the most carefully studied element of the body. It is The positioning of the hands
literally at another person’s eye level and clearly indicates whether relative to the chips can indicate
we are doing well or not. We can tell when someone is smiling
how risk-tolerant a player is.
sincerely: The face appears relaxed, both halves of the face are
involved in the smile, and there are crow’s feet around the eyes.
A false smile involves only the lower portion of the face. When
we see someone we don’t like, we still smile to be polite, but the
rest of our body betrays our honest feelings: There is increased
tension in our shoulders and arms, and our feet instinctively turn
away from the other person. From that point of view, the feet
are a lot more honest than the face because they’re not being
How do you hold your cards? Players
watched as closely. who hold their cards close to their body
are signaling that they ’re serious.

HOW CAN I TELL WHEN MY BOSS IS IN THE

RIGHT MOOD FOR ME TO ASK FOR A RAISE?
You can tell by the way the boss is holding his or her head: Is the
head stiff and straight, or is it tilted slightly to one side? A tilted
head is a good indication. You can observe this in dating couples.
It’s a sign that we are listening and interested in what the other
person has to say. And that we don’t see each other as a threat.
Your boss does the same thing to indicate that he or she is willing
to listen and isn’t reluctant to respond. People don’t do that when
they are wary and tense.
A poker game is the perfect place to practice reading
body language. All the players at the table are trying
to hide how good or bad their respective cards are.
But Joe Navarro knows that all of them are constantly
transmitting information through their body language.
How do opponents react when a new card is turned
up? Do they briefly stop breathing? Do their pupils
expand or contract? “Sitting across the table from a
poker player is like sitting across from a spy,” says
Navarro. “In both cases you can observe involuntary
reactions that they are trying to hide as best they
can—but they can’t.”

May 2020 60 ideasanddiscoveries.com

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HOW
DO YOU

SHAKY PROSPECT
There is no way to know how much Michelangelo’s
famed sculpture is worth. A painting of Jesus made
by his contemporary Leonardo da Vinci sold for
$450 million two years ago, so David could easily
be worth several times as much. Specialists at the
Galleria dell'Accademia in Florence are trying to
safeguard the giant statue against an earthquake.
 Science

AN ICON
OF ART
HISTORY?
One of the world’s best-known works of
art is in danger— even a tiny tremor
could bring down Michelangelo’s David.
His weak spot : the ankles…

ideasanddiscoveries.com 63 May 2020


or years directors at the
F
Galleria dell'Accademia
art museum in Florence,
Italy, have been playing
a very dangerous game.
None of the more than
1.5 million visitors who
flock to the Accademia
annually wants to miss
seeing Michelangelo’s David, the
most famous sculpture in art history.
But little do admiring visitors suspect
that this magnificent statue, which
stands 17 feet high and weighs more
than 6 tons, could come crashing
down at any moment. That would be
a sheer catastrophe: not because of
its inestimable monetary value, but
because one of the world’s greatest
art treasures would be lost forever.
The National Research Council of
Italy explains the problem: “Micro-
fractures visible on the left ankle and
the carved tree stump threaten the
stability of the sculpture.” They were
caused during the hundreds of years
that the statue stood outside on the
Piazza della Signoria before being
i
In 1504 the renowned
Italian Renaissance
artist Michelangelo
had finished sculpting
the biblical hero David
from a single block of Carrara marble,
depicting him moments before he’d
fought and killed the giant Goliath.
Today it is one of the most important
works in art history and an emblem for
the city of Florence.
LATE RESCUE OPERATION
Restorers at the Accademia are trying to
repair hundreds of years of damage from
erosion and clean off accumulated grime.
The many tiny holes of the original marble
have made it deteriorate faster than other
types of marble. Furthermore, weathering
pockmarked the face over the centuries.
moved to the Accademia in 1873.
There the stature stood at a slight
angle, which was enough to put huge
additional strain on its ankles. Today
the museum carefully maintains the
statue in a vertical position, however
no one has any control over another
potential devastator—earthquakes.
Florence lies near a number of active
fault lines and has been hit before.
Several earthquakes in 1895 were
severe enough that people had to
sleep in the streets so as not to be
trapped beneath rubble in the night.
 FRAGILE GIANT
Even apart from his endangered ankles,
the condition of David is far from pristine.
The marble has become porous over the
years as a result of weathering and bird
feces during the three and a half centuries
that the statue stood outside.
David is extremely sensitive to the
stress any tilting would produce, and
all the hairline fractures could easily
spread upward until a breaking point
is reached. The statue might simply
snap off at the knees and topple in
a heap. But even though earthquakes
can’t be predicted or prevented, they
can be prepared for. In this regard
California leads the way, and the J.
The Getty mounts its fragile statues
on bases with seismic isolators to
prevent damage. That would be an
expensive proposition in the case of
David, but it would still cost far less
than the Accademia earns each year
from his presence. There are project
proposals dating from as early as
2012, but Angelo Tartuferi, director
of the Accademia from 2013 to 2015,
was unable to get official approval.
His successor, Cecilie Hollberg, had DAVID’S SORE FEET
seen the threat of an earthquake as The statue’s center of gravity does not
“hypothetical” and felt there were align with that of its base, so if the base
is level, the statue’s body is off-balance.
more pressing problems. She was
For much of its time the base had been
PHOTOS: Getty Images (3); PR.

Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles
has spent decades preparing for a
seismic event. It also champions the
efforts around the world to mitigate
potential damage from earthquakes.
abruptly fired in 2019. So will David
still be around to greet visitors to the
Accademia in 50 years (or 5 years)?
Much will depend on the politics of
Italian museums—and on fate...
positioned on uneven, shifting ground.
This put enormous pressure on the body’s
narrowest part, the ankles, causing the
hairline fractures that now threaten the
statue’s continued existence.

ideasanddiscoveries.com 65 May 2020

Technology
 NERVES OF STEEL
The drone racer’s commands are
transmitted to the aircraft at the
speed of light. Even the slightest
hesitation or miscalculation can
result in a disastrous crash.

Whether they’re whizzing down the corridors of an abandoned shopping mall, executing
daring maneuvers to blow past competitors inside a subway tunnel, or tearing through
a stadium in high-speed pursuit, racer drones give speed junkies an unparalleled rush
and add a whole new and exciting dimension to the sport of racing.

ideasanddiscoveries.com 67 May 2020

WORLD DRONE PRIX
In 2016 Dubai hosted the first-ever World Drone Prix, the
biggest and most lucrative drone racing event at the time.
The 150 teams that took part in the qualifying rounds had
to compete for 12 laps, overcoming a series of obstacles
with as few penalties as possible. To win they had to finish
first after making at least one pit stop per race. 25-FOOT HEIGHT

RACING GATE

ight has fallen at Hard Rock Stadium,
home of the Miami Dolphins. Glowing
a ghostly green, a gate rises from the
empty stands as billows of fog swirl
around, creating an atmosphere like
a scene from a science fiction movie.
The stadium seems almost deserted,
and yet there is palpable excitement
in the air, which is suddenly filled with
the buzz of high-pitched engines. Six
flashes of light are racing toward the
gate: They are the LEDs of the racing
drones. As the unmanned vehicles
pass through the gate, they change
direction in a fraction of a second
and vanish in the neon-lit corridors
of the stadium. But one of the drones
doesn’t make it. First there’s a bang,
followed by a hail of ruptured lighting
tubes and drone fragments hitting the
ground. The buzzing of the other five
drones begins to fade away as they
continue their high-speed race inside
the huge stadium.
With a string of expletives, Ken Loo
tears his goggles from his face as he
sees his crashed drone. “What I really
love about drones is the feeling of
flying,” he explains. “I feel like I’m in
the cockpit of an aircraft.” The crash
has brought him back to reality in a
brutal manner. Loo is a die-hard drone

racer, but he’s had to learn the hard
way what an unforgiving sport it is…
SPORT OF THE FUTURE
The best year for drone racing so far
was 2019, but 2020 is expected to be
even better. Numerous investors now
support the sport, and TV networks
worldwide have acquired the rights
to broadcast the events sponsored
by the Drone Racing League (DRL).
When the 2019–2020 Drone Racing
League Allianz World Championship
U-TURN
Season began in August with round
one at Miami’s Hard Rock Stadium,
it was broadcast on NBC and NBC
Sports as well as Twitter. But what
makes the sport so special, and how
difficult is it to control a racing drone?
In contrast with participants in other
racing sports, drone racers have to
evade competitors not only to the left
and right but also above and below.
“The skill of the pilots is incredible,”
says Ben Johnson, spokesman and
head of communications for the DRL.
PIT LANE
“In combination with the incredibly
complex courses, that skill makes the
experience really stand apart.” Drone
racers may have to steer their aircraft
through crumbling ruins or fly at high
speed through a dense forest. Despite
the many tough obstacles they must
avoid, racing drones can reach a top
speed of 163.5 miles per hour on the
generally circular courses. Things are
particularly magnificent when races
are held at night and the high-speed
spectacle gets exceptionally thrilling. >
ideasanddiscoveries.com 69 May 2020
LIGHTNING-SPEED LIGHT SHOW
Drone races are frequently held at night.
To ensure pilots can see their competitors,
each drone is equipped with powerful LED
lights in the color assigned to each pilot.
The course features neon-lit gates to mark
the route that the pilots must negotiate.
1

TECHNOLOGY OF THE FUTURE

1 For drone pilots, the races are up close and personal. Images from the drone’s
front-mounted camera (see #2) are sent via radio waves to the pilot’s goggles.

BREATHTAKING SPEED
2 Spectators at a drone race can switch the frequency of their own goggles to the
channel of the racer they want to watch. This cockpit perspective conveys a
feeling of immense speed—a sensation that’s intensified by the colorful neon
lighting of the course and its obstacles.

HIGH-SPEED SMASH-UP
3 Racing drones can accelerate from 0 to 90 mph in less than a second and reach
a top speed of 163.5 mph. Thus spectacular accidents are the order of the day.

ideasanddiscoveries.com 71 May 2020

“I’M NOT SEEKING OTHER
JOB OPPORTUNITIES
UNLESS THEY OFFER FLYING
DRONES EVERY DAY.”
KEN LOO, DRONE PILOT AND GOOGLE PRODUCT DESIGN ENGINEER

NAME:
Ken “Flying Bear” Loo
PROFESSION:
Google product
design engineer
HOW IT ALL BEGAN:
Ken loves flying FPV
remote-controlled aircraft
and has become a huge
fan of drone racing and
a member of the Drone
Racing League (DRL).
Other hobbies include
archery, rock climbing,
and Ultimate Frisbee.
The drone pilots wear head-mounted
displays, usually goggles, that make
it possible to fly the race as though
they were in the aircraft. The devices
are called first-person-view goggles,
usually abbreviated to FPV. Mounted
toward the front of the drone is a tiny
camera that transmits images via
radio waves to the pilot’s goggles.
That makes the racing experience
very intense. And to make it exciting
for the spectators as well, they can
switch the frequency of their own
goggles to the channel of the racer
they want to watch. Viewers at home
can also don virtual reality goggles to
experience the thrill for themselves.
“FPV is like having an out-of-body
experience that you get to control,”
explains drone pilot Zoe Zumbaugh.
“When you get good at it, you can go
where you want to go, see what you
want to see. It changes your entire
perception of the world.”
Racing drones are small (the most
popular size is 250 mm, or just under
10 inches). They have a front-mounted
camera and are usually configured in
the shape of an H, which has more
room for equipment than the X shape
preferred for photographic drones,
which are built for hovering. Racing
drones accelerate faster than any
Formula One race car: DRL’s Racer4
can go from 0 to 90 miles per hour
in less than a second. It takes little
more than blinking at the wrong time
to crash one into a concrete pillar or
a row of neon tube lights. The extreme
performance of these quadrocopters
is the result of their special design.
Their frames are made of ultra-light
carbon fiber, which imparts maximum
stability despite the light weight. The
drones are driven by four rotors (that
is why they’re called quadrocopters).
The Racer4 model is equipped with
4X BrotherHobby 2510 1250kv motors
and HQ PC 7x4x3 props, which are
responsible for the drone’s extremely
high rate of acceleration. The “brain”
of the drone is the F4 flight controller,
which comes with an accelerometer,
barometer, and gyrocompass. In just
a fraction of a second it can translate
the pilot’s commands and transmit
them to the quadrocopter’s rotors.
The Racer4 is designed for fast repair
following a crash. According to the
DRL, because of its plug-and-play
electronics the drone can normally
be repaired in less than 15 minutes.
The rechargeable high-performance
lithium-ion polymer battery can power
the drone for about five minutes. For
the longer races it must be replaced
during a pit stop. During each race a
quadrocopter is subjected to a huge
amount of stress, especially because
of the pilots’ need for rapid turning
and braking ability. But the high-tech
aircraft also places extremely high
demands on the pilots themselves…
THE BREATH CONTROL OF
AN ELITE SHARPSHOOTER
You can see the tension written on
Luke Bannister’s face. Competing in
the first-ever World Drone Prix, the
15-year-old has made it to the final,
and now he must hold his own against
some of the best drone pilots in the
world. At 1,938 feet long, the custom-
built course for the World Drone Prix
stretches out like a glowing skeleton
with Dubai’s illuminated skyline in the
background. Competing against three
other evenly matched pilots—the best
of the best—Luke is in the final race,
which consists of 12 laps. The young
drone racer gets off to a good start,
leading early on, dominating for much
of the race, and catching up after he
had lost his position due to a pit stop.
To keep a quadrocopter on course
during a drone race, the pilot needs
situational awareness, sure instincts,
and incredibly sensitive motor control.
It takes no more than a millimeter’s
worth of movement of the joystick to
send the drone in another direction.
Combined with extreme acceleration
and high-speed flight, it doesn’t take
much to provoke a mid-air collision.
Fingers trembling with excitement are
absolutely disastrous. Like elite sharp-
shooters, drone pilots have to master
breath control and learn to slow their
pulse rate and control their anxiety.
Another “must” is acute spatial and
depth perception. You simply cannot
make a mistake when you’re steering
a 10-inch drone at 90 miles per hour
around a race course. Here the pilot
has the help of a team that at times
can be rather large. The rules require
at least four team members, including
a pilot, navigator, and technical crew;
while the team has to be sponsored,
no fees are required to take part in a
race. Luke Bannister’s team, Tornado
XBlades Banni UK, has 43 members,
and of course that number includes
a navigator. As with motorsport rally
races, the navigator keeps the pilot
informed about the conditions of the
course and all its obstacles.
The 2016 race in Dubai was worth
$250,000 to Bannister, but he hasn’t
left it at that. The young man has gone
on to win one race after another, and
he now has a six-figure income from
sponsoring alone, not counting the
huge sums of prize money for his wins.
In December his XBlades Banni UK
racing team won its third consecutive
Drone Champions League title at the
2019 finale in Salina Turda, Romania,
against top racing competitors from
Denmark, Russia, Japan, and China.
Bannister and his fellow XBlades pilot
Brett Collis tied for the award of Pilot
of the Year. After the event Bannister
commented: “It has been amazing to
be on top and stay on top for so long.”
Following his first big win in Dubai,
Bannister said he was going to be
saving the money that he won. “I have
several more races ahead of me this
year. But first, I am going to catch up
on sleep and focus on school for a
while,” he’d said. The talented young
PHOTOS: DRL (6); You Tube.
pilot won more money in one race
than most of his classmates could
even dream of earning in one year.
And that was only the beginning…
ideasanddiscoveries.com 73 May 2020
 History

Starving, exhausted, and outnumbered, 400 German

sharpshooters nevertheless succeeded in blocking
the progress of France’s Grande Armée at Waterloo.
In a desperate struggle between life and death, they
sealed Napoleon’s fate…

May 2020 74 ideasanddiscoveries.com

IMPERIAL AMBITION
Napoleon Bonaparte
crowned himself the
emperor of France in
1804 and proceeded to
get every great power
in Europe involved in
the Napoleonic Wars.
Forced to abdicate and
exiled to the island of
Elba in 1814, he briefl y
regained power the
following year. Three
months later he was
defeated at the Battle of
Waterloo by the armies
of Britain and Prussia
and banished to Saint
Helena, a British island
in the South Atlantic.
O
n June 16, 1815, Napoleon not only
overcomes the Prussian army under
Field Marshal Blücher at the Belgian
village of Ligny, he also contains the
British under the Duke of Wellington
at the nearby hamlet of Quatre Bras.
With Napoleon now on the verge of
victory, it appears Europe could be
on the cusp of a second Napoleonic
era. By the time Wellington and his
army confront the French emperor
two days later at the Belgian village
of Waterloo, there seems to be only
one last hope: that he can join with
Blücher’s Prussian forces. But they
are now 12 hours away and Napoleon
is aware of their impending arrival.
On the morning of June 18, Napoleon
reaches his forward command post
and prepares to attack Wellington
before noon. But the French emperor
has assigned very little importance
to a significant detail: Between his
forces and Wellington’s troops lies
La Haye Sainte, a small farmhouse
where 400 elite soldiers of the King’s
German Legion section of the British
Army are firmly entrenched. Despite
the prospect of an allied defeat, the
soldiers are determined to alter the
seemingly assured course of history.
JUNE 18, 1815,
NEAR WATERLOO:
In the early morning hours Private
Friedrich Lindau watches from inside
the barn of La Haye Sainte as a heavy
downpour drenches and softens the
surrounding fields, turning the sunken
roads and pathways into tiny rivers.
The 400 sharpshooters of the German
Legion’s 2nd Light Battalion are part
of a special unit that is fighting under
the British flag. Over the past 24 hours
they have been attempting to shield
Wellington’s army before their next
engagement with Napoleon’s forces.
The French have now moved closer
to Wellington’s troops, and Lindau’s
small unit is determined to slow down
their advance. The sentiment on both
sides, as summarized by the French
Corps Commander Count d'Erlon, is:
“Today we must be victorious or die!”
GEORG BARING (9:30 AM)
Alone in a hopeless situation…
Major Baring has experienced enough
battles to realize that his chances of
surviving the day are not good. Telling
his men to stay low and out of sight,
the leader of the 2nd Light Battalion
commands them on horseback. He’ll
have several horses get shot out from
under him over the course of the day’s
action. His band of 400 men is trying
to hold off French forces of around
70,000, including 14,000 cavalry as
well as 7,000 artillery with 250 guns.
The Legionnaires are sharpshooters
and highly experienced skirmishers.
Equipped with Baker rifles, they are
used to working in teams of two and
operating behind enemy lines. Baring
looks to the south, where a rise in the
ground blocks his view of the French
forces. He is aware Napoleon will try
to overrun the Legionnaires’ position,
and he doesn’t expect to stop them.
But he does intend to make them pay
dearly with blood.
GEORGE GRAEME (11:30 AM)
The long wait for a quick death…
When Lieutenant Graeme writes his
letters home to Scotland, he always
mentions how brave his comrades
are—and how crazy. In a previous
campaign during the Peninsular War
in Portugal, they became legendary
for their audacity, which borders on
recklessness. If Napoleon had known
more about the force occupying the
small farmhouse of La Haye Sainte,
he might have expended a lot more
resources to take it. Just 15 minutes
earlier, Graeme had seen the first of
the banners rising above the hill-line
to the south, and shortly before that,
the French artillery began its barrage.
Now Graeme sees a large column of
enemy soldiers advancing toward the
center of Wellington’s position, which
lies a few hundred yards beyond the
farmhouse. He concludes that they
 SPECIAL UNIT
The soldiers of the King’s German Legion were seasoned
skirmishers, especially in action behind enemy lines. The
“If the farmhouse of
special unit was equipped with highly accurate Baker
rifles and was particularly feared by enemy officers. La Haye Sainte had
The unit of German expatriates was formed in 1803
when the Electorate of Hanover was dissolved and been taken earlier,
Britain’s King George III was deposed as its elector.
The Legion fought as part of the British Army until it
was disbanded in 1816.
Napoleon would
almost certainly have
broken the allied
centre and defeated
Wellington’s army
before the Prussians
arrived in strength.”

are not expecting the Legionnaires
to put up a prolonged fight. Graeme
estimates the enemy army to consist
of around 20,000 troops and shouts
to his men: “There are lots of them!”
But there is no answer. The soldiers
inside the farmhouse are completely
focused on the task that lies ahead.
Experienced sharpshooters, they are
waiting for the enemy to come within
range of their Baker rifles. Armed with
shorter-range muskets, the French
will initially be helpless against the
firepower of the Legionnaires.
FRIEDRICH LINDAU (1 PM)
They load more slowly, but they are
much deadlier…
Private Lindau looks in admiration at
the man who many in the 2nd Light
Battalion consider to be immortal:
Major Baring. Amidst the barrage of
BRENDAN SIMMS,
HISTORIAN
French gunfire, he sits calmly on his
horse while barking out commands.
As the story goes, a French infantry-
man in Flanders had once shot Baring
directly in the mouth with his musket,
but Baring simply spit out the bullet.
Lindau bites off the top of a cartridge
of powder and ball. This turns his lips
black, but the method enables faster
reloading. One hour earlier the first
round of French bullets had whizzed

BAKER RIFLE
by overhead without striking anyone.
Now Lindau and his comrades begin
firing their precision Baker rifles from
The rifle that made the Legion so deadly the safety of cover. The first to fall are
The King’s German Legion was equipped with the .625-caliber Baker rifle. According to its the French officers—this strategy is
maker, Ezekiel Baker of London, the rifle’s seven grooves with a quarter turn made it easier widely regarded as dishonorable, but
to use and load in the field. Accurate to 200 yards, it had a longer range than any weapon it is very effective. The sharpshooters >
issued to the French Army. It shot only two rounds per minute—considerably less than the
muskets that were in use at the time, but it was shorter, lighter, and more accurate.
ideasanddiscoveries.com 77 May 2020
 NAPOLEON
THE FRENCH
BARRIER
PIGSTY
For almost the entire
day, this building of
rough stone served
Lieutenant Graeme as
a raised sniper position.
From that time on, his
comrades called him
“lord of the pigsty.”
WELLINGTON’S
CENTER
know it takes precise coordination
to advance a large number of troops
across a battlefi eld, and a lack of
leadership can throw the operation
into disarray. During the Peninsular
War, Lindau watched entire confused
and disoriented regiments come to
a standstill after losing their officers,
which had made them easy prey. The
same thing is happening outside of
the farmhouse, where the advancing
French troops are halted by a hail of
extremely accurate gunfire from the
400 German defenders. The problem:
ORCHARD
The sharpshooters
of the German unit
hid in the tall grass
of the orchard until Lindau sees his commander riding a
they were forced to fresh horse after having lost his first.
retreat back to the It will not be his last horse of the day.
farmhouse.
GEORG BARING (2 PM)
Back in action, despite being
wounded…
Baring’s men had begun the fight with
the standard issue of 60 rounds each,
BARN but that provision is now running out.
Baring’s men had He has repeatedly requested more
used the barn door ammunition, but none can be sent,
for firewood the
night before, so and confronted with 20,000 French
the French troops soldiers, his men cannot retreat now.
tried repeatedly A Lüneburg Light Infantry Battalion
to storm the barn.
tries to join the farmhouse defenders
After the battle
their bodies were but is cut down by the French cavalry.
piled up outside. With ammunition running ever lower,
Baring looks around and counts some
300 of his men still standing. From the
roof of the pigsty, Lieutenant Graeme
and a sharpshooter are sniping at the
advancing French soldiers. Private
THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON
Lindau, losing blood after being shot
in the head, stays at his post at the
barn’s entrance. He now shoots the
horse out from under a French officer
and then uses his rifle butt to finish
off the wounded man. The situation
changes dramatically around 3 PM,
Now the French are trying desperately when Napoleon orders Marshal Ney
to breach the outer wall that provides to capture the farmhouse of La Haye
Lindau’s cover. By firing through the Sainte. Baring watches as the French
loopholes in the wall, he fells several turn their artillery to fire directly on
French soldiers at a time. “They stood the farmhouse and prepare to assault
so closely packed that several times it. This time the infantrymen are being
I saw three or four fall by one bullet,” preceded by companies of sappers
he’d later recall. The battle is brutal. who are equipped with axes to knock
The fields are soaked with blood, and down the barriers and doors. Baring
the bodies are stacked several deep. realizes he is on the receiving end of
The cries of the wounded are drowned Napoleon’s undivided attention now.
out by the thunder of the artillery. The The emperor of France is apparently
losses on the Legionnaires’ side are determined to turn the farmhouse into
relatively modest. And Major Baring? a mass grave…
GEORGE GRAEME (3 PM)
Only four rounds are left for
3,000 enemy soldiers…
“I’m thirsty!” For the past 20 minutes
it’s all the young lieutenant has heard
from the Lüneburg soldier whom Major
Baring has sent to reinforce the pigsty.
Graeme ignores him. He’s well aware
that the combination of heat, smoke,
and excitement can make soldiers
delirious with thirst—so much so that
they sometimes leave cover to seek
water. But Graeme has other cares. He
is down to four rounds of ammunition,
and there are some 3,000 French Army
helmets within his line of sight. There
has been no resupply of ammunition.
Like the French soldiers, hundreds of
whom are lying dead outside the walls,
most of the allied soldiers are equipped
with muskets, and the rounds are not
compatible with Baker rifles. Graeme
has been stockpiling rocks to throw at
the enemy when his bullets run out.
The artillery fire has been hitting closer
too. But things could be worse, thinks
Graeme as he looks through a cloud
of smoke at the French officer and his
IMPRESSIVE FIREPOWER
Baring’s 400 men began the fight with
the standard issue of 60 rounds each.
They put up so much initial resistance,
however, that Napoleon believed he was
dealing with an entire division.
PATTERN BRITISH INFANTRY
OFFICER’S SWORD
A weapon for moments of bravery
Even in the age of firearms, the infantry sword was a necessity in battle. It was especially useful
in the thick of fighting or during man-to-man combat. This British sword was criticized, however,
for having a relatively weak blade.
horse lying where Lindau killed them.
The Legionnaires’ sharpshooters have
made the Grande Armée pay a heavy
price for their assault.
GEORG BARING (5 PM)
How do you defend a burning house?
By now around half of Baring’s men
are dead or wounded. Ammunition is
running out, and even the rocks are
in short supply. Lindau later recalls:
“Before I could shoot again, I had to
look through the pockets of my fallen
comrades for ammunition.” Baring is
tallying the cartridges and finds that
his men have just three or four each.
Now the French set fire to the barn;
the blaze keeps them at bay before
it starts to die down. Lindau and his
comrades go back to their loopholes,
where a French soldier grabs Lindau’s
rifle through the wall. A comrade who
still has ammunition shoots and kills
the Frenchman. Now another one tries
and gets stabbed in the face. Lindau
recovers a rifle from a fallen comrade,
but he is soon out of bullets again.
GEORG BARING (6 PM)
When only 42 of 400 men are left…
A rumor circulates among Baring’s
men that Prussian reinforcements are
coming, and their spirits start to rise.
However even if this rumor proves to
be true, Baring is unsure whether they
will arrive with sufficient force and in >
ideasanddiscoveries.com 79 May 2020
 time to make a difference. He’s aware
that the only other hope for survival
lies in retreat. Now he has little time
to weigh all the options because the
French are attacking again in force.
Baring makes one last futile request
for ammunition and prepares to face
the army of attackers. Once again the
French set fire to the barn, but the
Legionnaires manage to put it out.
Since their ammunition is now all but
exhausted, they are easy prey for the
French, who climb onto the roof of
the house and stables to fire on the
defenders below. Soon the attackers
are surging into the compound, where
many of them are bayoneted, slowing
down their assault. Baring knows that
the situation has become hopeless,
and retreat is no longer a disgrace.
So he leaves a small detachment to
defend the farmhouse, among them
Lieutenant Graeme, who later noted
that the French “all looked frightened
and as pale as ashes.” Initially only
a few dozen of Baring’s troops rally
on the main position. There they are
charged by French cavalrymen, but
supplied with fresh ammunition from
comrades of the 1st Light Battalion,
they drive them off.
The importance of the farmhouse
becomes clear as the French finally
do break through. “It was instantly
filled with enemy infantry,” recalls the
British Army Captain Jonathan Leach.
MODEL 1810 INDIA
PATTERN MUSKET TYPE II
The AK-47 of the Napoleonic Wars
Nicknamed “Brown Bess,” the standard-issue musket of the British military had a nominal caliber
of .75 inches, but the size of the ball was .693. The Model 1810 was a redesign of the 1793 model.
Nearly 3 million of these two designs were produced between 1795 and 1815. After the Battle of
Waterloo restored peace to Europe, Britain sold off more than 700,000 of the muskets, mostly to
South American nations that were fighting to throw off Spanish rule.
May 2020 80 ideasanddiscoveries.com
“They kept up a dreadful fire from the
loopholes and windows.” In an effort
to exploit his breakthrough, Marshal
Ney requests fresh troops. Napoleon
is said to have replied: “Where does
he expect me to find troops? Does
he expect me to make them?” Private
Lindau and a number of his comrades
have fallen into the hands of French
soldiers, who force them out from the
barn, through the gate, and down the
road toward enemy lines. Napoleon’s
luck is fading, though. Large numbers
of Prussians are now approaching
from his right, and his only remaining
chance appears to lie in confronting
Wellington’s forces head on.
The French Imperial Guard passes
the farmhouse and turns left to attack
the allied lines. The whole area is now
covered with wounded men; chaos
reigns, and the noise is deafening.
Baring is on horseback once again,
only to lose yet another horse, which
falls and pins him to the ground. He
begs his men to get him another, but
his command is crumbling, and they
refuse. Getting up to his feet, Baring
limps to a house behind the lines
where he is able to find and mount a
riderless horse. Back in the saddle,
he tries to motivate the allied soldiers
he sees fleeing in a panic, but they
ignore him. Then suddenly he hears
a shout of “Victory, victory!” Baring’s
defense of the farmhouse delayed
Napoleon long enough for Prussia’s
Field Marshal Blücher to arrive. The
allied troops retake the farmhouse,
and Ensign Frank, one of Baring’s
men who has been hiding the entire
time under a bed, can finally emerge.
Baring has no other men under his
command, but he calls the roll one
last time and discovers that 42 of the
original 400 men are still with him.
The battle is over, and the allies are
victorious. While the French captured
the farmhouse of La Haye Sainte for
a time, the resistance of Baring and
his brave men ultimately secures the
allied victory at the Battle of Waterloo.
EPILOGUE
When Napoleon suffered a defeat at
Waterloo on the night of June 18, 1815,
his fate was sealed. After the Battle
of Leipzig (October 16 – 19, 1813), he
had been forced to abdicate and go
into exile. But that was a lesser defeat.
The Treaty of Fontainebleau granted
him the island of Elba as well as a
large annual income, and he retained
the title of emperor. Four days after
his defeat at Waterloo, however, he
was forced to abdicate again, but this
time the British government sent him
to the island of Saint Helena in the
South Atlantic. While the climate was
pleasant and Napoleon’s food good
and plentiful, his health deteriorated
over the next two years, possibly due
to inactivity. It declined rapidly in early
1821, and by May of that year he was
dead. Modern research suggests that
he likely died of an advanced case of
gastric cancer, which had started out
as a bacterial infection that produced
ulcers in his stomach.
 “The heroism at
La Haye Sainte
was rational, not
suicidal: They
fought to the last A NEW VIEW
bullet but not the Drawing on new
sources, including
diaries as well as
last man.” other unpublished
material, renowned
Cambridge historian
Brendan Simms has
written an account of
this key event in the
Battle of Waterloo
from a soldier’s point
British Library; Rex; Hulton Archive/Getty; Royal Armouries Collections (4); Nastasic/Getty.

of view called The

BRENDAN SIMMS, Longest Afternoon.
PHOTOS: Universal History Archive/Contributor/Getty; Getty Images (2); Wikipedia;

HISTORIAN
Looking back on this final defeat,
historians agree: The brilliant general
made two serious mistakes. First off,
he had underestimated the strategic
importance of La Haye Sainte. This
farmhouse in a narrow depression
was a bottleneck through which his
army had to pass to attack the center
of Wellington’s position. Herodotus
tells us that a band of 300 Spartans
held off a huge Persian army for seven
days at the narrow coastal passage
of Thermopylae in 480 BC. In the same
manner, a force of just 400 soldiers
from the King’s German Legion held
off the French Army long enough that
its superior numbers were of no avail.
Second, Napoleon had overestimated
the size of the defending force. After
his first attack on La Haye Sainte, he
believed that the compound must be
defended by an entire division, and
he became more cautious. In the end
Napoleon suffered defeat in a battle
he must have seen as a sure victory.
What ultimately tipped the scales in
the allies’ favor was a loyal group of
400 courageous sharpshooters who
refused to yield.
Where most creatures
abandoned hope long
ago, the fennec fox has
really come into its own.
Even weathering the hot
dry days, frigid nights,
and vicious sandstorms
is no problem for this
desert dweller, which
is no bigger than a
Chihuahua…

THE REAL

RULER
OF THE
It’s high noon in the Sahara, and the North African
sun is blazing hot overhead, heating the air to as
much as 130°F. Though the fennec (Vulpes zerda)
is mostly nocturnal, spending the hottest part of
the day in its underground den, the tiny desert fox
has developed a number of adaptations to help it
deal with such extreme heat. Its ears, which can
be nearly half the size of its body, help the animal
radiate body heat to stay cool, and its furry feet,
with fur extending over the pads, protect it from
burning sand and serve as the desert equivalent
of snowshoes. Its feet are also useful for digging
out the underground dens where fennecs spend
most of the day. Their perfect habitat is a stable
sand dune. The diminutive fox’s long thick fur also
protects it from the sun’s heat during the day as
well as from the intense cold of the desert nights.
While they are not averse to eating fruits, tubers,
and eggs, fennecs mostly hunt insects in addition
to rodents, reptiles, and birds. In this regard the
huge ears come in handy again, giving the wee
foxes the ability to hear potential prey moving
underground. In their search for food they may
also visit temporary human settlements at night.
Like other desert dwellers, fennecs are able to go
without water for long periods. With a body length
of 14 to 16 inches, they’re the smallest member of
the Canidae family, which includes dogs, wolves,
coyotes, jackals, and dingoes. After a gestation
time of about 50 days fennecs give birth, usually
to one litter per year with one to four kits per litter.
Desert foxes mate for life and tend to congregate
in small communities with their offspring and the
young of the previous year. Playful creatures by
nature, the parents will often take an active role
in the games of their offspring. Fennec dens may
PHOTO: photo by yasa/Getty Images.
be huge, with an area well over 1,000 square feet
and up to 15 entrances. Neighboring families may
build their dens close together or even connect
them. Perhaps the best compensation for living
in such an inhospitable environment is partying
with your neighbors…
ideasanddiscoveries.com 83 May 2020