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 HOW TO SHARPEN:
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 // STA NDA R DS //

▶ 1 2 3 4 5 6

November/ My Pop Life From the Machines Cars & Trucks Drinks Military Tech
December Tips, gear picks, Editor How do you The newest How to buy, The powerful sonic
2020 and confessions The ideal road- improve on an VW Vanagon pour, and taste force that police
from our staff. trip car? A two- undefeated fighter is actually a Scotch like a harness for crowd
p.4 seater. p.8 jet? p.12 Mercedes. p.14 master. p.16 control. p.22

7 8 9 10 11 12 13

Space Science Deep Math Tools Outdoor Gear Home How to Be Good
NASA’s best hope A 2,000-year- It represents Snow blowers Winter coats Our Test team at What You Do
to stop deadly old theory on infinity in 3D. that will make that will keep you finds the smartest, The relentless
asteroids might why the Earth They graphed your driveway warm, without any most time-saving innovator of
be a giant lasso. fractures into it in 2D. look like it’s of the awkward modern robovacs. whistles.
p.24 cubes. p.28 p.32 spring. p.72 bulk. p.76 p.80 p.88

// FE ATURES //
J O S È M A N D O J A N A (M AG I C) ; K AT E P E T E R S (FA R M I N G) ; CO U R T E S Y B O E I N G (FAC TO R I E S) ; CO U R T E S Y L E G O (TOY S)

The Secrets of A Bomb Shelter How Hollywood The 2020 Pop

the World’s Holds the Key to Set Designers Mech Game and
Greatest Magic Farming’s Future Disguised WWII Toy Awards
Tricks Faced with a growing
population and expanding
Aircraft Factories After days (and days) of
testing during quarantine, we
He builds magic tricks that To hide a military airplane
environmental footprint, found the best tabletop and
baffle magicians and dazzle assembly line from Japanese
London has developed video games for everyone
audiences. We went behind bombers, you build an entire
an ingenious, apocalyptic in your home, from kids to
the curtain to learn how he fake suburb right on top of
solution. p.44 adults. p.59
does it. p.36 it. p.52

// ON THE COVER // ILLUSTRATION BY PEDRO OYARBIDE

POPULAR MECHANICS (ISSN 0032-4558) is published six times per year by Hearst, 300 West 57th St., NY, NY 10019 USA. Steven R. Swartz, President & Chief Executive Officer; William R.
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November/December 2020 3
 My Pop Life
1 Alexander George
// EXPERT H ACKS, GE A R RECS & LIFE-TESTED W ISDOM FROM OUR STAFF //
ROY BERENDSOHN
Test Editor
Tester, editor, writer.
More importantly, hus-
band, dad to five kids:
two born to me and
three by marriage.
Best Money
I Ever Spent
$6,500 for the 1979 Chevy
truck that I bought after
working a year between high
school and college. That
pickup was transportation
into the middle class, and I
drove it for the next 25 years.
My Favorite
Products
to Test
Hands down: chainsaws.
Once you know how to
disassemble a tree, it’s
amazing how fast the job
gets done with a saw that
has high power-to-weight
ratio and good balance.
LIVING MY BEST
KNIFE
I’m knife-centric, and the
Leatherman Free K4 is really a
stripped-down multitool with a
highly utilitarian knife blade and
a handful of simple fold-out tools.
The blade is 420HC, a tough form
of steel that holds a good edge, but
sharpens easily. Plus: It’s light-
weight and compact.
4 November/December 2020
BEST THING POP
EVER TAUGHT ME
to get the job done. It’s a
W
PRODUCTS I’M USING RIGHT NOW
1 2
Stanley Bailey
No. 6 Bench Plane
(1918 Vintage)
Leaves a straight, glass-
smooth surface on the
toughest wood. I bought
it at a flea market for $17.
3 4
Diablo Step Drill Bits
These Swiss-made bits
make precise holes in
thin stock, whether it’s
sheet steel or plastic.
They’re effective in it
all, up to 1/8-inch thick.
Coolest Thing on My Desk
The Panasonic Auto Stop pencil
sharpener issued to me when I
started at Pop Mech more than 30
years ago. Still works great, too.
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
Matt Allyn Features Director;
Christine Anderson Executive
Director of Commerce & Content
Strategy; Brian Dalek Director
of Content Operations; Leah
Flickinger Director of Content
Creation; Lou Mazzante Test
Director; Suzanne Perreault
Editorial Operations Director; Jesse
Southerland Creative Director
Take your time. Do it DESIGN + PHOTO
right. Do it once. Amy Wolff Photo Director; Colin
McSherry Senior Art Director; Alyse
I’ve edited countless Markel Art Director; Eleni Dimou
Senior Designer; Ash Bartholomew,
stories where you see Kory Kennedy Digital Designers;
the author apply those Kristen Parker Photo Editor; John
Hamilton Associate Photo Editor
three simple principles
EDITORIAL
Molly Ritterbeck Health & Fitness
compact motto for life.
Director; Bette Canter Deputy
Editor; Tyler Daswick, Taylor Rojek
Associate Features Editors; Andrew
Daniels How-To Editor; Courtney
Linder Senior News Editor; Jordan
Smith Editor; Danielle Zickl Health
& Fitness Editor; Jennifer Leman
News Editor; Daisy Hernandez,
Paige Szmodis Associate
News Editors; Katie Fogel Social
Media Editor; Drew Dawson Gear
& News Editor; Jessica Coulon
Assistant Editor; Leah Campano
Editorial Planning Associate; Amber
Joglar Administrative Assistant
Kit Fox Special Projects Director;
Caroline Dorey-Stein Assistant
Special Projects Editor
TEST TEAM
Will Egensteiner, Jennifer Sherry
Associate Test Directors; Dan Roe
Test Manager; Jeff Dengate, Matt
Phillips Senior Test Editors; Roy
Berendsohn, Adrienne Donica,
Brad Ford, Amanda Furrer, Bobby
Irwin Vise-Grip
R OY B E R E N D S O H N (H E A D S H OT, P L A N E , S H A R P E N E R) ; CO U R T E S Y I R W I N ; CO U R T E S Y D I A B LO ; CO U R T E S Y S T I H L ; CO U R T E S Y L E AT H E R M A N)
Lea, Riley Missel, Morgan Petruny
10-inch Pliers Test Editors; Lakota Gambill,
Trevor Raab Photographers; Joël
Featuring a Nankman Logistician
one-hand lock
and release, these
VIDEO
Josh Wolff Director; Jimmy
bite down hard Cavalieri Production Manager; Pat
Heine, David Monk Producers
and stay put.
CONTRIBUTING EDITORS
Caroline Delbert, Daniel Dubno,
Wylie Dufresne, Kyle Mizokami,
Darren Orf, David Owen, Joe
Pappalardo, Richard Romanski,
James Schadewald, Joseph Truini,
Nicholas Wicks
EDITORIAL DIRECTOR
Bill Strickland
Popular Mechanics International
Kim St. Clair Bodden Russia, South
Africa•SVP/International Editorial
Director
Editorial Offices
3939 West Drive
Center Valley, PA 18034
Stihl MSA 220 C-B
Chainsaw HOW TO REACH US: Customer
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PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.
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My Pop Life
1 William Upton Associate Publisher;
// EXPERT H ACKS, GE A R RECS & LIFE-TESTED W ISDOM FROM OUR STAFF //
Best Money I Ever Spent
I collect Lincolniana [Abraham Lincoln
memorabilia], and my favorite piece is a
painting named “Lincoln House” by artist
Scott C. I paid it off in installments!
PRODUCTS I’M USING RIGHT NOW
1 2
The Lesson, by
Cadwell Turnbull
A small Caribbean island
must learn to live with reach its golden age until
alien visitors who use
sentient nanoprobes to
do their bidding.
3 4
Panasonic
RP-HJE125-V
Headphones
Better headphones are
out there, but these are
easy to find and don't
need to be charged.
6 November/December 2020
My
Favorite
App
CAROLINE DELBERT Libby is the public library
audio and e-book app.
Contributing Writer
During quarantine, I’ve
I’m an enthusiast of been putting holds on a
just about everything. steady stream of Agatha
Christie books.
The Best Thing POP
Ever Taught Me
Let’s just say I knew very
little about quantum
mechanics before Pop Mech.
Where My
Mind Wanders
I’m always curious! That’s
why I’m here. I’m most curious
about ideas that unify different
fields or areas of study—
connections that surprise and
enrich us.
MY GO-TO
Exerpeutic Foldable TECH HACK
Exercise Bike Tweak notifications for
This sweet bike didn’t everything. Make your
user experience work
quarantine. It’s so small, for you! Unsubscribe
you don’t even need to
from emails (not Pop
fold it up between uses.
Mech’s!), turn off push
alerts, and mute words
you hate on Twitter.
W
Erin Condren
LifePlanner
This year has been a Current Passion Project
low point for the idea
Does breaking in a new
of “planning,” period,
but writing things pair of Birkenstocks
down still helps me. count?
Jack Essig
SVP, PUBLISHING DIRECTOR
Cameron Connors Executive
Director, Head of Brand Strategy &
Marketing; Samantha Irwin
General Manager; Chris Peel
Executive Director, Men’s & Enthusiast
Group, Hearst Magazines Digital Media
ADVERTISING SALES OFFICES
NEW YORK: Caryn Kesler Executive
Director, Luxury Goods; John Wattiker
Executive Director, Global Fashion
& Retail; Doug Zimmerman Senior
Grooming Director; John Cipolla
Integrated Account Director Spirits,
Entertainment & Travel; Kimberly
Buonassisi Account Director; Kyle
B. Taylor East Coast Sales Director,
Hearst Autos; Joe Pennacchio East
Coast Automotive Director; Samantha
Wolf Integration Associate; Everette
A. Hampton Executive Assistant;
DETROIT: Marisa Stutz Group
Advertising Director, Hearst Autos;
Eric Drieselman Sales Director,
Hearst Autos; Toni Starrs Integration
Associate; CHICAGO: Justin Harris
Midwest Sales Director; Autumn
Jenks Midwest Sales Director;
Yvonne Villareal Sales Assistant; LOS
ANGELES: Stacey Lakind Southwest
Sales Director; Anne Rethmeyer
Group Advertising Director, Hearst
C A R O L I N E D E L B E R T (H E A D S H OT, B I R K E N S TO C K S , PA I N T I N G) ; CO U R T E S Y B L AC K S TO N E P U B L I S H I N G (B O O K) ; CO U R T E S T E X E R P E U T I C ; CO U R T E S Y PA N A S O N I C ; CO U R T E S Y E R I N CO N D R E N
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Director, Hearst Autos; Erica Miller,
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FRANCISCO: William G. Smith, Smith
Media Sales, LLC; DALLAS: Patty
Rudolph PR 4.0 Media; HEARST
DIRECT MEDIA: Brad Gettelfinger
Sales Manager
MARKETING SOLUTIONS
Jason Graham Marketing Solutions:
Executive Director, Integrated
Marketing; Jana Gale Executive
Creative Director; Karen Mendolia
Executive Director, Events &
Promotions; Mike Sarpy Design
Director; Alesandra Ajlouni Senior
Manager, Integrated Marketing;
Jaclyn D’Andrea, Caroline Hall
Marketing Coordinators; William
Carter Executive Director, Consumer
Marketing; Peter Davis Research
Manager
ADMINISTRATION/PRODUCTION
Aurelia Duke Finance Director;
Regina Wall Advertising Services
Director; Trevor Czak Business
Coordinator; David Brickey
Production Manager
PUBLISHED BY HEARST
Steven R. Swartz President and
Chief Executive Officer; William
R. Hearst III Chairman; Frank
A. Bennack, Jr. Executive Vice
Chairman; Mark E. Aldam Chief
Operating Officer; Catherine A.
Bostron Secretary
HEARST MAGAZINES, INC.
Debi Chirichella Acting President,
Hearst Magazine Group, and
Treasurer; Kate Lewis Chief Content
Officer; Kristen M. O’Hara Chief
Business Officer
Gilbert C. Maurer, Mark F. Miller
Consultants
300 West 57th Street
New York, NY 10019
REMODELING YOUR BATHROOM?

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 From the
2 Editor
// ALE X A N DER GEORGE //

MAZDA MX-5
$26,580
I keep waiting
for the designers
to slip up, but
Mazda still builds
the most joyfully
agile and afford-
able convertible.
Purists will save
weight with the
soft top, but I’d
pay extra for the
RF version’s
electric hard roof,
for highways
and winter.

The Best TOYOTA 86

$27,060
Cars for Yes, it has rear
seats, but it would
be negligent to

Long Road omit this afford-

able, rear-drive,
naturally aspirated

Trips gem. The Supra's

faster, but not nec-
essarily more fun.
When negotiating

W
price, mention
that Toyota is
likely updating the
E N E E D TO VI S IT MY IN-LAWS, WHO 86 for 2022.
live roughly 1,200 miles away, in a
state with a ton of COVID deaths.
So, in the name of minimizing the
PORSCHE
likelihood of any of us requiring 718 SPYDER
intubation, we’re driving there, $97,300
probably in my 2004 Volvo wagon. A roaring flat-six
engine connected
The weeks before any road trip, I’ll involuntarily to the best man-
daydream about which money-no-object cars I’d ual transmission
in any new car.
choose for that drive and why. My current top pick: Clumsy shifters
the new Mercedes-Benz Metris Getaway ($70,000, like me will like the
Auto-Blip func-
more on p.14). It’s an unofficial successor to the VW tion, which kicks
Vanagon, down to the pop-top sleeping space, and up the revs to the CO U R T E S Y M A Z DA ; CO U R T E S Y TOYOTA ; CO U R T E S Y P O R S C H E ; CO U R T E S Y C H E V R O L E T

right spot when

the ideal tool for traveling by land in a pandemic, at downshifting.
least until I’m comfortable driving a full-galley RV.
My second choice: a two-seater, one with butt-
numbingly stiff suspension, and a pretend jet fighter 2020
cockpit interior. Impractical, yes. Also, tiring. But CHEVROLET
I’ve always found intense driving to be meditative, CORVETTE
especially after the four-hour mark. It’s novel to be
that focused on just one thing for that long. And I
$59,995
The first
must not be alone, because while crossovers and Corvette with an
pickups still dominate the market, manufacturers engine behind
the seats lives
keep building great drivers’ cars. up to the huge
Of the dozens of new models I’ve test-driven so hype: incredible
power-per-
far this year—in preparation for Pop Mech’s auto dollar value in
awards, out now online—here are four exceptional a Ferrari-grade
exterior. Warn-
two-seaters I would recommend to any drivers with ing: Bring a
money and a long trip on the calendar. And to fel- friend, because
that targa top is
low daydreamers building their fantasy garages with clumsy for one
nowhere to drive. person to remove.

8 November/December 2020
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 Machines
3
// BY ALE X HOLLINGS //

The F-15EX Is a
Worthy Remix
of a Classic
American Fighter

CO U R T E S Y B O E I N G

12 November/December 2020
T
H E U . S . A I R F O R C E H A S O F F I C I A L LY
gone back to the future, placing an order
in July for eight F-15EX fighters. The
Boeing-built jets are the first of what could
be as many as 144 new fighters to supple-
ment older models of the F-15, which took
to the skies in 1972 and has maintained
an astonishing string of 104 air-to-air kills and
zero losses. The F-15 may have seemed destined
to collect dust with other Cold War relics, but the
twin-engine aerial powerhouse has proven too
capable to retire.
McDonnell Douglas built the F-15 from hard
lessons learned from the Vietnam War, when fight-
ers like the F-4 Phantom were designed with the
assumption that the increased range allotted by
air-to-air missiles had rendered dogfighting obso-
lete. P-51 Mustang and F-86 Sabre pilots left the
Korean War with an impressive 13:1 kill ratio; in
Vietnam, however, F-4 pilots, who lacked guns for
close-range air combat and the maneuverability
found in smaller, more nimble fighters, managed
an abysmal 1.5:1 kill ratio.
The Air Force needed a dedicated air superior-
ity fighter—extremely fast, with powerful radar, a
large complement of air-to-air missiles, and a gun
that could be used for close-range fighting with
other jets—to ensure their pilots would survive the
next conflict. The service also required a thrust-
to-weight ratio of 1:1 and exceptional speed and
maneuverability to keep up with the Soviet Union’s
MiG-25, which could fly at Mach 2.8.
The first F-15 prototype packed two Pratt &
Whitney F100-PW-100 afterburning turbofan
engines that could unleash a whopping 23,500
pounds of thrust with afterburners; it was so pow-
erful, it could break the speed of sound while flying
straight up. With a top speed of Mach 2.5 and an
advanced AN/APG-63 nose-mounted radar, the
F-15 could spot even low-flying enemy planes at a
range of up to 200 miles. It could also carry three
600-pound external fuel tanks that gave it a range
of 3,000 miles—no aerial refueling needed.
The fighter scored its first air-to-air kill in 1979,
when an Israeli Air Force F-15A shot down a Syrian
MiG-21. Over the coming years, Israeli, Saudi, and
American pilots would add to the F-15’s win streak.
By 1986, the fighter had proven so capable that the
decision was eventually made to field another new
variant of the platform: the F-15E Strike Eagle.
THE F-15 MAY HAVE SEEMED
DESTINED TO COLLECT DUST
WITH OTHER COLD WAR RELICS,
BUT THE TWIN-ENGINE AERIAL
POWERHOUSE HAS PROVEN TOO
CAPABLE TO RETIRE.
While other F-15s were built to dominate air-to-air
engagements, the F-15E leveraged the jet’s range,
speed, and ordnance to become one of America’s
most capable long-range precision-strike aircrafts.
By the 1990s, the Air Force needed a new air
superiority fighter that could avoid detection as
air defense systems continued to mature. Enter
the F-15’s stealthier successor: the F-22 Raptor.
However, America’s gradual shift toward counter-
insurgency and antiterrorism operations in
uncontested airspace ultimately halted those plans;
when the U.S. Department of Defense decided to
end production of the F-22 in 2009, it guaranteed
the F-15’s continued dominance.
Now, the Air Force is once again purchasing new
F-15s, after buying its last Strike Eagle in 2004.
While one might question prolonging the lifespan
of a fourth-generation fighter in an era of stealthy
fifth-gens, the F-15EX still has the ability to carry a
payload of 12 air-to-air missiles or 15 air-to-ground
weapons—at least four times more than the F-35
can while maintaining stealth—and an integrated
electronic warfare suite. While it isn’t as capable in
highly contested airspace as an F-35 or F-22, what it
lacks in tact it makes up for in power.
In the future, the Air Force intends to network
stealth jets like the F-35 to missile-laden platforms
like the F-15EX through a secure data-link. This
link would allow the transmission of targeting data
from forward stealth fighters to F-15EXs following
behind, making it possible for the F-15 to engage
targets from greater distances. With new F-15s
rolling off the assembly line and into the Air Force’s
hangars, it seems clear that this powerful fighter
born out of Vietnam’s dogfights will continue to
serve for decades to come.
November/December 2020 13
 Cars &
4 Trucks
// BY CHRIS DI XON //
The Beloved
Volkswagen
Vanagon’s True
Successor Is a
Pop-Top Benz
B
A C K I N 1 9 5 1 , A B R I T I S H M I L I TA RY
officer asked engineers at Westfalia,
a storied German coach and trailer
maker, to turn his Volkswagen bus into a
camper. Westfalia installed a rear sofa,
cabinets, and hand-sewn curtains to cre-
ate a charming, self-contained rig they
called a “camping box.” The little wünderbus was
neither powerful nor reliable, but it was simple to
work on, and would make Westfalia a household
name. A couple of decades and generations of West-
falia-modded camper vans later, VW debuted the
Vanagon. It possessed a sharp, boxy, Millennium
Falcon-esque aesthetic all its own. When Westfalia
14 November/December 2020
turned the Vanagon into a camper, the result was
utilitarian art, comfortably seating and sleeping
four. Its 1992 successor, the Eurovan, was fast and
safe, but lacked the Vanagon’s quirky mojo. North
American sales were dismal (VW sold roughly
28,000 Eurovans versus 130,000 Vanagons). VW
retired the Eurovan in 2003, leaving the United
States without a factory-built camper for 17 years.
The Eurovan’s disappointing sales and the high
The fully deployed cost of bringing over a European camper conspired
and outfitted to keep VW’s ironically named “California” vans
Metris Getaway, out of North American dealers. But at last, we have
during the
the spiritual successor to Volkswagen’s iconic bus-
author’s two-
week testing trip.
ses: the Mercedes Metris Getaway. The 16.8-footer
is identical in scale to the VW vans blanketing
European roads. It’s garage-able and powerful. And
the five-seat, two-bed rig (which went on sale this
fall for around $70,000) isn’t only a functional fam-
ily hauler. It’s a fun-as-hell little RV.
The timing couldn’t be better. In 2020, van and
TIM MCMANUS
RV camping have exploded in the wake of Covid-
19—not to mention the ever-growing popularity of
#vanlife—as people seek safe, self-contained means
of travel. According to Monika Geraci, a spokesper-
son for the RV Industry Association, Airstream
broke its all-time monthly sales record in May, while ▶ Outdoorsy (out- ▶ Though it’s more set
July saw a 54 percent increase in RV shipments doorsy.com) and up as a peer-to-peer
across all makes over 2019—the best July for ship-
ments in four decades. “A lot of people who hadn’t
THE BEST RVshare (rvshare.com)
both function as Airbnb
car rental company,
Turo (turo.com) and its

thought about RVing before, once states reopened in CAMPER
May, flooded the dealerships,” she says. Meanwhile,
bookings on rental website Outdoorsy were up by VAN RENTAL
4,500 percent between March 30 and late July. Sales
SERVICES
of van-style campers have also skyrocketed.
The Getaway camper is the result of a part-
Not ready to commit
nership between Mercedes and custom outfitter the tens of thousands
Driverge Vehicle Innovations, as well as a collabo- of dollars on your own
ration with Seattle-based VW restoration, repair, rig, or don’t need a
and rental operation Peace Vans. “We viscerally felt camper van full time?
Borrow a loaner.
the gap in the market [left by the Eurovan],” Peace
Vans owner Harley Sitner says. “The most common
customer question was: ‘When is a new modern
pop-top VW camper coming out?’”
But until 2015, North America had no proper
Vanagon- or Eurovan-scaled rig to upfit. Then,
Mercedes brought its midsize Metris cargo and pas-
senger vans to North America. Sitner set to work
building out his own pop-top version using Euro-
pean-imported components, and started selling it
in 2018. Mercedes of Seattle also sold the camper
on its lot. Stock quickly ran out. Seeing the “grow-
ing demand for a practical daily driver that could
double as a weekend getaway camper,” according to
Mercedes upfit manager Don Maxwell, Mercedes
corporate partnered with Peace Vans and Driverge
to mass-produce the build.
During two weeks of putting the Getaway
through duty as a surf van and a mountain escape
pod, my family and I became enamored. Though
it lacks that coolness of a Vanagon, the Getaway
shares more DNA with an old-school VW than a
luxury Toyota Sienna. The interior is spartan—
with plastic trim, wood laminate flooring, manual
seats, and no galley (sink and stove) or cabinetry.
But it still offers a nice Pioneer stereo unit and Mer-
cedes’s slew of safety features: blind-spot warnings,
rear curtain airbags, collision prevention assis-
tance, and traction, lane, and stability control.
Inside, the Getaway has a trick sliding bench with
under-seat storage, shoulder belts, and a removable
table. Crucially, that seat also easily folds down into
a spacious bed. Overhead is the coup de grâce: a
crash-tested fiberglass pop-top. Releasing a couple
meets Vrbo for camper
owners, with a variety
owners offer plenty of
Vanagon- and Micro-
of rigs. $134 average
per night on Outdoorsy,
bus-based campers.
From $75 per night
$150 on RVshare
▶ If you’re traveling to
▶ Peace Vans (peace Southern California,
vansmodern.com) Vintage Surfari
loans Getaway Metris (vwsurfari.com) is a
campers along with its good, reliable source for
own “full camper” (read: a Bay Window, Vanagon,
full galley) Metris. $225 or Eurovan camper.
per night From $149 per night.
of latches and pushing gently creates a cavernous,
tented interior with another bed hiding in the roof,
which lowers with a pull. Together, the mattresses
provided roomy, comfortable sleep for all four of us.
Driving into the mountains, our rear-wheel-
drive van’s aggressive stance and nearly 7 inches
of clearance were plenty for North Carolina fire
roads. And the Getaway’s tight 36-foot turning
radius eased through forest switchbacks. I initially
worried that its turbocharged 2.0-liter, inline-
four would feel anemic, but with 258 pound-feet of
torque, its 208 horses ran up the Blue Ridge Escarp-
ment while delivering nearly 20 mpg.
For 20 years, I’ve wrenched on eight of my
own Vanagon and Eurovan campers and over-
seen buildouts of a 4x4 V W Syncro and a pair
of veggie-oil-fueled Ford Sportsmobile rigs for
Jimmy Buffett. Having owned full-galley camp-
ers, I’d always thought we needed one. But now,
I’m not sure if that’s necessary for a traveling fam-
ily. Unlike in the tighter confines of our Eurovan,
my son and daughter appreciated vast, motion
sickness-preventing views through the Metris’s
expansive windows. They watched Star Wars
thanks to rear USB charging ports, and a middle
seat allowed plenty of room between them.
For the price of a Lexus GX or a Ford F-150
Limited Edition, the Getaway is safe, fun, and emi-
nently practical and capable, with hauling to beat
any minivan. It manages to capture the zeitgeist of
the Vanagon—with none of the mechanical risk.

November/December 2020 15
 Drinks
5
// BY A N DRE W DA NIELS //

F
O R A S P I R I T T H A T O N LY R E Q U I R E S
three ingredients to make, Scotch gets sur-
prisingly complex. Like wine, each glass
hails from one of several distinct regions
that forms its final flavor. That terroir
primarily comes from the turf-like mate-
rial that makes Scotch smoke, but it also
shows up in the barrels used for aging. Knowing
your Macallans from your Lagavulins takes some
science, a bit of history, and plenty of tasting.
Scotch’s story starts with peat, a decomposed
plant matter that accumulates over time and com-
presses naturally. One-fifth of Scotland’s land mass
is covered in peat bogs; for centuries, thanks to the
country’s lack of forests, Scots used peat to heat their
homes, cook food, and especially make whisky.
Peat comes in during the kilning stage of pro-
duction. Distillers place barley—the grain in every
single-malt Scotch—on a screen above a peat fire
to halt the germination process when the barley
has the greatest amount of sugar for the yeast to
convert into alcohol, says Naomi Leslie, The Bal-
venie East US ambassador. Burning peat produces
smoke, including aromatic phenols that latch onto
the barley as it dries and end up in the bottle, says
Glenfiddich’s U.S. ambassador, Allan Roth.
Because the elements of Scotland’s differ-
ent regions yield unique peats, they leave diverse
notes in their whiskies. Islay peat is dark and bold
due to the swamp-like conditions of the island, so
an Islay whisky may taste salty or like “chewing on
charcoal,” says Benjamin Boice, the single-malt
specialist for nearby Jura. Speyside peat, mean-
while, is softer and earthier, producing lighter,
floral, and grassier whiskies.
These days, though, most single-malt Scotch
isn’t very peated at all. Once trains brought coal
to Scotland, many distillers—except those on
Islay, which didn’t get railways—stopped using

How to the less-efficient peat as a fuel source and a fla-

vor-driver and began relying on local growing

Become a conditions, blending processes, and maturation

methods to shape their whiskies. All Scotch must

Scotch age for at least three years in oak casks, but dis-
tillers can experiment from there: American oak
barrels create vanilla and brown sugar flavors,
Supertaster while European oak casks lend notes of molasses,
dried fruits, and baking spices, Roth says.
Barrel size matters—“The smaller the cask, the
more rapid the maturation,” says Rory Glasgow,

16 November/December 2020 P H OTO G R A P H BY T R E VO R R A A B

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 Drinks
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Benriach’s senior Scotch and Irish whiskey BECAUSE SCOTLAND’S DIFFERENT

ambassador—and so does age: A 20-year-old
peated whisky won’t taste as smoky as it would at REGIONS YIELD UNIQUE PEATS,
age 10, because “as the whisky sits in the cask, it
breathes out of the wood, and you evaporate some THEY LEAVE DIVERSE NOTES IN THEIR
of the alcohol,” Glasgow says. Since smokiness WHISKIES. AN ISLAY DRAM MAY TASTE
comes from the spirit, you lose some intensity
with aging. If you’re into smoky Scotch, go young; SALTY, WHILE A SPEYSIDE WHISKY CAN
if you like it more mellow, drink an older dram.
But you won’t know what you like until you BE LIGHT AND FLORAL.
taste. Grab a few bottles and a Glencairn glass
(pictured on p.16). Its bowl shape funnels aro-
mas straight to your nose, says Anton Quinn, who
manages and is whiskey specialist for Boyd’s Jig
and Reel, a Scotch bar in Knoxville, Tennessee.
Just don’t sink your face into the glass; the alco-
hol’s vapors will overpower your senses. Instead,
place your nose an inch above the glass and gen-
tly inhale with your mouth open to activate your
olfactory system, “which allows you to access your
memories of previous smells and flavors,” he says.
Then, evaluate what you smell: fresh-cut grass,
hay fields, and citrus peels, perhaps?
Next, it’s time to sip. Start neat—a room-tem-
perature pour without any additions—swish the
spirit around your mouth, and let it sit on the
middle of your tongue for a few seconds before
swallowing. Is it floral, sweet, salty? Once you’re
satisfied with your observation, add water and
taste again. “Just a few drops will lower the alco-
hol, intensity, and bite, and bring out more of the
smoke,” says Glasgow.
Remember: Your palate expands over time, so
if you didn’t like ultra-peated Laphroaig when you
first tried it, you might love the smoky taste now.
“Keep an open mind to all flavors,” Quinn says,
CO U R T E S Y G L E N F I D D I C H ; CO U R T E S Y B E N R I AC H ; CO U R T E S Y J U R A

“and appreciate the endless variety Scotch whisky

has to offer.”

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combine with Highland peat smoke
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Premier Grand Cru Classé Bordeaux
barriques, this is an Islands whisky
for wine fans. Catch cinnamon on the
nose, bitter chocolate on the palate,
and sweet fudge and subtle smoke
on the finish.

18 November/December 2020
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 Military
6 Tech
// BY LY N NE PESKOE-YA NG //

One audio engineer

calls the long-range
acoustic device
(LRAD) the “sound
equivalent of looking
into the sun.”

The Power

T
and Pain of H IS YEAR , U. S . L AW E N FO RCE M E NT O FFICE RS HAVE USE D
an unusual tactic to control crowds: sonic warfare. A box

the Police’s that looks like a projector, box amplifier, or loudspeaker

is actually a long-range acoustic device (LRAD)—mili-
tary-grade crowd control that creates powerful sound waves
160dB that, if misused, can disorient and injure humans standing
S I PA U S A V I A A S S O C I AT E D P R E S S

within the target beam. “Your body goes into complete pain

Sonic and panic mode,” says audio engineer Cory Choy, who experienced
LRADs while documenting the 2014 Black Lives Matter protests in

Weapon New York City. “It’s the sound equivalent of looking into the sun.”
LRAD devices, usually mounted on police cars or even on offi-
cers’ chests, vary in look and size. But every model has the same
two capabilities. In one mode, it acts as an amplifier, projecting

22 November/December 2020
a voice or recording across thousands of meters.
In the other, it emits a “deterrent tone” designed
to alert attention to that recording.
The first LRADs were developed in response
to the bombing of the USS Cole off the coast of
Yemen in 2000. U.S. Navy officials asked the
LRAD Corporation (now Genasys) for a device
that could both communicate from a safe dis-
tance and disperse potential threats with an
unbearable sound. By 2009, police departments
had acquired LRADs for use in the United States.
“Humans are regularly exposed to noise that
can cause damage over time, but LRADs can
cause lasting hearing damage in a matter of sec-
onds,” says audio engineer and composer Marisa
Ewing. Any sounds above 85 decibels (dB) can
cause permanent damage to your hearing,
depending on how long you’re exposed to them,
she says. “Normal conversation is about 60 to 70
dB, concerts and sporting events can be about
94 to 110 dB, and a jet taking off can be between
120 and 140 dB. In contrast, some LRADs can
create sounds up to about 160 dB when used at
their full power.”
While LRADs can cause migraines, dizzi-
ness, and hearing loss in the short term, people
exposed to them can re-experience those same
symptoms when they hear lesser loud noises, like
sirens, says Ewing.
LRAD’s maximum continuous audio output is
measured in decibels at a distance of one meter
in front of the system. The broadcasts follow the
inverse square law: For every doubling of the dis-
tance from the audio source, the sound pressure
level drops 50 percent. The National Institute of
Occupational Safety and Health guidelines says
that hearing loss could only occur at the decibel
levels that most law enforcement departments’
LRAD systems operate on based on repeated
exposure, while in extremely close proximity,
and over extended periods of time.
At a distance, an LRAD deterrent tone may
sound like any alarm. But while whistles and
sirens emit waves in all directions, like the light
from a naked lightbulb, LRADs produce a nar-
row cone of sound to be pointed at a target, like
the beam of a flashlight. This packs the typically
diffuse kinetic energy into a tight space, bom-
barding anyone in its vicinity.
Publicly available marketing materials for
A JET TAKING OFF CAN
BE BETWEEN 120 AND 140
DECIBELS. IN CONTRAST, SOME LRADS
CAN CREATE SOUNDS UP TO ABOUT
160 DECIBELS WHEN USED AT THEIR
FULL POWER.
LRADs rarely describe the deterrent tone. “We
don’t market LRAD as a weapon at all,” says
David Schnell, Vice President of U.S. sales at
Genasys. “It is a very loud, long-range speaker,
designed to allow people to communicate above
very loud noise and chaos.” The deterrent tone,
Schnell says, is “like anything else—there is
a risk, but if it’s operated correctly, you’re not
going to hurt anybody.”
The source of the LRAD’s power may be decid-
edly low-tech, says audio engineer Robert Auld.
After watching an LRAD-300X deconstructed
on video, Auld believes the LRAD contains a pair
of ordinary off-the-shelf drivers, much like the
ones that power stadium sound reinforcement
systems, mounted in a frame that encloses and
redirects the sound waves until they all head
in the same direction. This limited frequency
range—200 Hz to 10 kHz, roughly the same as
human speech—combines with the efficient
drivers to produce the destructive tone. “It is a
brute-force design dedicated to a single purpose:
playing really loud in the most sensitive part of
human hearing,” Auld says. “There is nothing
particularly sophisticated about it.”
Sound specialists and DIYers have scram-
bled—unsuccessfully—to find ways to protect
against the weapon’s effects. Cheap foam ear
plugs provide up to 30 dB of protection, while
covering your hands with your ears reduces
noise by around 20 dB. But the best protection
is to dodge the direct beam of the weapon, Auld
says. “Remember that the LRAD beams sound in
a narrow pattern, so move off to one side to get
out of the main pattern.”
November/December 2020 23
 Space
7
// BY JEN NIFER LEM A N //

I
N 2013, A M ETEOR EXPLODE D 14 M ILES
above Chelyabinsk, Russia, knocking out
windows across 200 square miles and injur-
Could a Cosmic ing more than 1,600 people. It was a wake-up
call for astronomers to help defend Earth from

Lasso Divert more potentially hazardous asteroids.

Of the almost 1 million known comets and

Extinction-Level asteroids in our solar system, more than 2,000 have

the potential to be hazardous to Earth. These aster-
oids are typically 450 feet wide or larger, on an orbit
Asteroids? that swings them within 14 million miles of Earth’s
orbit. “Although asteroid deflection might sound
like science fiction, it is a serious topic,” says Flavi-
ane Venditti, Ph.D., an observatory scientist at the
Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. “Out of all nat-
ural disasters, an asteroid impact is the only one we
have the power to avoid.”
Proposed defensive measures against oncom-
ing asteroids look blunt so far. In 2021, NASA
will attempt their Double Asteroid Redirection
Test (DART). This mission will involve slamming
an oven-sized spacecraft into an asteroid called
Dimorphos—scheduled to make a close (but safe)
approach to Earth in 2022—as scientists measure
how the impact changes Dimorphos’s trajectory.
It’s risky to Hulk-smash an Earth-bound, extinc-
tion-level asteroid, though. “In general, when we
move an asteroid, we want to keep it in one piece,”
says planetary astronomer and DART co-lead
Andrew Rivkin, Ph.D., of Johns Hopkins Applied
Physics Laboratory. The rock could break apart
and create a wave of several smaller “city-killing”
asteroids instead. (This risk also applies to an
Armageddon-style nuclear solution, we’re told—
P H OTO I L LU S T R AT I O N C R E AT E D BY A LY S E M A R K E L U S I N G G E T T Y I M AG E S

there are no plans to test a space nuke at this time.)

But Venditti’s team of researchers has suggested
a way to sidestep the fragmentation conundrum
with something we might call the cosmic lasso
method. As the team explained in a paper for The
European Physical Journal, this method involves
towing a smaller space rock to an oncoming aster-
oid and tethering the two. Attaching additional
mass would displace the first asteroid’s center of
mass and shift it to a new, safer orbit. “Thus, no
unwanted consequences related to fragmentation
would happen after the deflection,” Venditti and
her researchers wrote.
To test the lasso method, the team ran a series
of computer simulations targeting the potentially
hazardous asteroid Bennu. Venditti and her col-

24 November/December 2020
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7

leagues mapped out various deflection scenarios
for Bennu that unfolded over the course of 300
years. They tested different mass ratios for the
smaller asteroid (1/1,000th the size of Bennu and
1/10,000th the size of Bennu), evaluated three dif-
ferent tether lengths (621, 1,242, and 1,864 miles
long), and assessed possible angles at which the
tethers could be attached to the asteroid.
Their simulations revealed that asteroids as
small as 1/10,000th the mass of the main object
would be sufficient enough to pull Bennu into a
different, safer orbit—roughly the equivalent of
tethering a No. 2 pencil to an orbiting astronaut.
“The neat trick to this technique is that it changes
the position of the original asteroid rather than its
velocity, because attaching the two asteroids makes
them into a single object, with the center of mass
in a different place than the original asteroid, pre-
tether,” Rivkin notes. “And because the center of
mass (and so, its position) is different but the veloc-
ity stays the same, the orbit changes.”
An asteroid 1/10,000th the mass of Bennu, with
a tether 1,864 miles long attached along an equa-
torial orbit, pulled Bennu off of its trajectory by
almost 600,000 miles, or 150 times the radius of
Earth, according to the paper. However, an aster-
oid 1/1,000th the mass of Bennu, attached via the
same tether, pulled Bennu off course by as much as
6 million miles (1,500 times Earth’s radius). In the
latter scenario, the team found attaching the tether
at a 45-degree angle resulted in a shift in trajectory
of about 20 million miles. At a 90-degree angle, the
deflection was about 23.6 million miles.
The lasso plan dramatically lowers the risk of
peppering Earth with asteroid fragments, but a lot
needs to be worked out before we send robotic space
cowboys across the solar system. Actually corral-
ling and attaching two asteroids would be, to put
it mildly, complex. “The first step is always to ana-
lyze the physics of the method,” Venditti says. “If
the math works, then the logistics and engineer-
ing side of the method needs to be developed.” To
organize the logistics, astronomers would need to
spot the potential threat far in advance. Bennu’s
next close approach to Earth will happen in 2060.
According to Venditti’s team, a mission launched
by 2035 would give us enough time to deflect it if
needed. (But don’t worry. At its closest, Bennu will
still be 500,000 miles away.)
When it comes to defending Earth from maraud-
ing asteroids, Rivkin argues that creativity is key:
“Anything is possible, I suppose, if you’re willing
to invest enough resources into making it happen.
Planetary defense is a great topic for thinking about
out-of-the-box solutions.” This is the perfect time
to experiment.

MASS
EXTINCTION, W I N D/
S H O C K WAV E
F I R E BA L L
Thermal radiation
TSUNAMI
An asteroid
FA LLI N G
DEBRIS
CRATERS
The risk of falling

SIMULATED A simulation of
asteroid impacts
generated during
some asteroid
crashing into
the ocean could
When an asteroid
slams into Earth,
into a giant hole in
the Earth’s surface
on land revealed impacts can reach create 400-foot it could send in the wake of an
A 2017 study in around 60 percent 500 degrees waves, according a torrent of asteroid impact is
Geophysical Research of fatalities Fahrenheit, hot to a 2003 study rocks showering only 0.17 percent,
Letters analyzed the would result from enough to melt from UC–Santa down upon the but stay frosty.
causes of death from organ-rupturing your skin. Overall, Cruz. Overall, the surrounding region. Arizona’s Meteor
50,000 computer- shockwaves and the study showed 2017 simulations Stand back—the Crater is almost
simulated asteroid wind gusts some exposure to this indicated such simulations showed 4,000 feet across,
impacts both on land call “hypercanes,” heat would cause tsunamis would these showers but its asteroid
and at sea. The results which reach 500- about 30 percent only cause one in caused about 1 was just 160 feet in
were not pretty. mph speeds. of deaths. five deaths. percent of deaths. diameter.

26 November/December 2020
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 Science
8
// BY CA ROLINE DELBERT //

Science
Confirms
Plato’s
Theory: Earth
Is Made of
Cubes

W
H AT W O U L D YO U G E T I F YO U
smashed the Earth into little bits?
To answer that question, scientists
from the U.S. and Hungary ran a
series of simulations illustrating
the ways that rock fractures. The
results help us understand the nat-
ural shapes on Earth and across our solar system.
They also confirmed what philosopher Plato had
theorized in ancient Greece: As you break down
the Earth, it crumbles into cubes.
This explains the distinct fracture patterns
observed in nature, says study coauthor Douglas
Jerolmack, Ph.D., a geophysics professor at the
University of Pennsylvania. “Since fragmenta-
tion is a ubiquitous process that breaks rock and
ice across the solar system, our findings help to
explain the shape and size of planetary materials.”
In the f irst of the computer simulations
performed by teams from the University of Penn-
sylvania, Budapest University of Technology, and
the University of Debrecen in Hungary, research-
ers created a geometric model in which they carved Domokos and his Next, the team conducted fieldwork at Hár-
an abstract cube into almost 600,000 pieces by team analyzed mashatár-hegy, a mountain overlooking Budapest.
the fracture
randomly inserting a series of 50 2D planes. All Their analysis of a dolomite-rich outcrop revealed
pattern of a rock
of the resulting fragments were, on average, cubic. outcrop outside
that fragments were, on average, cubic. These
These pieces were then randomly split apart, observations, paired with previously collected
CO U R T E S Y G Á B O R D O M O KO S

many times, resulting in 13 million fragments.
The numbers of sides, edges, and vertices were
counted, and those outcomes were averaged. While
the resulting fragments weren’t actually millions
of tiny cubes, the averages are cuboid, down to
multiple decimal places.
of Budapest. The
fragments were field data—both naturally weathered stone and
roughly squarish. rock that had been dynamited by humans—was
compared to the 13 million computer-generated
fragments by performing 4 billion computations.
“It was a surprisingly good match,” says coauthor
Gábor Domokos, Ph.D., a professor of mechanics

28 November/December 2020
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 Science
8
at Budapest University of Technology.
To understand how rocks break down this way,
the team then used supercomputers to create a
series of mechanical simulations. Here they stud-
ied a molecular model, where a brittle rock-like
material was modeled, using what looks like virtual
gumdrops and toothpicks. The gumdrops repre-
sent the rock-like substance while the toothpicks
represent the bond holding it together, including
a weighted failure criterion—which measures the
force that can break each segment. In these simu-
lations they studied the fault lines that shatter open
when they break, like if you dropped a plate onto
the floor. The simulations found that as you broke
apart natural materials, on average, most pieces
conformed, on average, to a cube-like shape.
The research could eventually help scientists
identify regions on Earth’s surface that are sus-
ceptible to rock falls. As rocky outcrops are exposed
to the elements, inherent flaws in the rock slowly
grow into large cracks. When these fissures meet,
they form unstable blocks of rock that can be loos-
ened by an earthquake or by gravity over time. “The
size and structure of the crack networks determine
the size of the blocks that are produced, which ulti-
mately determines, to a large extent, the hazard
created when they fail,” Jerolmack says. Their
work, he adds, could eventually help to forecast how
these rock blocks form on both 2D and 3D surfaces.
The discovery also supports an improbable
theory that’s nearly 2,400 years old. Before the dis-
covery of chemical elements and atomic structure,
Plato and his fellow natural philosophers—the
forebears of modern scientists—came up with
the classical elements of earth, water, fire, air,
and cosmos to explain what the world was made
PLATO’S
CUBES ON
THE BIG
SCREEN
30 November/December 2020
of. In Plato’s dialogue Timaeus, he theorized that
the classical elements were each composed of a
three-dimensional shape where all angles are
equal, as are all sides. Of these five shapes, known
as Platonic solids, he believed the cube was linked
with Earth due to its ability to seamlessly fill space.
Jerolmack and Domokos both pointed out that
their results are a twofold representation of Plato’s
work, first as the Platonic solids, but second, and
arguably more interesting, in combination with the
philosopher’s allegory of the cave.
In Plato’s Republic, he tells a story about pris-
oners in a cave. They can only observe strange
shadows on the wall, never what’s casting the
shadows. Plato suggests that for people with no
additional information, the shadows are reality,
but that doesn’t imply that the shadows are the full
reality. In an analogy straight out of calculus, he
suggests that there are additional stages of reality
with more dimensions of understanding. “Plato’s
idea was that what we see with the naked eye are
just distorted shadows of the true reality, so the
reality which we perceive is a distorted version,
and the ideas are the reality,” Domokos explains.
By st udy ing the rock frag ments and the
“shadow” created by taking their probabilis-
tic and arithmetic averages, Jerolmack says, the
researchers inadvertently brought both of Pla-
to’s ideas together. “What we’ve demonstrated is
that on average, rock or earth is made up of cubes,
but you never see the cube,” he says. “It exists
only when you take all these distorted shards
and bits and average them together.” Domokos
adds: “It is so much in the spirit of Plato—
there are too many coincidences to say that it is
just coincidence.”
At the crux of Mission: coauthor Gábor Domokos, an analysis on an image
CO U R T E S Y PA R A M O U N T P I C T U R E S
Impossible—Fallout, Tom a mechanics professor at of Pulpit Rock to see
Cruise’s character, Ethan Budapest University of whether the outcrop’s
Hunt, and antagonist Technology. “Somebody fracture patterns fit
August Walker, played took me to see the movie Plato’s theorized cuboid
by Henry Cavill, come and, at the end, I said ‘My average. “I didn’t tell him
to blows atop Norway’s god! Look at those frac- what it was. I just told him
famed Pulpit Rock.
The granite cliff
tures!’ ” he says.
Domokos asked one
to do it,” Domokos says.
“And, of course, he got the
caught the eye of study of his assistants to run right numbers.”
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 Deep Math
9
// BY CA ROLINE DELBERT //

Researchers have
finally proved that all
continuous, closed
curves contain four
points that create a
rectangle (fig. 1).

Two
Mathematicians

I
Just Solved N 1 9 1 1 , G E R M A N M AT H E M AT I C I A N O T T O
Toeplitz first posed the inscribed square

a Century- problem, predicting that “any closed curve

contains four points that can be connected to
form a square.” A proof for Toeplitz’s theory
Old Geometry still eludes experts, but according to Quanta
I L LU S T R AT I O N BY A LY S E M A R K E L

magazine, two mathematicians in quaran-

Problem tine have taken a huge leap toward a solution.

Imagine a serpentine belt in an engine. Like a
closed curve, it can settle into almost any shape,
as long as there are no “corners.” Toeplitz sug-
gested that in any of these shapes, there must
be four points along the curves that, when con-

32 November/December 2020
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 Deep Math
9

nected, create a perfect square (see f ig. 1).

Researchers proved this for “smooth, continu-
ous” closed curves in 1929, but throughout the
Covid-19 quarantine, modern mathematicians
Joshua Greene, of Boston University, and Andrew
Lobb, of Durham University, sought to generalize
WHAT ARE you back to the mirror
image of your starting
K LE I N B O T T LE
(fig. 3)

THESE SHAPES,
point (that initial The Klein bottle is a
the proof from squares to all kinds of rectangles, point’s reflection on a type of non-orientable
broadening Toeplitz’s “square peg problem” into
ANYWAY?
2D coordinate plane). surface that is impossi-
a “rectangular peg problem.” You can make your ble to consistently plot
For advanced mathematical concepts, proofs own Möbius strip if you in a two-dimensional
MÖBIUS STRIP give a strip of paper space. And because it
often begin with a special case within a gener-
(fig. 2) one half-twist and is a one-sided surface,
alization so the learned qualities of that special Known as the “twisted tape the ends together you will gradually flip
case make the generalization easier to prove. For cylinder,” the Möbius to form a continuous upside down while
Greene and Lobb, a critical change in perspective strip is a one-sided, loop. Most simply of traveling along it.
made the special case that “loosened the lid” on non-orientable surface. all, a Möbius strip is Unlike the Möbius
In other words, it’s a essentially the infinity strip, though, it has
decades of prior work.
shape that, if you trace symbol manifested in no boundaries.
The pair built upon a foundation laid by mathe- a line along it, will bring 3D space. —Courtney Linder
matician Herbert Vaughan. In the 1970s, Vaughan
found that plotting all unordered pairs—or pairs
of values that have no particular relationship to
one another—on a closed curve in 2D space makes be found in a closed curve, they used a different
a Möbius strip, a one-sided “ribbon” connected in 4D concept called “symplectic space” to plot their
such a way that you can trace the entire inside and curves. Symplectic space applies a vector to an
outside without lifting your pen (see fig. 2). This is object in 3D space—for example, factoring a plan-
because when you plot unordered coordinate pairs et’s momentum into charting its orbit. Greene and
on a plane, each pair (x, y) occupies the same place Lobb sought to apply vectors to shapes like the
as its inverse (y, x). Möbius strip to determine the conditions under
For Greene and Lobb, Vaughan’s proof was which they would intersect with themselves (the
like the first number in a sudoku puzzle. It was a indicator for plottable rectangles).
helpful starting hint, sure, but still left an entire The mathematicians considered a shape called
mystery to solve. a Klein bottle (see fig. 3), which “overlaps itself”
The next breakthrough arrived in 2019, when in 3D space such that it looks like a pitcher pour-
Cole Hugelmeyer, a Ph.D. student studying mathe- ing both through and into itself. The Klein bottle
matics at Princeton University, turned Vaughan’s is made from two intersecting Möbius strips—the
Möbius strip into a 4D plot. Hugelmeyer extended same signifier of a rectangle as in Hugelmey-
(x, y) into (x, y, a, b), in which a represented the er’s proof—so Greene and Lobb determined that
distance between x and y, and b represented the wherever they had a Klein bottle, they also had a
angle at which the chord connecting x and y met plottable rectangle.
the x-axis. After Hugelmeyer plotted the Möbius And if t wo Möbius strips don’t intersect,
strip in this fashion, he rotated it by adjusting it’s impossible to have a Klein bottle, so the two
only b. researchers deduced that any configuration of
Why? Because x, y, and a represent the proper- intersecting Möbius strips must produce a rect-
ties of a rectangle: two equidistant pairs of points angle. That means infinite configurations, and
intersecting at a common midpoint. So, the point infinite rectangles.
where the rotated Möbius strip intersected the The solution combines decades of accumu-
original Möbius strip signified the vertices of a lated institutional memory—how generations of
rectangle on the original closed curve. researchers expand on each other’s work—with
Hugelmeyer’s proof applied to just a third of sudden intuition. Nearly 110 years of mathemati-
all possible rectangles, however. So in Greene cal progression made this solution possible. Well,
and Lobb’s attempt to prove all rectangles could that and a lot of time in quarantine.

34 November/December 2020
 HE BUILDS THE
WORLD’S GREATEST
MAGIC TRICKS.
BUT WILL HE
ACTUALLY TELL US
HIS SECRETS?
B Y D AV ID HO WA R D · PHO T OGR A PH Y B Y JOSÉ M A NDO JA N A

36 November/December 2020
November/December 2020 37
THERE IS A CENTURY-OLD MAGIC
TRICK THAT JIM STEINMEYER FINDS
PARTICULARLY FASCINATING.
A group of random audience members file on stage and each
place a personal possession inside a sturdy, commercial-
model safe, out of view of the magician, Charles Morritt. The
safe is locked before anyone looks inside, and after a beat, a
burglar appears. The lock-picking bandit looks at the closed
safe with a pair of field glasses and disappears. Moments
later, a telegram arrives for Morritt. It’s from the master
thief. It says, in essence, “I’ve decided not to crack that safe
and steal the contents—it’s not worth my time. But here’s a
list of everything inside.”
When the safe is opened, the list matches up, item for item.
By almost any estimation, Steinmeyer is the greatest
creator of illusions in the history of magic and theater, but
describing Morritt’s stagecraft still animates and energizes
him. He’s not even sure what to call the act. It’s a mind-
reading trick, but instead of the magician playing the part of
the clairvoyant, it’s the third-party burglar.
“Something bigger is happening,” Steinmeyer says. Mor-
ritt had come up with a new twist on a familiar routine: A
magician presses his fingers to his temples, closes his eyes,
38 November/December 2020
and sees the un-seeable.
S t ei n me yer u s e s t he
mind-reading trick as a
launchpad into a fascinating
disquisition on how magic
tricks evolve, but it walls me
off from a question I’m eager
to ask: How does it work?
That’s the point of my vis-
it—I’m here to understand
what Steinmeyer does and how he does it. I’d approached him
with this intent a few weeks earlier. He’d been polite, but wary.
Given the nature of his business, he said, he had to be propri-
etary about his insights. “In terms of explaining how things
work,” he told me, “I can’t get into too much of that.”
But he had agreed to let me inside his world under an ill-
defined agreement to stick to the basic principles of building
magic tricks. Of course, I’m still hoping he’ll lift the lid on his
more guarded secrets, and I’m alive to the fact that I’m in the
room containing much of his classified material.
My eyes flick across Steinmeyer’s studio, a shrine to the
history and craft of stage magic. Here is a miniature ver-
sion of the cabinet used in the Disappearing Donkey illusion,
a once-lost trick that Steinmeyer reconstructed via dusty
tomes and informed intuition. There are two walls of ref-
erence materials: books about magic, of course, but also
books about furniture, graphic design, screenplays, and
antique apparatus. Resting along one wall is a pair of tables
used in the iconic sawing-the-assistant-in-half illusion, as
well as a locked chest for mind-reading tricks, a cylindrical
 ◀ Steinmeyer has 24 notebooks, 100 pages each. Counting both sides of a
page, that’s 4,800 pages dating back to 1980 or ’81. He says he shows them
to no one. ▼ Steinmeyer’s Disappearing Donkey trick (featuring Midget,
pictured) is based on a technique by English magician Charles Morritt.
“phantom tube” used for optical illusions, and a foam-core
model of the magic table he created for Disney’s latest stage
rendition of Mary Poppins. This prop allows the British
nanny to pull gigantic items from her carpetbag, including
a hat rack and full-length mirror.
But what Steinmeyer intends to unpack for me is uncer-
tain. He’s not going to let me flip over his mirrors or rifle
through his drawers, and when I ask him a straight-line
question, he responds with misdirection—labyrinthine tan-
gents and looping alternate pathways. His story about the
burglar and the safe is as much about what he doesn’t say as
what he does. My brain fizzes with unsated curiosity.
Secrecy is the coin of the realm here, and Steinmeyer is
an open secret himself: Most people who see magic shows
assume the performers invent their own tricks, but it’s illu-
sion designers like Steinmeyer who conjure most of the
magic offstage. The New York Times, in fact, labeled Stein-
meyer theater’s “celebrated invisible man.”
But even given Steinmeyer’s relative anonymity com-
pared with the Copperfields and Blaines of the world, magic
has to reckon with YouTube now. Type any trick into a search
bar and you can view explainers of its mysteries in seconds—
endless spoilers about invisible wires, trap doors, and rigged
boxes. You can find books that detail the mechanics of most
illusions, down to diagrams with measurements. Some of
these tell-alls have existed for generations. Some of the more
recent ones, Steinmeyer wrote himself.
almost anyone else on the planet. The god-tier highlight of his
career is arguably designing David Copperfield’s televised
vanishing of the Statue of Liberty, but over more than three
decades, Steinmeyer has engineered an entire pantheon of
physics-defying, brain-exploding, how-is-that-even-possible
feats. He made a flying carpet for the latest turn of Aladdin
on Broadway. He transformed the Beast into a prince at the
end of the stage version of Beauty and the Beast. He vanished
the titular character of The Invisible Man. He erased an ele-
phant from the center ring for Ringling Bros.
In the more traditional world of magic, he brought
a painted portrait to life and back again (“The Artist’s
Dream,” performed by husband-and-wife team the Pendrag-
ons, among others) and designed a whole series of illusions
in which the performer walks through a mirror, a wall, and
a number of other impenetrable objects. Steinmeyer has
invented card tricks and box tricks and levitation tricks
and ESP tricks and every other imaginable kind of theatrical
deception, then some you couldn’t imagine, for the biggest
names in entertainment, including Orson Welles, Siegfried
& Roy, Doug Henning, and Ricky Jay.
Aside from its ambition and quality, what stands out is
the breadth of Steinmeyer’s work. Most illusion creators stay
in a lane: big-stage illusions, escapes, mind reading, theater
productions, or “close-up” magic. Steinmeyer does it all.
“Jim is an expert in virtually every area of magic—in fact,
he’s singular in that,” says Richard Kaufman, publisher of the
industry magazine Genii and the author of scores of books
about magic. “Nobody else is working at this level. People like
Jim come along once every two or three generations.”

S 
So as one of history’s greatest conjurers of magic contin-
ues to explain and not explain the safe trick, I find myself
wondering: If anyone can dig up the secrets behind many
of Steinmeyer’s tricks, why is he so intent on hiding them?
teinmeyer keeps his secrets out of reach as hours of con-
versation unfold. He is engaged and animated, and he
shares his biography with depth, but he deflects other
questions in a way that reminds me of the conversa-

A
t 61, Steinmeyer retains a striking youthfulness that
manifests in an easy grin, a cheerful chattiness, and
eyes that seem lit from behind. He wears a khaki vest
over a tie and pinstriped Oxford, a look that recalls
him as a boy in the 1950s, haunting Chicago-area magic
CO U R T E S Y J I M S T E I N M E Y E R (D O N K E Y, B AC KG R O U N D D R AW I N G S)

shops, hobnobbing with performers, probing for tips. As we

walk through his home, posters of great magicians past stand
guard along the walls. One shows an illustrated Harry Kellar,
a sensation in the early twentieth century. Kellar’s arms are
elevated skyward, a woman floating above his hands. The leg-
end reads: “Levitation—The Greatest Illusion in the World.”
Once settled in the studio with Albert, Steinmeyer’s
doddering but ebullient 13-year-old dachshund, I make an
opening gambit: I ask Steinmeyer about the state of magic
today. He launches into a commentary about how people
don’t just receive entertainment anymore—they see it as a
challenge. “That’s what this has become,” he says, “‘Let’s
talk about magic as a puzzle. Let’s deconstruct it.’”
Steinmeyer has given the world more to tease apart than

November/December 2020 39
tional rope-a-dope magicians use, suggesting one thing—See
these rings? Solid metal, right?—before doing another.
I ask where his ideas come from. His answer, at first, is
that he doesn’t really like the question. “For years and years,
I thought it was presumptuous to say, ‘Here’s how you create
things,’” he says. “I always hate reading that stuff.”
Only when I press does he relent.
“My secret,” he says, “is that I keep a messy notebook. It
has to be all three things: That you keep it, that it’s messy, and
that it’s a notebook.” A spiral-bound Strathmore Sketch pad
sits on the table between us, and he flips through it, pausing
just long enough for me to glimpse the pages. There are care-
ful sketches of rotating, hinging mechanisms, drawings of
altered cabinets and wardrobes enveloping phantom figures
and annotated with measurements and enigmatic notations.
Two pages depict a giant industrial fan—clearly an illusion in
which the performer passes unharmed through the spinning
blades—but many of the others are impenetrable.
Steinmeyer’s job is to “think of something completely
impossible, then figure out a way to apparently accomplish
it”—and that process involves intense revision, sometimes
over several years. “An idea branches,” he says. “You start
working on something and you go, ‘Oh, it would really be
good if it was like this.’ And you pursue that for a little while
and you go, ‘Yeah, that’s not right.’ Well, those”—he points
to a stack of notebooks—“are so when I abandon something,
I can go back and find it. There are no dead ends.”
For example, the Mary Poppins illusion originated as an
unrelated jolt of inspiration: a table that employs angled
mirrors to conceal items within its folds. “I remember
thinking that was a really good idea, but I had no use for it
at the time,” Steinmeyer says. Into a notebook it went, and
years later he excavated it for the play.
A trick has to tell a story, and each story includes layers
of deception. “There are three scripts in a magic show,” he
explains. “There’s the script where you ostensibly say what’s
happening, which is often a lie. Then there’s the script of
what you’re actually doing, so you’re saying one thing and
doing something else. And then there’s the script of how
you’re maneuvering the audience through the act.” The story
should be both familiar and impossible. Audiences should
recognize the trick. “You want that thing where people go,
‘Ohhh, they’re about to divide a person into three pieces,’”
Steinmeyer says.
Once magicians manipulate audience members toward
certain expectations, those expectations can be subverted,
and the audience can be fooled.
W
hile attending elementary school in suburban Chi-
cago, Steinmeyer went home every day for lunch,
flipped on the TV, and watched “Bozo’s Circus,” a
variety show sometimes featuring touring magi-
cians. Steinmeyer’s older brother, Harry, had a drawerful of
abandoned magic props, and when Jim was about 6, he says,
“I found that drawer.”
Jim’s bounty: a P&L Change Bag (turn one item into
40 November/December 2020
▶ Steinmeyer with the box used for one of his versions of the sawing-in-half
illusion. His tricks regularly befuddle others in the magic industry. “Magicians
are actually pretty easy to fool,” he says.
another, or pull something from an empty bag), an Ireland
set of cup and balls, and a collection of mystifying instruc-
tion books. Harry taught Jim that magic was about more
than props—you had to engage the audience with a story—
and between this tutelage and the television and Chicago’s
booming local magic scene, a fascination took hold.
Steinmeyer immersed himself in Chicago’s magic-shop
subculture, popping in on Saturdays, hanging around, and
talking to other magicians. Before long, he developed what
was known as a “medicine pitch” act, in which he played
an old-timey snake-oil salesman and incorporated tricks
into demonstrating his various cures. The act won a few
local awards.
When Steinmeyer was 13, his father died, leading to
what he describes as “a hell of a year.” As the family wrestled
with grief, his mother encouraged him to attend a magic
convention in Michigan with his friends, to plug into some-
thing that might distract or excite him. Steinmeyer saw a
performance by George Goebel, a veteran magician with
a grand-scale stage act. Rather than perform for a small
circle of spectators, the tuxedoed Goebel stretched his act
across the entire stage, employing costumed assistants
in larger illusions like levitation and sawing someone in
half. “That’s when I became interested in stage magic,”
Steinmeyer says. “It was that performance with that guy.
I was a 13-year-old kid who just lost a father… And it was
like another door opening on an interest I already had, and
opening in some bigger, grander way.”
In the following years, Steinmeyer dropped his own act;
what he really loved, he realized, was conceiving ambitious
illusions—the flashbulb of an idea popping inside his head,
the mental calisthenics of how it might work, the sketch-
ing and spitballing. In college, he started pitching tricks to
Doug Henning, arguably the world’s most famous illusionist
during the 1970s. Henning eventually bought a piece from
Steinmeyer called “Modern Art,” an illusion in which the
performing magician stands inside a picture frame but is
split in half when the frame is moved—their legs stuck in
place while their head and torso slide with the frame. Hen-
ning liked the way “Modern Art” spun off a trick called “The
Zig Zag Girl,” in which the performer divides an assistant
into thirds. “It was very much of its time,” Steinmeyer says.
“Because Zig Zag was so fresh in the ’70s, things that felt like
that were attractive.”
Two other Steinmeyer illusions soon made a Hen-
ning TV special, and Henning eventually offered him a
job helping launch Merlin on Broadway. The job was sup-
posed to last six months; Steinmeyer kept it for seven years
before moving on to Disney Imagineering. These positions
had their rewards, he says, but he struggled with the com-
promises that came with corporate productions. He knew
that if he wanted to design illusions from a molecule of an
idea in his notebook to something that grew and emerged
November/December 2020 41
naturally—he needed to be on his own.
Today, running his own business requires an aston-
ishingly disparate set of skills. Some days Steinmeyer is
a mechanical engineer, building scale models with foam
core, mirrors, and toothpicks; other days, he’s a historian
and detective, reconstructing old tricks; still others, he’s a
graphic designer drawing up informal blueprints, or a play-
wright developing scripts to go with his illusions.
Each illusion involves close collaboration with the build-
ers and the performers—Steinmeyer’s clients. “Every trick
has a flaw,” he says. “If it didn’t, it wouldn’t be a trick, it
would be reality.”
For magic to accomplish the impossible—making some-
thing disappear—a “flaw” in the magic has to be hidden,
like a trick mirror or special compartment. If a magician
can’t conceal this secret, the trick is worthless. Steinmeyer
relies on both meticulous design and well-suited perform-
ers to construct tricks. When he offered to help launch the
solo career of Alex Ramon—a former magician for the Ring-
ling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus—he asked Ramon to
write down his favorite tricks, architectural styles, pieces
of art, color schemes, and so on to garner a sense of his aes-
thetic and his way of thinking.
Ramon had never performed original tricks before, but
in Steinmeyer’s studio he understood for the first time how
they were birthed. “It made me think about magic in a dif-
ferent way,” Ramon says. “I was just a performer. I didn’t
42 November/December 2020
▼ First-time guests at the Magic Castle must speak the correct password to
open a hidden door behind reception and gain entry into the club.
have that engineering mind.” Today, he has a trick in which
his “blond assistant” materializes in an empty chair cov-
ered by a cloth. Though the assistant’s silhouette appears
at first to be human, it turns out to be Ramon’s dog. Stein-
meyer helped Ramon create this signature part of his act.
“I definitely owe a big chunk of my career to Jim,” he says.
D
uring the evening on my second day in Hollywood,
Steinmeyer drives me to the Magic Castle. The
members-only club for magicians and enthusiasts is
both a laboratory for the craft and, by night, a place
for guests to take in large-scale and intimate performances.
Built in 1909, the building is a shambling maze, a classic
chateau-themed manor with narrow passages, branching
wings, antique banisters and Tiffany stained-glass win-
dows. At the time of my visit, Steinmeyer served as president
of the club (though his tenure has since ended), and we
arrive about an hour before opening so he can attend a board
meeting. I have to borrow a tie at reception to meet the dress
code, though I’m already wearing a sport coat.
Steinmeyer heads to his meeting, leaving me to roam the
castle. In a room tucked behind the main entrance, I test
ALAMY
“EVERY TRICK HAS A FLAW. IF
IT DIDN’T, IT WOULDN’T BE A
TRICK. IT WOULD BE REALITY.”
“Irma,” the ghost operating the grand piano, and she nails
my softball request (“Hotel California”).
The energy ramps up once the doors open, the crowd rolls
in, and the performances start. In the Close-Up Gallery,
Tom Craven peppers his card, rope, and metal-ring tricks
with a stream of old-world patter. Over in the larger Parlor of
Prestidigitation, Bill Abbott presents a mashup of puppetry
and magic featuring a lustful monkey. In the Magic Castle’s
showcase room, the Palace of Mystery, Greg Otto performs a
comedy-laden routine (when a heckler pipes up, Otto replies,
“I thought I told you to stay in the truck”) before Kyle and
Mistie Knight deliver a classic big-stage performance heavy
on audience participation. To take the stage, Kyle passes
through a giant fan with spinning blades—the very trick I’d
spotted in one of Steinmeyer’s notebooks.
What’s striking, besides the polished performances, is
the feeling in the building. The Magic Castle rules call for
people to stow their phones, and there are no TVs. It’s a time
capsule, everything analog, and the audience arrives with a
roiling, tipsy energy. People call out to performers, laugh,
slap shoulders, and scream with surprise and wonder. No
one is sneaking a look at their phone, and no one resists the
timeless astonishment that has been conjured in magic
audiences for decades, from Charles Morritt to today.
I mention this to Steinmeyer on the drive back—he’d
been in his meeting for the duration—and he nods. “I know
it’s weird to say, but somehow magic is immune from tech-
nology,” he says. When he watches performances, he tunes
in to not just the magic but the way people respond to it. “The
thing about the Magic Castle and places like it, when you’re
there in the right size theater, the intimacy is just com-
pletely amazing. People always say afterwards, ‘I had no idea
the performances were going to be so strong.’”
O
n my last day, I ask Steinmeyer straight up: How does
the sawing-in-half trick work? Two trick tables are
in the studio with us. The illusion has been around
for more than a century, and Steinmeyer has men-
tioned its timelessness and layers of innovation. So what’s
the secret? True to form, Steinmeyer gives a non-answer.
He begins a mesmerizing filibuster about the illusion’s evo-
lution, citing his friend and mentor Alan Wakeling, who
in the 1970s came up with an “incredibly elegant” design
for the trick in which two audience members shackle the
hands and feet of the woman, and instead of sawing the box
in two, the magician stabs four blades through the sides.
Steinmeyer allows that historically,
the trick is that the woman pulls her
knees up to her chest when the sawing
happens. But with Wakeling’s box, you
can still see her feet sticking out the
bottom, and beyond that, the box looks
too narrow for a knee lift. So I press:
“But there’s no room for her to—”
“Right. I mean it’s all—as soon as
people believe you’re doing one thing,
you can subvert it by doing something else,” Steinmeyer
says. He smiles and shrugs as if to say, What more do you
expect?
Here, I realize where Steinmeyer has been trying to lead
me all along. In Hiding the Elephant, his narrative history
of magic, Steinmeyer points out what most of us already sus-
pect or know: The secrets of magic are often right in front of
us. He says a magician friend often tells him, “If you want to
keep something a secret, publish it.”
Magic is not about knowing how we’ve been deceived.
“Magic,” Steinmeyer says, “is an opportunity to experience
a deception without actually being threatened.”
In a world of deepfakes and identity theft and warfare by
invisible computer viruses, real-life deception has conse-
quences. You need to know the mechanisms of these “tricks”
to avoid being taken in. That’s why we press for answers.
Steinmeyer sees I’m pressing about the sawing-in-half
trick, so maybe against his better judgment, he relents. The
feet are fake, he explains. The box incorporates design ele-
ments that make it appear narrower to the audience than it
actually is. In fact, there’s just enough room for the woman
to drop her knees to one side and avoid the blades.
I nod. Huh. It’s a cool explanation, but somehow learn-
ing the answer isn’t as exciting as I’d expected. I remember
something I’d read in one of Steinmeyer’s books: Magicians
don’t protect their secrets from the audience, they protect
the audience from their secrets.
The truth of how magic works is that most of us don’t
know because we don’t want to know. What we want, instead,
is to sign what Steinmeyer calls “a mysterious pact between
a performer and the audience.” We want to be in the midst of
that credulous, shrieking crowd at the Magic Castle.
“There’s no substitute for that,” Steinmeyer says. “When
you gasp or scream in response to a card trick, it’s a hotwire
to that sense of being incredibly pleased, a sense not only of
surprise, but of wonder.”
The secret of magic is not knowledge, it’s feeling. Stein-
meyer and I eventually wile away almost an hour analyzing
the early-1900s illusion with the thief and the safe. He rev-
els in the intricacies of it—the different historical accounts,
Charles Morritt’s possible motives, all the potential expla-
nations. Steinmeyer holds that feeling himself. He admires
a trick well done. He treasures the wonder that comes with
being fooled in an artful way.
Steinmeyer doesn’t know how the safe illusion works. He
never has, it’s possible he never will, and this doesn’t bother
him in the least.
November/December 2020 43
 BY ROB KEMP
PHOTOGRAPHY BY
KATE PETERS

◀
The tunnels consist of two
portions—a larger upper level, where
growing and processing takes place,
and a smaller lower level, shown
here, which is used for storage.

November/December 2020 45

in a complex of bomb shelters left abandoned since World
War II, something is growing. Thousands of green sprouts
burst from their hydroponic trays, stretching toward glow-
ing pink lights that line the arched ceilings. These plants,
along with tens of thousands of other salad crops, are being
grown from seed without soil or sunlight, in tunnels trans-
formed into a high-tech commercial farm.
The farm is known as Growing Underground (GU), and it’s
located 108 feet below the main street in Clapham, a south
London suburb. Every year, in 6,000 square feet of old bomb
shelter, more than 100 tons of pea shoots, garlic chives, cilan-
tro, broccoli, wasabi mustard, arugula, fennel, red mustard,
pink stem radishes, watercress, sunflower shoots, and salad
leaves are sown, grown, and prepared for dispatch.
London’s unique move toward re-localizing agricul-
ture—feeding its growing population while cutting the
environmental impact of producing and transporting
crops—is the brain-child of entrepreneur Richard Ballard
and his business partner Steve Dring.
“The United Nations predicts that we need 70 percent more
food by 2050,” says Ballard. “But how are we going to achieve
this when only 10 percent of the Earth’s surface is suitable for
agriculture and we use a third of that to grow livestock feed?”
Ballard’s journey to becoming a pioneering subterranean
farmer is an unusual one. After his ethical garden furniture
business went bust in 2008, he moved closer to his old friend,
Dring, and the pair would regularly sit in the pub and dis-
cuss ideas for start-ups. Both men were intrigued by the idea
of vertical farming as an efficient way to feed people, espe-
cially in urban areas.
These farms are not susceptible to weather, and crops can
be protected from food contamination and grown without
herbicides and pesticides. Transport costs are minimal, har-
vesting is often automated, and much of the water used to
grow crops can be recycled.
46 November/December 2020
But the question of how to build it in a city
where living space is at such a high premium pre-
sented their first major challenge.
At that time, London’s Crossrail line was in
its construction stages. The excavations for the
73-mile-long high-speed railway across the city
regularly featured on the TV news—especially as
secrets to the city’s past were being unearthed,
including plague pits, Roman artifacts, and
unexploded World War II bombs. It led Ballard
and Dring to consider going underground.
They worked with the management company
for the city’s underground railway network,
Transport for London (TfL), to find the Clapham
site. “As long as we weren’t building an under-
ground nightclub, they were happy for us to trial a
small farm to see if a tunnel could work as a grow-
ing environment,” Dring says.
A crowdfunded campaign raised more than
$900,000 to develop the site. After a successful
trial in one small section of the shelters, Ballard
and Dring negotiated a nearly 20-year lease from
TfL and began operating in 2015.
THE ENTRANCE TO GU IS WITHIN AN
unassuming brick office at street level. In here
sit four of the site’s seven aboveground staff; they
work at computers taking orders from retailers
and arranging deliveries. It’s also the spot where
visitors are asked to remove any jewelry and sign
a consent form confirming that they are in good
health, have never carried typhoid, and are not
bringing any nuts onto the site.
From there, it’s a trip into a cramped eleva-
tor with barely enough room for two people. It
descends slowly, 10 stories belowground, to where
visitors step out into a tunnel of whitewashed
corrugated arches that contrast brightly with
the eerie elevator shaft. Through a row of rubber
strips hanging from a tunnel entrance, the kind
you see in an industrial refrigerator, a bright pink
light glows. Coupled with a sound of hard-core
punk music coming from another passageway,
this farm has the feel of the illicit nightclub their
landlords had feared.
The working farm currently occupies an eighth
of its potential 45,000 square feet of growing
space. The entire site is two parallel tunnels, each
1,640 feet in length. Built at the height of the Blitz
 ▼
Workers check
the progress
of crops in the
growing tunnel.

November/December 2020 47
 between 1940 and 1942 and capable of accommodating 8,000
people, the space was already connected to electricity and the
London water supply before Growing Underground moved in.
Belowground the next set of safety precautions sees visitors
putting on white rubber boots, disposable hair nets, another
net to cover any facial hair, and white lab coats.
“It’s a controlled environment. We don’t need pesticides
but we can’t afford contamination,” says Jess Moseley, GU’s
operations coordinator and tour guide. “We ask visitors to
remove their jewelry to prevent any possibility of any foreign
body contamination. We don’t want tiny gemstones in our
salad.” Visitors wash their hands thoroughly with soap and
use an alcohol-based sanitizer on them, and then are free to
enter the farm.
Moseley works alongside a team of growers, all wearing
the same hair net and rubber boots combo. Four of them,
dressed in blue, stand in a line at polished-metal weighing
scales picking bunches of harvested herbs and packing them
for distribution.
“There are 16 production staff and two growers who orga-
nize the sowing,” Moseley explains, as the electronic scales
beep and another box of fresh herbs is sealed and stacked.
These micro greens are the intensely flavored early stages
of plants that are usually harvested later in their life cycle.
They’re especially popular with restaurants that serve
dishes with very little on the plate. “We
switched pea shoots to tendril pea shoots, ▼ These LEDS utilize a red:far-red (R:Fr) spec-
Pea shoots are
which are frillier, because the chefs pre- planted in the
fer them,” says Moseley. recycled growing
medium.
Most of GU’s crops are micro herbs— ▶ light resembles sunlight at its peak level, which
Cilantro sprouts
there are only two larger crops, pea under the pink
shoots and sunflower shoots. Most full- growing lights.
48 November/December 2020
size produce such as carrots or bok choy could
be grown here, but they take too long to grow to
make them profitable. However, more research
into alternative lighting spectrums may make
these a possibility, says GU operations manager
Alex Hamilton-Jones.
“Larger crops require a change to the grow-
ing equipment, like the height of the stacks and
light intensity,” Moseley says. “This is going to be
a part of the next iteration of the farm.”
Within its short existence, Growing Under-
ground’s team has expanded its variety and
reduced turnaround time on crops. That’s due
in no small part to a number of technological
innovations that optimize growing conditions
on the farm.
“Our pea shoots can be harvested up to 60
times in a year,” Ballard says. “Outdoors you
get three or four harvests of those in a year; in a
greenhouse, around 30.”
To help plants grow quickly, the correct lights
are key. Ballard and Dring tried seven different
LEDs during their R&D and found that the sys-
tem they settled on—spectrum AP673L LEDs
from Valoya of Finland—produced the best yield
and greatest flavors.
trum ratio that targets the red and far-red light
absorbing photoreceptors on the plant leaf. The
delays flowering of herbs and allows the plant to
focus its energy into fast biomass development.
 The result is a compact, intensely flavored
product grown in a short time in conditions that
not only suit the plant but meet the needs of the
growers, too. “The cycle for growing coriander has
gone from 21 to 14 days,” explains Riley Ander-
son, the site’s team leader. “Some plants can be
harvested after just six days in the growing tun-
nel, which beats anything a farm aboveground can
achieve consistently through the year.” They toyed
with duller tones than the vivid pink that now illu-
minates the growing tunnel, but found that the
reduction in visibility meant having to lift each
plant tray out off of its bench to do quality checks.
It slowed the process and didn’t enhance the crop.
“We wanted to source the lowest energy con-
suming lighting system we could find,” explains
Ballard. “The LEDs do not use the same amount
of energy nor do they create the high direct heat
that conventional (high-pressure sodium) lights
do, which means we’re able to grow the plants in
shelves closer together.”
The power comes from Good Energy, which
only uses renewable sources. “As it’s a closed-loop
system of farming, anything that’s added—nutri-
ents or fertilizers—stays within the circuit,”
says Ballard. The only farm waste—the sub-
strate recycled carpet left over from harvesting
the herbs—is sent to SELCHP, a waste-to-energy
converter in southeast London. “Zero carbon out-
put has been the Key Performance Indicator we
chose to work to from the very start because any
business starting today needs to think about its
impact on the environment,” says Ballard.

I N A D D I T I O N T O H I G H -T E C H L I G H T I N G , T H E R E
are several other adaptations that allow plants in
the tunnels to grow so quickly. It starts when the
seeds are sown, without the aid of conventional
soil: Workers place two-inch-thick rectangular
growing mats—called Growfelt and made from
pulped floor carpet—into shallow trays. The mats
are sprinkled with seeds by hand.
Once sown, the seed trays are stacked onto
carts and left in a dark section of the same tun-
nel for propagation. For a short time they sit in
complete darkness, covered with plastic wrap.
This “fools” the seeds into thinking they’re
beneath the earth. This is where germination
begins. Within a day or two, the seed shoots
appear. By the fourth day the trays are trans-
ferred to shelves known as benches under the
banks of LEDs in the crop-growing tunnel.
There’s no music playing in the growing area—

November/December 2020 49

▲ workers seldom spend much time in
The trays in the here, as the plants are doing all the work
foreground hold
crops that are on their own. Instead the only noise in
ready for harvest,
while those under this long, f lamingo-pink chamber is
the lights are still the whirring of the axial fans dangling
growing.
from the ceiling. Although the fans help
keep the farm at a settled temperature of
around 59°F, the plants beneath the glare of the LEDs feel a
warmth of up to 77°F.
“There’s a slight variance throughout the farm,” says
Anderson. “We place the crops strategically to optimize
growth. Our radishes prefer to be right at the front of the
farm, where it is coolest. Our most robust crop, the pea
shoot, grows well wherever it is positioned within the farm.”
On either side of the tunnel are trays bristling with herbs
at different stages of growth. In each tray a handwritten
sign identifies the type of crop, along with a P date of prop-
agation, an L for the day it was put under the lights (when
transferred to the farm from propagation), and B for the
bench the tray is assigned to.
The warming glow provides “sunlight” for 18 hours a day.
Rain comes in the form of hydroponics. A faucet fills each
tray of plants with a water-and-nutrient mix five times a
day. The roots in the trays grow down through the matting
to absorb the mix and then water is filtered through tanks
beneath the benches. “We use 70 percent less water than con-
50 November/December 2020
ventional field farming,” says Moseley.
The night before a harvest, workers put the
plants on carts in the middle of the farm, which
has the best airflow, Anderson says. That dries
them overnight to the point of being packable
without them breaking down quicker.
To harvest, fresh herbs are sliced from their
roots, shaken off of the matting that served
as their soil bed, and placed into a blue bowl.
From there the crop is weighed and packed
into transparent tubs made from rPET—recy-
cled plastic—and labeled with the GU logo and
contents.
Above each growing bench is a round, yellow
sensor the size of a large coin that records tem-
perature, humidity, and illumination, and sends
the data to the University of Cambridge’s engi-
neering department. The results are fed back to
GU, which compares them with the crop yields
to determine which conditions are working best
for growth.
“We monitor yields every day when we cut,”
says Ballard. “A platform with machine learning
capability collects the data from all the sensors
and alerts you to any anomalies. It gives us access
to the sort of technology being used in big agricul-
tural projects, but that would be too expensive for
us to put together.”
C R O P S H E R E C A N B E H A RV E S T E D , PAC K E D ,
delivered, and served on a plate all within four
hours. The reduced time spent in transit means
GU products have a longer shelf life than those
grown outside of the capital. As a result they’re
sold in some of the U.K.’s major food retailers and
wholesalers.
A number of renowned London chefs use
GU produce, too, including Michelin-starred
Michel Roux Jr. He not only uses their herbs in
his dishes at Le Gavroche, a French restaurant
in the Mayfair area of London, but he also came
on board as a founding supporter. He describes
the shoots and leaves that it provides as “mind-
blowingly good.”
For distribution to smaller restaurants, GU
goes underground as well. “We send our deliv-
ery guys off with all these bags of orders onto the
subway trains,” says Anderson. “Food that’s been
grown in a Tube tunnel is delivered through one as
well, further reducing the carbon footprint.”
Tours of the tunnels take place outside of
the production cycle, with chefs, students, and
potential investors visiting during the week and
members of the public shown ▶
Garlic chive seeds
around on Saturday after- are sown into the
noons. “We’ve had farmers recycled carpet
seed bed.
from Scotland, mainland ▼
The garlic chive crop
Europe, and as far as Amer- is harvested and
ica come and visit us,” adds ready for packing.
Anderson. In the past five
years that the farm has been operating, technology
has improved a lot—more efficient LED lighting,
water recycling, and air management systems,
Anderson says. “But the principle of what we’re
doing is remarkably simple, giving crops the nutri-
ents they need and a medium to grow in.”

BALL ARD IS NOW BUSY SOU RCI NG FU N D I NG

to expand farther into the tunnels while inves-
tigating sites for other controlled-environment
farms in other parts of the world and in differ-
ent structures.
“When we started, the plan was to produce
a supply for London,” Ballard says. “But as the
retailers have taken an interest, we’re now look-
ing to serve their distribution centers beyond
the M25 [London’s encircling motorway].”
As GU grows, it looks to similar farms for
inspiration. In South Korea, subterranean veg-
etable farms are cropping up at underground
stations on the Seoul metro, thanks
to a start-up called Farm8, while in
Tokyo, abandoned utility tunnels
built to service a skyscraper city that
never materialized have also been
converted into GU-style farms. In
Hamburg, Germany, a vertical farm
called &ever uses methods similar to
GU’s to harvest salad crop using just
5,920 square feet of indoor grow-
ing space. Producing an equivalent
yield outdoors would require 161,458
square feet of open field.
Increasingly crowded cities are
getting imaginative when it comes
to farmland. “But these farms don’t
have to be underg round at a ll,”
says Ballard. “It can be in an aban-
doned factory or disused warehouse
aboveground. The model is simply
redundant space.” Even so, with at
least six more abandoned tunnels
beneath London alone, GU’s sub-
terranean farm may not be the only
game of its type in town, or under-
neath it, for much longer.

November/December 2020 51
 How Hollywood
Set Designers
Hid America’s
WWII Aircraft
Factories
BY CORY GRAFF

52 November/December 2020
 ◀ In the Army’s greatest cover-up,
Boeing’s Plant 2 disappeared under
a 26-acre suburb of burlap, chicken
feathers, and wood-framed cars.

November/December 2020 53
A
AS THE SUN ROSE OVER THE HORIZON,
a Japanese aviator worked to get
his bearings above enemy territory.
Anti-aircraft shells rocked his float-
plane bomber as he looked for his
target, a giant aircraft factory. The
imposing building and expansive
runways should be unmistakable, but
there were only houses below.
Am er ican intercepto rs wo ul d
surely find him soon. Seconds turned
into minutes he couldn’t afford. He
was still searching in vain when a pair
of American P-40 Warhawk fighters
zoomed in behind him, lining up to
end his failed mission.
In early 1942, this scenario played
out clearly in the mind of Army engi-
neer Colonel John F. Ohmer Jr.,
though the intended mark for his
greatest illusion—the Imperial Jap-
a nese Nav y—ha d yet to a ct ua lly
appear. The art and science of cam-
ouf lage had infatuated Ohmer for
years. After joining the Army in 1938,
he combined his love of magic and
photography to find inventive ways
to fool the eye and the lens. When
Ohmer went overseas to study Brit-
ain’s wartime concealment efforts, he
marveled as German attackers wasted
their bombs in open fields brilliantly
attired to appear as vital targets.
As commander of the Army’s 604th
Engineer Camouf lage Bat ta lion,
Ohmer campaigned to demonstrate
his craft by obscuring Hawaii’s Wheeler
Field in 1941. His superiors rejected his
proposal because of the $56,210 price
tag (nearly $900,000 today). Then on
December 7, 1941, Japanese attackers
Enemy raiders were spotted skulking
offshore. One Japanese submarine
shelled an oil storage facility near
Santa Barbara and in the early morning
hours of February 25, 1942, air defense
gunners around Los Angeles blasted
1,400 shells into the spotlight-pierced
night sky, chasing the ghosts of uniden-
tified aircraft.
The threat of an imminent attack
led Ohmer’s superiors to reassess the
value of his vision. He received a dream
assignment, one that was simple in
concept, but colossal in scope. He had
to make everything worth bombing,
from San Diego to Seattle, disappear.
The long list included airfields, oil
depots, aircraft warning stations,
military camps, and defensive gun bat-
teries. The most visible and vulnerable
targets were a dozen or so distinctive,
wooden aircraft assembly buildings.
Military leaders fretted that just a few
air-dropped incendiary bombs would
burn them to the ground. The loss of
just one major airplane-producing
facility could lengthen the war con-
siderably. If a factory like Lockheed confusing web of drab paint and cam-
burned in 1942, the military would ouflage netting. The Army called the
lose roughly 3,500 fighters, bombers, jobs “tone-downs;” meant to blur and
and cargo planes they were counting obscure the distinct lines of the plants.
on. It could easily take a year or more Factories located in urban areas,
to get such a facility up and running such as Lockheed in Burbank, Boeing
again. in Seattle, and Douglas in Santa Mon-
Ohmer turned to Hollywood to find ica, induced the cover-up crews to go
the most adept civilian workers, raid- much further. In order to make the
ing movie studios to leverage the skills big facilities vanish into their native
of set designers, art directors, paint- landscape, artists and craftsmen cre-
ers, carpenters, and landscape artists ated false neighborhoods on the tops
for the urgent task, along with a handful of enormous assembly buildings, com-
of willing animators, lighting experts, plete with realistic-looking streets,
B O E I N G (P R E V I O U S S P R E A D , TO P, R I G H T )

bombed and strafed Oahu’s exposed
airfields, along with the naval base at
Pearl Harbor. Wheeler alone lost 83
warplanes, each one nearly worth the
cost of Ohmer’s proposed cover-up.
With America at war, it seemed like
only a matter of time before America’s
West Coast bases and factories became
the next targets of the Japanese navy.
and prop designers. Ohmer knew that
these artisans worked fast and already
understood the fundamentals of illu-
sion from building elaborate movie sets.
Some of the concealment efforts
were relatively simple. Southern Cali-
fornia aircraft-building facilities such
as Consolidated, North American, and
Northrop quickly disappeared under a
trees, yards, and homes.
Crunched for time and resources,
the Army and the Hollywood crews
understood that the illusion only
had to be good enough to confuse an
enemy pilot for a few critical min-
utes. As Douglas Airview (a magazine
from the Douglas Aircraft Company)
put it, “This would give defending

54 November/December 2020
 ▲ On the roof of Boeing Plant 2, trees and structures were
often shorter than the workers; ▶ Boeing’s faux suburb
design mimicked the nearby South Park neighborhood.

planes and guns their chance. In the

bookkeeping of war, that possibility is
worth any cost.”
Ohmer’s trickery worked so well
that A merican f liers looking for
Dougla s beca me lost, compla in-
ing someone had absconded with
their once-familiar buildings and
runway. Lockheed’s disguise was so well-
executed that the Warner Brothers
studio facility suddenly stood out as
the most imposing complex in the San
Fernando Valley. Jack Warner worried
that his movie-making complex might
be mistaken for the hidden aircraft
factory. Unconfirmed rumors circu-
lated that he hired a company painter
to scribe a huge arrow on the roof of one
of his massive sound stages, along with
the words “Lockheed That-A-Way.”

November/December 2020 55
T H E C ROW N J E W E L OF OH M E R’S
concealments took place near Seattle,
where the Boeing’s Plant 2 sprawled
over 700,000 square feet of floor space.
Inside, thousands of men and women
churned out a new B-17 Flying For-
tress heavy bomber roughly every 90
minutes.
Ohmer placed his top movie studio
recruit on the Boeing project, architect
John Detlie. He was pure Hollywood,
married to movie star Veronica Lake.
Before Detlie joined the war effort, he
was an Oscar-nominated art director
and set designer at MGM. In Seattle,
Detlie assembled 13 architects and
draftsmen, eight commercial artists,
seven landscape architects, five engi-
neers, and a soil-management expert.
Thwarting an enemy reconnais-
sance f lier took more than simply
covering the factory building. A sharp-
eyed scout mig ht zero in on t he
adjoining airfield, parking lots, or
ramp areas. Making Boeing’s entire
production facility disappear meant
sowing confusion over several square
The WWII Aircraft
That Camo Protected
Production numbers from Jan.
1940 to Aug. 1945 at the six
largest West Coast factories.
NORTH AMERICAN:
INGLEWOOD, CALIFORNIA
16,447
Including 9,949 P-51 Mustang
fighters, 3,208 B-25 bombers,
and 2,163 AT-6 advanced trainers
Camo: Tone-down
LOCKHEED:
BURBANK, CALIFORNIA
13,385
Including 9,423 P-38 Lightning
fighters and 2,189 Hudson
patrol bombers Camo: Urban
neighborhood camouflage
CONSOLIDATED VULTEE:
D O W N E Y, C A L I F O R N I A
istic shadows and gave just a small
amount of depth, giving more life to
the scene. The finished deception
looked amazingly impressive from
the “attacker’s-eye-view” at five to ten
thousand feet. Only as a pilot came in
low for landing did the hidden runway
lose its illusion.
To blot out expansive ramps and
automobile parking lots surrounding
the factory, workers installed 90-foot
wooden masts in sturdy concrete foot-
ings before webbing the tall poles with
heavy steel cable.
Boeing never finished covering
their parking areas, but similar proj-
ects utilized hundreds of masts and
more than a million feet of cable.
Builders would stretch acres of cam-
ouflage netting from the suspended
cables, creating a dazzling pattern
of fields, lawns, and buildings over
parked cars and newly built aircraft.
At another factory, over four million
square feet of string netting spanned
the parking lots. These nets were inter-
woven with burlap strips and blocks of

miles of land.
Disg uising the active r unways
and taxiways as an innocuous urban
scene called for a two-dimensional
solution to not impede aircraft oper-
ations. Planners envisioned a pattern
of visual noise composed of lawns,
buildings, and roads crisscrossing the
active airfield. First, builders mixed
finely crushed rock into bitumen, an
asphalt-like substance, and applied it
Including 6,725 B-24 Liberator
to areas heavily trafficked by aircraft.
The mixture provided a dull texture
that gobbled up reflections and shine
emanating from the airfield’s large,
flat concrete surfaces. In non-traffic
spaces, the men added wood chips and
11,687
fabric, then dotted with wads of green-
painted chicken feathers affixed with
Including 11,537 BT-13 and tar to look like vegetation. But when
BT-15 Valiant basic trainers it rained, the paint-infused feathers
Camo: Tone-down smelled awful. And when it was warm,
fuzzy green tar-coated plumes drifted
off and stuck to fresh-from-the-factory
CONSOLIDATED VULTEE:
SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA airplanes.
Workers obscured the heart of Boe-
9,630 ing’s facility, Plant 2, with 26 acres of
camouflage netting stretched across
heavy bombers and 2,833 the roof to create the appearance of a
Navy patrol bombers new faux ground level elevated roughly
Camo: Tone-down 50 feet above the surrounding land-
scape. The building’s uneven bays and
distinctive saw-tooth profile required
DOUGLAS: LONG BEACH,
CALIFORNIA the netting to be supported by wooden

cement to absorb light.
Over the rough texture, workmen
used paint to create an intricate top-
down view of a typical neighborhood,
devised by Detlie’s crew. Its pigment,
developed by Warner Brothers, was
reputed to “resist disclosure of the
camouflage through infra-red pho-
tography.” Oil mixed with the custom
9,439
scaffolding or steel cables in low spots.
Reinforced catwalks, sometimes
Including 4,285 C-47 cargo masquerading as sidewalks, included
planes and 3,000 B-17 Flying wood and wire handrails to keep a
Fortress heavy bombers distracted maintenance man from
Camo: Tone-down straying off the supported path and
plunging through the netting.
BOEING: SEATTLE, Detlie’s mock rooftop neighbor-
WASHINGTON hood at Boeing called for 53 houses,

paint helped establish a convincing
cross-hatch of artificial roads. On the
airport’s infield, men constructed six-
inch-high false buildings made from
concrete blocks. From overhead, the
ludicrously small structures cast real-
56 November/December 2020
7,340
Including 6,942 B-17 Flying
Fortress heavy bombers Camo:
Urban neighborhood camouflage
Source: Army Air Forces Statistical Digest,
WWII, Men and Equipment (Table 75)
a dozen or so garages, greenhouses, a
service station, and a store. The width
and length of the structures stayed
life-size, while the height, barely
perceptible to fast and high-flying air-
craft, was truncated. For the sake of
 ▲ A fresh B-17 is rolled out of Plant 2. The edge of the rooftop camouflage
was painted and built to match the true ground level.
speed, cost, and the rarity of wartime
materials, many of the rooftop houses
were only about 6 feet tall.
Beams affixed to the factory roof
penetrated the netting vertically to
become the corner posts of the arti-
ficial structures. Clad in burlap and
plywood, the houses wore dark panels
for windows, and light and earthy exte-
rior paint tones seen in any American
neighborhood of the era. Roofs, which
would be most visible from the skies,
often appeared in white, red, or a dark
gray hue. Two full-height houses on
Boeing’s rooftop were real, providing
the living quarters for Army gun crews
protecting the factory.
Roads and driveways made from
oil-stained burlap overlaid the net-
ting and spanned the rooftop scene.
Dotting the roads, workers built doz-
ens of imitation automobiles from
wooden frames clad in fabric. Unlike
the graceful, rounded cars of the late
1930s and early 1940s, the fake autos
were slab-sided and plain. Plant work-
ers lashed down the artificial cars to
BOEING
keep the lightweight structures from
moving on windy days.
In the neighborhood’s yards, workers
created artificial vegetation rang-
ing from expansive victory gardens to
12-foot-tall trees. Each of the 300 imi-
tation trees began with a trunk and
main branches hammered together
from lumber. Artists made foliage
for the trees and bushes from chicken
wire and fiberglass flocked in painted
feathers—these all-weather tree con-
struction methods were used a decade
later when Disneyland opened in 1955.
In an attempt to break up the dis-
tinctive shadows created at the edges
of the massive building, workers
camouflaged its outer walls in a mul-
ticolored pattern and constructed
cantilevered wads of artificial foliage
along its perimeter.
The factory’s tallest chimneys disap-
peared inside strategically placed pump
houses and sheds while smaller vents
received a coat of red paint to look like
fire hydrants. The tinderbox setwork
required an actual fire-suppression sys-
tem, too, made up of 100 functioning
fireplugs, 67 sprinkler units, and con-
cealed fire-fighting towers equipped
with powerful spray nozzles.
Factory employees accessed the
rooftop site via hatches and patrolled
on the cat walks above the plant.
As they inspected and repaired the
neighborhood they called “Wonder-
land,” they also moved cars around the
scene and even re-arranged laundry
on clotheslines to maintain a lived-in
look. Periodic application of new paint
shades assured that the bogus vegeta-
tion and artificial lawns continued to
look realistic in every season.
As America pushed its forces across
the Pacific, the threat of an attack on
the continental United States became
less and less likely, yet the factory cam-
ouflage stayed secret until July of 1945.
That month, as Allied forces closed in
on the Japanese home islands, Army
officials felt safe enough to permit
national publications to run with the
story of the strange neighborhoods
made from burlap, plywood, and feath-
ers. Though the Japanese bombers
never materialized in American skies,
readers marveled at the ingenuity and
achievement of one of America’s most
peculiar wartime engineering feats.
November/December 2020 57
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November/December 2020 59
 BY C A R O L I N E D E L B E R T, B R I T T A N Y V I N C E N T & A L I Y A B A R N W E L L

The Last of Us Part II $50

Few games hit as hard as this

tale of revenge, which combines
a mature narrative with visceral
gameplay that continually asks
you to question the morality of
your actions. The original The
Last of Us was the pinnacle of
PS3 game design at the time,
with its painstaking attention to
detail, realistic character models,
and beautifully orchestrated
story. The sequel improves on
virtually everything, imbuing the
title with a sense of humanity,
raw violence, and heartrending

CO U R T E S Y S O N Y (L A S T ) ; CO U R T E S Y 2 K (B O A R D E R L A N D S) ; CO U R T E S Y B E T H E S D A (D O O M) ; CO U R T E S Y C A P CO M (O K A M I) ; CO U R T E S Y N I N T E N D O (C LU B H O U S E)
emotion previously unseen in
any game. Ellie’s pain practically
seeps through the controller.

Borderlands 3 $15 Doom Eternal $60

We always appreciate coopera- Doom (2016) was a return to form for the series that helped establish
tive shooting games with a sense the first-person shooter. Eternal takes everything about that game and
of humor. Of course, humor is ramps it up considerably. The combat is faster, the movement is more
subjective—don’t look for ele- fluid, and the environments are more expansive. The Doom Slayer even
vated comedy here. It’s more like has a compelling story and lore to go with the amazing, frenetic game-
crass jokes and ’80s references, play, which makes this demon-blasting good time even better.
but as long as that amuses,
players will be quite happy. Bor-
derlands 3 is an improvement on
installment 2; it’s longer, larger,
and has a better balance of
co-op special attacks, frighten-
ing enemies, obnoxious robots,
innuendo, and wild planets.

Clubhouse Games: 51
Worldwide Classics $40

Despite advances in graphics and

Okami HD $20 platforms, we keep coming back
to classics like chess, checkers,
Beautiful, involved, challenging, and captivating, Okami offers eye- and solitaire. Clubhouse Games
candy visuals that use cell-shading in a sumi-e art style, which looks gives you access to 51 activities
downright stunning in 4K. The mechanics that require players to draw that have entertained humans
with a calligraphy brush for special moves make it more interesting for hundreds of years, but what
than many button-mashers. It’s a visual treat that challenges players to sets it apart is its intuitive, attrac-
think creatively with an engaging main story and fun mini games. tive user interface.

60 November/December 2020
 GA ME & TOY AWARDS

Final Fantasy VII

Remake $60

Final Fantasy VII is one of the

most influential titles of all time.
Fans had high expectations for
the remake, and it manages to
meet them. Square Enix took a
chance by expanding the story
into multiple parts and including
War of the Zombie $3
characters and elements not
seen in the original game, and the
Fans of challenging civilization
gamble paid off with a title that
strategy sim RPGs will take
celebrates the source material
to War of the Zombie. They
without being constrained by it.
maneuver an expandable air-
craft carrier-like ark around a
world map to missions. Once on
the ground, they control a four-
person strike team to complete
CO U R T E S Y VA LV E ( A LY X ) ; CO U R T E S Y S Q UA R E E N I X (F I N A L) ; CO U R T E S Y VA N D E R V E E R G A M E S (ZO M B I E) ; CO U R T E S Y FA I L B E T T E R G A M E S (S U N L E S S) ; CO U R T E S Y S O N Y (G H O S T )

objectives that include wiping out

zombies, rescuing hostages, and
infiltrating underground bases,
among others. The size of the
world grants WoZ massive scope,
Half-Life: Alyx $60 with both turn-based and live-
action elements.
Even though VR is arguably the most exciting gaming development to
emerge recently, there aren’t a ton of killer apps for the tech yet, lead-
ing many to believe it’s a novelty. But Half-Life: Alyx proves how AAA
gaming in VR can be satisfying, providing an immersive experience that
can’t be matched by playing with a standard gamepad. Fling a blood-
thirsty headcrab from your face using your actual hands. Reach around
cover to pop off a few shots to clear the room of enemies. You don’t so
much play Alyx as you become her—an impressive feat with VR still in
its relative infancy.

Sunless Sea $20

Failbetter’s visually appealing (and brutal) exploration game came to
Nintendo Switch this year. In it, London has sunk into the Neath, a sub-
terranean world filled with a mix of ancient civilizations, retired corpses,
actual devils, mechanical dynamos, and horrifying realizations. You
trade resources, carry passengers, fight ship-sized crabs and sea anem-
ones, and find out one unsettling origin story after another. Combining
the best parts of roguelikes, exploration, and narrative elements makes
Sea one of the deepest and most replayable games.
Ghost of Tsushima $60
Ghost of Tsushima breathes new life into open-world games by drop-
ping players into a gorgeous recreation of 13th-century Tsushima
Island. Samurai warrior Jin Sakai works to restore order to the land by
dispatching the invading Mongols armed with his katana and an array of
stealth weapons. Like a Kurosawa film come to life, it’s simultaneously
arresting and beautiful in its violence, and there are dozens of hours’
worth of content to wade through.

November/December 2020 61
 GA ME & TOY AWARDS

Red Dead
Redemption 2 $60

How can we deny the majesty

of one of the best-selling and
most cinematic free-roaming
games ever made? Although

CO U R T E S Y R O C K S TA R G A M E S (R E D) ; CO U R T E S Y E C H O N I G H T G A M E S (S I G N S) ; CO U R T E S Y B L A C K B I R D E N T E R TA I N M E N T (H A R D S PAC E) ; CO U R T E S Y CO L D W I L D G A M E S (M E R C H A N T ) ; CO U R T E S Y D I S T R AC T I O N WA R E (D I C E Y )
we wanted to reach through
the screen to choke Dutch
(and Arthur for listening to
Hardspace:
Dutch), we still got teary eyed
Shipbreaker $25
at both endings. And when
the story triggers an emo-
We rarely see what happens
tional response, it means the
when massive sci-fi vessels are
developers did something
past their prime. In Hardspace:
right. Challenging hunting
Shipbreaker, you’re a “breaker”
side-missions, animal-skin
who recycles decommissioned
outfits, poker and blackjack,
starships. Each one you encoun-
horse-taming, quick-draw
ter has a different layout. To
shoot-outs, running your
avoid decompressive explosions,
own ranch, alienating entire
detonating fuel, and volatile
towns—Red Dead Redemption
reactors, you must approach
2 has everything we want in an
with care. As we were challenged
action-adventure game.
with bigger, more massive
ships with each job, we began
to appreciate taking gargantuan
tasks and literally breaking them
down into bite-sized pieces. It’s
Signs of the
a certain zen that comes from
Sojourner $20
tearing a multi-thousand-ton
hulk down to nothing.
This stylish and deep deckbuild-
ing game challenges you to play
through conversations. Most
similar games have combat, but
in Signs, the sparring is verbal;
we love the way even small mis-
matches and victories affect
how the game ends. You’ll need
to match card symbols with
your acquaintances, all while
you travel around a dusty, near-
apocalyptic world as a mer-
chandise buyer. Signs aims “to
capture both the feeling of leav-
ing home and returning changed
by our experiences,” says devel- Dicey Dungeons $15
oper Dyala Kattan-Wright.
Yahtzee meets deckbuilding in
this funny, grim, and fiendishly
difficult game from Chipzel, Mar-
lowe Dobbe, and Terry Cavanagh
Merchant of the Skies $15 (the developer behind Super
Hexagon and VVVVVV). They’ve
Merchant of the Skies offers a world that mixes roguelike elements, created a rich, replayable game
map exploration, and beautiful pixel art as you visit a place of light- with six characters and dozens
ning worship to recharge your ship and serenade a giant carrot in a of challenge modes in total, all
top hat, among other things. What we love about Merchant is how narrated by an evil game-show
it walks a fine line: It’s a crunchy resource game for spreadsheet hostess. “[This] is the best game
lovers, but it’s also a lively, quick-travel and exploration game set in I’ve ever worked on,” Cavanagh
a fascinating environment. says. We agree.

62 November/December 2020
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 BY E R I C Y U R K O , W I L L E G E N S T E I N E R & W I L L H E R K E W I T Z
Abandon All
Artichokes $13
Abandon All Artichokes requires
players to become “heartless”
by ridding their starting deck
of any artichokes, as the title
suggests. To do so, they must
take new vegetables from the
“Garden Row”—a series of five
face-up vegetable cards that
players may draw from—and
use their effects. Players add
these cards to their decks in the
hopes of drawing a perfect five-
card hand with no artichokes in
sight. The concept of deckbuild-
ing is often fairly challenging,
but designer Emma Larkins has
done an excellent job creating a
simple game to teach a difficult
concept, making this title a great
way to introduce new players to
modern tabletop gaming.
64 November/December 2020
Tapestry $99
If you’re looking to sink your
teeth into something long
and complex, Tapestry is your
game. Take a couple of hours,
whether by yourself or with up
to four friends, and build your
own civilization using “advance-
ment tracks” like science,
technology, exploration, and
military. Designer Jamey Steg-
maier built in some flexibility
here: You can choose to focus
on one of the four approaches
(and reap improved benefits as
you progress) or take a more
“jack-of-all-trades, master of
none” track.
Rosetta: The Lost Language $20
Players work cooperatively to translate an inscription from a now-lost
civilization, with one person—the “author”—creating the hidden mes-
sage for the others to guess. The whole team wins if they can correctly
decode the meaning. Because only the inscription must be hidden,
Rosetta is conducive to remote play: With the right camera setup, play-
ers can easily collaborate. Featuring great artwork and encouraging
creativity, Rosetta: The Lost Language is an engaging title for two or
more players to have some group fun, even in quarantine.
CO U R T E S Y S TO N E M A I E R G A M E S ( TA P E S T R Y ) ; CO U R T E S Y L I B E L LU D (O B S C U R I O) ; CO U R T E S Y G A M E W R I G H T ( A R T I C H O K E S) ; CO U R T E S Y S TO R Y M AC H I N E G A M E S (R O S E T TA ) ; CO U R T E S Y R E N E G A D E G A M E S T U D I O S (P L A N E T X)
Obscurio $47
Gorgeously illustrated, Obscurio
is part escape room with a twist
thrown in: One player is the “trai-
tor” secretly working to prevent
the team from making it out of
the library. The game is easy to
get the hang of and emphasizes
effective communication among
the party. To succeed, members
must decipher the meaning of
certain images on their way to
the correct exit.
The Search for
Planet X $40
In The Search for Planet X,
players scour the night sky to
find a mysterious new planet,
using logic to piece together
information about asteroids,
gas clouds, comets, and more.
Be careful, though: Any theo-
ries you make may help your
opponents come up with the
right answer. It’s a fantastic
tabletop experience with great
art that should appeal to play-
ers who want to dive into a
thoughtful game.
 GA ME & TOY AWARDS
CO U R T E S Y FA N TA S Y F L I G H T G A M E S (S TA R WA R S) ; CO U R T E S Y T H U N D E R W O R K S G A M E S (C A R TO G R A P H E R S) ; CO U R T E S Y C H I P T H E O R Y G A M E S (C LO U D S P I R E) ; CO U R T E S Y T H A M E S & KO S M O S (E X I T, C R E W )

Star Wars:
Outer Rim $65
The lawless edge of the Star
Wars galaxy lends itself to some
interesting gaming. Play as a
smuggler, have run-ins (and
potentially work) with famous
characters from the series, and
tangle with different gangs.
Here’s good news for people
looking to play solo, or social
distancing alone: In single-player
mode, you can still compete
against a character generated by
the game itself, whose turns are
dictated by a deck of cards with
preset action options.
Cartographers $25
Cartographers tasks players
with charting out a new fantasy
realm for their kingdom, reveal-
ing cards that represent areas
of land that appear on the map.
Though there are symbols to
Exit: The Catacombs of Horror $25 represent those areas, we pre-
ferred picking up markers and
This super-sized, two-part, escape-room game challenges players to pencils to draw our own vibrant
find a missing friend under the streets of Paris. Featuring tough puz- landscapes. Whoever earns the
zles—like one that can only be solved by candlelight—and inventive most reputation stars by the end
gameplay, this Exit title proves that you don’t have to leave your house wins. Other players can throw
for a compelling escape-room experience. Pleasantly, for a game titled monsters at you to thwart your
“The Catacombs of Horror,” it wasn’t too scary, either. plans, so be flexible.

The Crew $15

The Crew is a cooperative trick-taking game, meaning players

Cloudspire $130
The options for playing Cloudspire can seem overwhelming at first;
the game incorporates boards, chips, dice, and cards and it supports
PvP, solo, and team modes. But for 130 bucks, we would hope for
some broad functionality that lends itself to multiple replays with a
number of different participants. Cloudspire’s mix of world building
and combat delivers.
perform some action each round, and whoever does the best wins
that hand—similar to Hearts, Spades, or Euchre. Groups of two to
five players complete up to 50 missions together, targeting certain
objectives (like taking certain cards, or winning certain hands).
Should they fail, the players immediately lose. Thankfully, they
can keep playing the same mission until successful, and the short
rounds are easy to restart, making it ideal for players who want to
settle in for a long session.

November/December 2020 65
 GA ME & TOY AWARDS

BY A L E X G E O R G E

Nintendo Switch Lite

$200

If you play—or plan to play—

almost exclusively in handheld
mode, alone, without much
multiplayer, then get the Switch
Lite, which is more portable and
costs less than the standard
Switch. This is a Game Boy for
the 2020s, with its hard-button
controls that phone games just
can’t replicate.

Xbox Series X $499

The Series X wins on certain

specs: 12 teraflops of computa-
tional capacity and a 1TB SSD.
But while non-exclusive essen-
tials like Call of Duty and NBA 2K
look excellent on both this and
Playstation, the Series X’s value
is versatility. The system can
play titles going back to the early
2000s, upgrading the graphics
when possible. We’d budget for
Microsoft’s Netflix-for-games
program Game Pass Ultimate
($15 per month).

T R E VO R R A A B (S W I TC H) ; CO U R T E S Y M I C R O S O F T ( X B OX ) ; CO U R T E S Y S O N Y (P L AY S TAT I O N)

Playstation 5 $399

No gaming system matches Sony’s library of exclusive games.

The Playstation’s hardware is as good as any, and we especially
like that the PS5 has a trick proprietary system to efficiently
pull data from its 825GB drive. But PS5-only titles like Ratchet
& Clank: Rift Apart, Gran Turismo 7, and franchises like
Uncharted and God of War alone can justify choosing Sony.

66 November/December 2020
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Abacus Brands
Professor Maxwell’s
VR Science Lab $50

This science-lab kit opens doors

to fun, hands-on STEM expe-
riences. Kids can conduct 25
experiments (with step-by-step
instructions and help from
augmented-reality videos), then
put on the included VR goggles
to explore how each experiment
relates to real-life examples,
such as flying over an active
volcano or going deep into a
crystal cave.

Mattel Hot Wheels

Track Builder Unlimited
Ultra Boost Kit
Motorized Set $50

Hot Wheels offers plenty of

builds that can be mixed and
matched, but this motorized set
won over kid testers with its two

L A KOTA G A M B I L L ( V R L A B) ; CO U R T E S Y L E G O (M U S TA N G) ; CO U R T E S Y C R AYO L A (M A R K E R) ; CO U R T E S Y M AT T E L ( T R AC K)
boosters, which click together in
a variety of configurations.

$20

Don’t constrain creativity to pre-

made color options. Crayola’s
Lego Creator Ford Mustang 10265 $150 Maker Series allows kids to DIY
their own hues. This Marker
Pass on your mechanical knowledge by working with your kid to build Maker has the tools they need to
this Lego Ford Mustang. Modeled after the GT 1967, the 1,471-piece mix their own shades from three
replica includes a detailed interior, opening hood and trunk, and add- ink bottles and package them in
ons like a supercharger and spoiler. up to 16 full-size markers.

How We Tested Toys

Our colleagues at Good Housekeeping (another Hearst publication) have been testing products for
more than a century, just like we have. And they take toy evaluations seriously, making sure that the top
games and devices hold to ASTM standards, and then sending the most promising ones out to the most
relevant testers: kids. We partnered with the Good Housekeeping Institute for this package, combin-
ing some of their test results with our own evaluations to bring you this authoritative list of STEM and
builder toys and entertaining games for your little tinkerer or future programmer.—W.E.

68 November/December 2020
 Lego Boost Creative
Toolbox $160

You can count on Lego for

engaging fun, but this robot kit
adds some high-tech elements
to the classic bricks. Made for
kids ages 7 through 12, the
847-piece set includes five pro-
grammable designs, like a talking
robot, guitar, cat, rover, and
auto-builder. It’s also compatible
CO U R T E S Y O S M O (G E N I U S) ; CO U R T E S Y L E G O ( TO O L B OX ) ; CO U R T E S Y J A K K S (D OZ E R) ; CO U R T E S Y D I S CO V E R Y # M I N D B LO W N (C I R C U I T R Y ) ; CO U R T E S Y T H A M E S & KO S M O S (S O L A R B OT S) ; CO U R T E S Y H A S B R O (N E R F)

with its own smartphone app,

called Lego Boost, which has
Osmo Genius challenges and activities to help
Starter Kit $99 kids build their coding skill set.

If your kid already uses a tablet

for gaming, the Genius Starter
Kit can help turn those digital
amusements into tangible learn-
ing opportunities. It Includes
an iPad or Fire base, tangram
pieces, and word and number
tiles. The kit then captures what
the user does live in front of the
tablet, integrating those actions
and pieces into five apps that
help develop kids’ problem-solv-
ing skills through puzzles.

Thames & Kosmos

SolarBots: 8-in-1
Solar Robot $25

Powered by a compact solar

Jakks Xtreme Power
Dozer $60
We all need to vent, and it’s OK
to occasionally indulge in a lit-
tle destructive play time. The
Xtreme Power Dozer is ideal for
that, capable of pushing or pull-
ing up to 200 pounds—whether
it be plowing through other toys
inside or piling up dirt and rocks
outside. Maybe buy yourself
noise-canceling headphones
before handing this over to your
kid, though; it’s equipped with
LED lights and a piercing siren
that alerts others to the nearby
construction.
Discovery #Mindblown
Toy Circuitry Action
Experiment Set $50
Expose kids to circuitry and
electrical engineering early with
this set for kids ages 8 and up.
With six total experiments, it
enables them to levitate balls,
spin a robot, and launch a rocket.
Plus, the modules are flexible,
allowing for some freeform
experimenting so kids can build
their own design.
panel, these little robots use mini
electric motors and can march,
crawl, and somersault. And the
colorful, 48-page guide offers
instruction on how to assemble
up to eight of the robots, with
interesting facts about real-life
solar power as a renewable
Hasbro Nerf Halo
MA40 Blaster $50
Modeled after a blaster in the
upcoming Halo Infinite video
game, Nerf’s MA40 can unleash
10 darts in quick succession,
thanks to its motorized, clip-fed
design. It even includes a tacti-
cal rail for attaching a number
of accessories. But be sure to
emphasize one rule: No aiming
at the eyes.

November/December 2020 69
 BY W I L L E G E N S T E I N E R , D O N M E L A N S O N & D A R R E N O R F

Mattel Hot Wheels

Cybertruck $400

One-tenth the size of Tesla’s

real Cybertruck, this version
from Hot Wheels features func-
tioning head- and taillights, a
telescoping tailgate, and “Chill”
and “Sport” modes. Tesla and
Mattel are even leaning into the
now-infamous incident from the
actual Cybertruck’s unveiling—a
cracked window sticker comes
included. It’s a fun distraction for
those of us who may never own a
Cybertruck to pretend like we do.

Spin Master Kinetic

Sand Kalm $30 How We
This tiny sandbox is like a zen
Game Now
garden for adults, but more fun. Stay-at-home orders don’t
The squishy, granular Kinetic have to cramp your style
material feels like something on game night—stay safe
between sand and Play-Doh, by hosting the fun online.
clumping together so you can
mold it with the included scoop,
POGO
rake, and knife. Our testers loved
Spikeball The joy and nostalgia of
its therapeutic effects. $60
playing a classic board game

T R E VO R R A A B (I P H O N E) ; CO U R T E S Y M AT T E L (C Y B E R T R U C K) ; CO U R T E S Y S P I N M A S T E R (S A N D) ; CO U R T E S Y S P I K E B A L L
Spikeball continues to be one of our favorite games to whittle is unmatched. Luckily, all you
away time in the backyard. The premise is simple: Think volleyball have to forfeit is the tactile
where you team up with a friend (or, these days, an immediate component. With Pogo,
family member or someone in your household) to face off against choose from free games like
another pair, attempting to bounce the ball off the net so that the Monopoly and Scrabble
other duo can’t return it. There’s not much strategy to it, but it’s a to play with friends. Simply
great blood-pumping diversion after a week gazing into devices. create a private room and invite
others to join.

STEAM REMOTE PLAY

With Steam Remote Play, one
player buys and runs a game,
Apple iPhone 11 Pro $999
streaming it to everyone else
in the group. The platform is
Yeah, it’s an expensive “toy.” But
free, but you must purchase a
the iPhone 11 Pro has plenty of
title to get started—something
high-res screen real estate (at
like Overcooked! ($17) is
458 pixels per inch) for playing
great for two to four players.
mobile games. And it was the
best iOS camera phone in our
ZOOM
testing. It’ll show you what’s out-
Who said video-conferencing
side the frame of the photo you’ll
was only for work? Invite your
take so that you can adjust and
friends to a video call, fire up a
not miss something (or some-
game, and share your screen. We
one) important, and the Zero
recommend The Jackbox Party
Shutter Lag function saves the
Pack 3 ($25), which includes
sharpest frame closest to when
five quirky multiplayer games.
you clicked the button, preserv-
—Courtney Linder
ing crisp shots.

70 November/December 2020
 GA ME & TOY AWARDS

Lego Star Wars

Imperial Star
Destroyer Set $700

This isn’t just any Star

Destroyer. Lego modeled
this after the very first ship,
named the Devastator, that
graced screens back in 1977
during the opening minutes of
A New Hope. Complete with
an included Rebel Tantiv IV
ship, this Star Destroyer has
a staggering 4,784 pieces,
eclipsed only by Lego’s 2007
and 2017 Millennium Fal-
cons (about 5,000 and 7,500
pieces, respectively).

DJI Mavic Air 2 Drone $799

CO U R T E S Y L E G O (D E S T R OY E R) ; CO U R T E S Y D J I (M AV I C)

The Air 2 offers clear improve-

ments over its predecessor in the
two areas that matter most: its
camera and flying capabilities.
You can now shoot 4K video at 60
fps, along with still photos up to
48-megapixels, while the drone’s
flight time has been increased to a
lengthy 34 minutes (up from 21).
Those upgrades do make this ver-
sion heavier and larger than the last
one, but it still folds small enough
to tuck in a bag or backpack.

November/December 2020 71
 Tools
10
// BY BR A DLE Y FOR D //
Top-Perfoming
Snowblowers to
Dig Yourself Out
W
AKING TO A FRESH BLANKET OF
snow brings back memories of our
childhood, with school called for
the day and the only thing on your
agenda: sledding with friends. But
we’re not kids anymore, and the
realization that we have to unbury
the car and head to work quickly clears the nos-
talgic fog from our minds. If you’ve finally gotten
tired of shoveling, need to replace an aging snow-
blower, or just want something bigger and better,
then we’ve got some snow removal options for you.
Now, testing snowblowers out of season is
challenging without one key element: snow.
We discovered that outdoor power equipment
72 November/December 2020
manufacturer DR Power uses wet sawdust for
product testing and development. So we got a
dump truck full of the stuff. We hosed it down,
mixing it thoroughly as we did. When we arrived
at what felt like the proper consistency, we
weighed one cubic foot of our imitation snow and
found it was exactly 21 pounds (average wet snow
weighs about 20 pounds per cubic foot). With that,
we set up an area 8 feet by 6 feet by 5.5 inches
deep. We recorded the time it took each machine
to clear this test area. We then created a dense,
wet-sawdust snowbank and used each machine to
break through it. In the course of using the snow-
blowers, we also recorded our impressions on
CO U R T E S Y A R I E N S ; CO U R T E S Y C R A F T S M A N
starting, turning, chute operation, ease of use in
general, and any other notable features.
It’s important to note that wet sawdust, while it
is similar enough for testing purposes, is not snow.
It’s heavier than most snow and much less slippery,
so our test is a bit tougher on these machines than
the conditions most users will encounter. If you
expect snow that needs clearing this season, you’ll
find a snowblower model here that’s ideal for you.
PH OTO G R A PH BY T R E VO R R A A B
EDITORS’ CHOICE
A R I E N S PR O F E SS I O N A L 3 2
H Y D R O R A PI DT R A K
Price: $3,499 | Power: Gas | Engine
displacement: 420cc | Electric
start: Yes | Battery: No | Drive
system: Hydrostatic, with track
| Speeds: Variable, forward and
reverse | Width: 32 in. | Stages: 2 |
Chute: Remote, manual
The Professional 32 Hydro
RapidTrak sits near the top of Ari-
ens’s commercial product line,
designed for very heavy residen-
tial or commercial use. We cleared
our test area in two minutes and 45
seconds and found this Ariens, for
its size and weight, simple to oper-
ate. The RapidTrak features three
positions, adjusted by pulling a sin-
gle lever beneath the right hand
grip. The first position lifts the back
of the track up so the machine rides
on the two large drive wheels, mak-
ing it very nimble. The second sets
the track flat for normal operation,
and the third puts pressure on the
front of the auger housing, help-
ing it dig into hard, packed snow.
The hydrostatic drive, paired with
a differential, helps make it as easy
to turn as a wheeled machine. In
the snowbank test, we were able
to creep slowly into the dense,
packed material, break through
without pushing or clogging, and
throw our wet sawdust 36 feet. The
remote-operated chute and deflec-
tor should throw actual snow much
farther, enough to clear wide drive-
ways and parking lots.
The rig also comes equipped with
heated hand grips, a halogen light,
BEST FOR SNOWBANKS
and drift cutters. For the price, this
C R A F T S M A N S B 65 0
had better be the best.
Price: $1,399 | Power: Gas | Engine displace-
ment: 357cc | Electric start: Yes | Battery: No |
Drive system: Friction disc | Speeds: 6 forward,
2 reverse | Width: 28 in. | Stages: 3 | Chute:
Remote, electric
The Craftsman SB650 has one more “stage”
than most snowblowers its size. Normally,
the auger pushes snow to the center, which
is swept toward the intake housing and the
impeller by the snow behind it. The SB650’s
third stage acts like a screw, pulling snow back
into the impeller faster. This is an advantage
when clearing dense snow left by plows at the
end of a driveway or heavy, wind-driven drifts.
The third stage breaks its way into the dense
snow, rather than just scraping the edge of it.
In testing, the SB650 felt much like any other
snowblower. Power steering facilitated quick
turns when we pulled a trigger below either
hand grip to turn in that direction. One advan-
tage with this type of system is that the axle is
normally locked, which made it easy for us to
keep nice, straight lines. It took us three min-
utes and nine seconds to clear the 8 by 6-foot
area in our test. But, when we got to the snow-
bank, we were able to see how the third stage
worked as it consumed the dense pile of wet
sawdust, throwing it 27 feet.
The cherry on top: The SB650 comes with
long, poly skid shoes that slide easily on pave-
ment and won’t mar or scuff walkway pavers or
fancy garage floor coatings.
November/December 2020 73
 Tools
10

| Power: Battery | Volts: 60 | Amp

| Width: 20 in. | Stages: 1 | Chute:

D R P OW E R PR O 2 8 in diameter—than other machines

Price: $1,000 | Power: Gas | Engine
displacement: 252cc | Electric
start: Yes | Drive system: Friction
disc | Speeds: 6 forward, 2 reverse
| Width: 28 in. | Stages: 2 | Chute:
Remote, manual
The Pro 28 two-stage snowblower
is an excellent value when you com-
pare width and throwing ability to
cost. This model’s “EZ-Turn” steer-
ing incorporates a differential in
the axle, which allows for quick
180-degree pivots with no trig-
gers to pull. Levers on the dash
panel operate the all-metal chute
of similar size. Turning at the same
RPM, the impeller can eject snow at
a higher speed than a smaller one.
So DR is able to achieve greater
snow-throwing distance with a
smaller engine—it pitched our wet
sawdust 38 feet.
The Pro cleared our test area in
two minutes and 25 seconds, the
fastest of any machine, and easily
cut through the dense, packed saw-
dust. That said, we felt and heard
a lot of vibration. Considering the
cost and performance, though, we
can’t complain too much.
It takes only one pull on the recoil
starter to get the Pro running. And
DR includes a set of non-marring
CO U R T E S Y D R P O W E R ; CO U R T E S Y G R E E N W O R K S

and deflector. The Pro 28 fea- plastic skid shoes.

ONE-STAGE Much like the choice between gas and

battery power, choosing one or two
This limits how far the snow can be
thrown, as well as the amount that can
▶ Two-stage units have a horizontal
auger that collects snow and pushes

VS.
stages has a lot to do with snow volume pass through the machine. But on the it to a rotating impeller that ejects it.
and the area you need to clear. plus side, one-stage units are simple to These machines can throw snow 30 to

TWO-STAGE
▶ One-stage blowers are so-called operate, light, easy to maneuver, and 60 feet, which makes it easier to clear
because they have one curved paddle less expensive than their bigger two- large spaces without piling snow that
that collects the snow and ejects it. stage counterparts. you’ll just have to move again.

74 November/December 2020

Price: $1,199 Power: Gas | Engine dis-
placement: 252cc | Electric start: Yes |
Drive system: Friction disc | Speeds:
6 forward, 2 reverse | Width: 28 in. |
Stages: 2 | Chute: Remote, manual
At 28 inches wide, Toro’s Power Max HD
828 is big enough to tackle large areas
but small enough to maneuver on most
walkways. The HD in the name, standing
for heavy duty, means that the 828 fea-
CO U R T E S Y TO R O ; CO U R T E S Y E G O ; CO U R T E S Y T R OY- B I LT
tures steel construction of all the major
parts. In fact, the only significant plastic
bits we found were the control panel and
belt cover.
We really like Toro’s “Quick Stick”—the
combined chute and deflector control—
which takes very little effort to reposition.
We were able to direct and throw wet
sawdust 34 feet, sweeping either left or
right—a bit less than the claimed 45 feet,
but wet sawdust isn’t as slippery as snow.
In our area test, we cleared the sawdust
quickly and efficiently, in two minutes and
46 seconds.
Price: $1,299 | Power: Battery (2) |
Volts: 56 | Amp hours: 7.5 | Drive sys-
tem: Electric motor | Speeds: Variable,
forward and reverse | Width: 24 in. |
Stages: 2 | Chute: Remote, manual
The steel-framed, 24-inch Power+
blower is very much like gas-powered
units of similar size, except for the elec-
tric motor and two 56-volt, 7.5-amp
hour batteries. Those give the Power+
some distinct advantages in the noise
and weight departments.
EGO claims a run time long enough to
clear an 18-car driveway (roughly 130 by
12 feet) of eight inches of snow. But keep
in mind the heavier and wetter the snow,
the shorter the run time. Clearing our 8
by 6-foot test area, with turbo mode on
and throwing the sawdust 31 feet, used
up about 25 percent of the battery.
Operating the Power+ is a breeze.
With its relatively light weight and a dif-
ferential in the axle, we found the EGO
very easy to maneuver.
WIDEST INTAKE
T R OY- B I LT A R C T I C STO R M 3 4
Price: $1,899 | Power: Gas | Engine dis-
placement: 420cc | Electric start: Yes |
Drive system: Friction disc | Speeds:
6 forward, 2 reverse | Width: 34 in. |
Stages: 2 | Chute: Remote, electric
Troy-Bilt’s Arctic Storm is a serious
option for folks with a lot of ground to
cover, with its wide intake housing and
auger capable of clearing a 34-inch path.
Considering the blower’s size, we found
it to be surprisingly agile. Still, it may be
too big for narrow walkways and awk-
ward in tight spaces.
The Arctic Storm just about swal-
lowed our snowbank; its intake housing
is that wide. And we were able to throw
the sawdust as far as 31 feet. Using the
small joystick-type control for the dis-
charge chute and deflector is a joy. With
just a thumb, we could reach from the
handle to make adjustments on the fly.
In our area test, we cleared the sawdust
in just two minutes and 41 seconds. And
we appreciated the heated hand grips.
November/December 2020 75
 Outdoor
11 Stuff
// BY A DRIEN NE DONICA //

B
I G O L’ P U F F I E S A R E G R E AT F O R S TAY I N G WA R M , B U T S H E D D I N G
The Best their bulk frees you up to actually do things. That’s why many of the
latest jackets are slimmed down, some with the help of next-level syn-
Coats for thetic insulations that mimic the structure (and attempt to match
the warmth) of down. Our list of this year’s best winter coats includes

Braving options so you can stay toasty while at the job site, carving lines on the
slopes, or running to town for supplies.

Winter’s To find the best performers, we considered price, insulating ability, comfort,
and style. Our test editors wore more than a dozen coats to assess the fit, feel, and
performance of each. We also did a warmth-comparison test, during which our
Cold editors sat or walked outside for an hour while wearing the coats on cold, windy
days with temperatures hovering around freezing. Then we gave each coat a
rating—warm, warmer, or warmest. After our thorough evaluations, we’re cer-
tain there’s a jacket here that will meet your needs.

76 November/December 2020 PH OTO G R A PH BY T R E VO R R A A B

 T H E N O R T H FAC E
G OT H A M JAC K E T I I I

Price: $299 | Insulation: 550-fill down |

Rating: Warmest | Moisture Protection:
2-layer waterproof shell

The Gotham Jacket III is as stylish

as it is capable of keeping you warm
and dry. The standard-fit men’s coat
accomplishes that with 550-fill goose-
down insulation, a gaiter built into the
hood, and rib-knit cuffs within the
sleeves and at the hem to seal out the
cold. To prevent water from seeping
in, The North Face deploys its DryVent
fabric—a material that’s treated with
durable water repellent—and seals
the seams. It’s not designed for heavy
activity, but this coat kept us warm when
the temperature dropped below freezing
and offered plenty of room for storage,
thanks to one internal and five external
pockets. Our only gripe: The brim of the
large faux fur-lined hood can fall to or
below eye level, making it difficult to see.
BEST PUFFY
PATAG O N I A M AC R O PU F F
Price: $200 | Insulation: 90- and 135-
gram synthetic | Rating: Warmer |
Moisture Protection: DWR coating
This Patagonia puffy has fewer baffles
and higher loft than the brand’s popu-
lar Micro Puff coats. (Still, that doesn’t
mean the design makes you look like a
human marshmallow.) We found that
the Macro Puff hugs the body without
restricting movement, has a high neck,
and blocks chill-inducing winds very
well. The recycled-nylon shell houses
PlumaFill, a polyester insulation cre-
ated with ultrafine filaments wrapped
around stabilizing core fibers, to keep
you warm. So you won’t overheat, the
side panels and sleeves have 90-gram
PlumaFill, compared to the 135-gram
variety used in the body. Also available
with an attached hood, the Macro
Puff is plenty packable for mild days
when you just want to bring it along
as insurance.

BEST PARKA
K Ü H L A R K T I K D OW N PA R K A

Price: $499 | Insulation: 800-fill down |

Rating: Warmest | Moisture Protection:
Water-resistant coating

There’s a lot to appreciate about the Arktik Down

Parka: A large hood, many pockets, a two-way zip-
per with a draft flap, and internal cuffs with thumb
holes top the list. Kühl also adds some flair with an
attractive cotton-blend shell, high-quality metal
hardware, faux-fur hood brim, and micro-suede
trim, without sacrificing performance. The 800-
fill down insulation kept us plenty warm and is
CO U R T E S Y PATAG O N I A ; CO U R T E S Y K U H L

protected by a water-resistant PU-and-synthetic-

wax coating on the shell. We like the long sleeves
and the double-layer front pockets at the waist.
Secure your phone, keys, or wallet in the top, and
stuff your hands into the side pockets underneath
when the wind picks up. Consider purchasing one
size down, though, as we noticed the Arktik runs
big. Yeah, it’s the most expensive coat here, but
consider this your parka if you want durable capa-
bility blended with style.

November/December 2020 77
 Outdoor
11 Stuff

BEST VALUE PARKA

L . L . B E A N BA X T E R
STAT E PA R K A

Price: $299 | Insulation: 650-fill down

| Rating: Warmest | Moisture Protection:
2-layer waterproof shell

The waterproof L.L. Bean Baxter State is

comfortable, very warm, and packed with
features. There are 10 pockets (three of
which are internal), a two-way zipper, fleece
wrist cuffs inside the sleeves, and both the
hood and its faux-fur brim are removable.
The 650-fill down instantly warmed us up
after we donned the coat, and it kept us
toasty enough when zipped closed that we
were comfortable even when walking and
sitting in subfreezing temperatures. The
more affordable price tag does come with
some trade-offs, though. The jacket runs
true to size, but some of its proportions are
askew. The sleeves are very long and wide
(we were glad the wrist cuffs kept warm air
from escaping), and the stiff collar reaches
chin height even when the coat isn’t zipped.
The zipper can be finicky, however, and
although massive and warm, the hood
isn’t adjustable.

BEST VALUE SKI JACKET

E D D I E BAU E R P OW D E R S E A R C H
PR O I N S U L AT E D JAC K E T

Price: $279 | Insulation: 100-gram

synthetic | Rating: Warmest | Moisture
Protection: 2-layer waterproof shell

If you ski or snowboard a handful of times

each year, it might not make sense to
choose a jacket that costs more than your
car payment. Instead, choose the Powder
Search Pro. Eddie Bauer keeps the price
in check by choosing synthetic insulation
CO U R T E S Y L . L . B E A N ; CO U R T E S Y E D D I E B A U E R

instead of down (like premium brands

often use) and opting for a basic but effec-
tive design. The classic-fitting jacket has
an insulated, helmet-compatible hood,
a powder skirt, and pit zips for dumping
heat when you really start moving. It’s a
bit stiff and heavy for a ski jacket, but it’s
well-built. The ripstop nylon exterior with
300-denier polyester at the shoulders,
elbows, and back hem is tough enough to
hold up to a ski edge, as well as working
and playing outside in rougher conditions.

78 November/December 2020

B E S T 3 -I N -1
T H E N O R T H FAC E T H E R M O BA LL
E CO T R I C L I M AT E JAC K E T
Price: $299 | Insulation: 10-gram
synthetic | Rating: Warmer | Moisture
Protection: 2.5-layer waterproof shell
The versatility of three-in-one coats—
comprised of an outer waterproof shell,
an inner jacket or vest that zips in and out,
and both worn together—makes them
a smart investment. And the ThermoB-
BEST WORKWEAR
CARHARTT DUCK
Q U I LT E D F L A N N E L– LI N E D
AC T I V E JAC K E T
Price: $100 | Insulation: 7.2-oz.
flannel and 4.4-oz. nylon | Rating:
Warmer | Moisture Protection:
Water-repellent cotton duck
At 3 pounds, 6.4 ounces, this jacket
is among the heaviest in the test.
But that weight is a fair trade-off
CO U R T E S Y T N F; CO U R T E S Y C A R H A R T T
for such a durable, warm coat that
won’t wither under a hard day’s
work. The 12-ounce cotton duck
exterior on the Active is made of
ring-spun fibers that are woven to cre-
ate the tough canvas-like fabric that can
stand up to abuse at construction sites
and home workshops. Meanwhile, a quilt-
ed-flannel lining in the body and hood and
quilted nylon in the sleeves add comfort
all TriClimate is the best we’ve tested. It’s
comfortable, light, and protective. Soft
to the touch, the PU-coated waterproof
jacket kept us dry during a drizzly hike and
has a soft fleece-lined chin guard on the
collar. The inner shell (which shows sweat
easily) has 10-gram insulation. Combined,
they offered just enough warmth for days
when the mercury hovers in the 30s. The
hood’s cinch cords tighten with a quick pull,
so we didn’t have to mess with any buttons
when the skies opened up. We do wish,
however, that the pockets on the outer
shell were lined for additional warmth.
and warmth. It felt more like a super-soft
blanket than a capable piece of workwear.
Inner and outer pockets fit tools or a wal-
let and were large enough that they didn’t
appear bulky when full. However, the hood
is a touch large for casual use when you
don’t need to fit a helmet under it.
November/December 2020
CHOOSE THE RIGHT
TYPE OF INSULATION
Down and synthetic materials
are the most common types
of insulation used in winter
coats. Each has its own advan-
tages, but the way they keep
you warm is similar: Your body
generates heat and warms the
still air that’s trapped between
the fibers and filaments of the
materials. “We know air is
the best insulator on earth,”
says Hsiou-Lien Chen, a tex-
tile researcher and associate
professor at Oregon State
University. “If you can create
more spaces to trap that air,
the material will have better
insulation.” Here’s how each
does it.
DOWN
Numerous filaments diverge
from a central point. This cre-
ates the spherical shape of—and
pockets of air in—down clusters.
And the clusters offer the most
warmth for their weight of any
insulator. But they collapse when
wet, losing their ability to retain
warm air. Also, down is usually
the most expensive insulator,
given it’s sourced from geese
and ducks.
SYNTHETIC
Polyester insulation is made of
terephthalic acid and ethylene
glycol, two petroleum deriv-
atives (though it’s becoming
increasingly common to source
these compounds from recycled
water bottles). The resulting
fibers have hollow cores and
are crimped, which creates air-
trapping loft, and spun into a bolt
of fabric. Newer, more sophisti-
cated synthetic insulation, such
as Patagonia’s PlumaFill and The
North Face’s ThermoBall, mim-
ics down with ultrafine threads
and clustered construction.
Regardless of shape, synthetic
insulation is generally cheaper
and traps less warmth than
down, but it better retains its
insulating power when wet.
79
 Home
12
// BY BR A D FOR D //

Developing
our testing
process with the
Roborock S5.

The
Smartest
Robot
Vacuums for
Any Home

G
ROWI N G U P, O U R VI S I O N O F
the future was filled with fly-
ing cars and robots that did
our work for us. While the air-
borne vehicles of The Jetsons
have yet to materialize, robot
vacuums have arrived. (No,
they don’t look like George’s Rosey.)
Ranging in cost from a bit under $200
to over $1,000, these wafer-shaped,
dirt-sucking automatons come with a
wide range of features and technology,
like bump-and-go navigation, LiDAR
(Light Detection and Ranging) floor-
plan mapping, and even mopping. We
tested a range of popular models to see
how well they work and which ones do
so best. You’ll likely need to keep your
current vacuum, but a robot vacuum
can absolutely cut down on time spent
cleaning and make life easier.

HOW WE Our team of test editors has researched, evalu-

ated, and tested these four robot vacuums. We
and cleaned their filters before moving to the next area. We
observed and rated the vacuums on speed, how well they picked

TESTED set up three separate 8 x 8-foot concrete areas

and covered one with a low/medium-pile carpet,
one with laminate, and one with smooth con-
crete but obstacles. To simulate different types and sizes of dirt
and debris, we spread five grams of flour, five grams of sawdust,
15 grams of dried rice, and 20 grams of kidney beans in each area
before setting the vacuums loose. We then emptied each model
up the debris, and how they dealt with obstacles.
For the one model with a pet-accident avoidance feature,
we threw down both novelty rubber poop and cut-up cigar seg-
ments. Any with mopping capabilities were tasked with cleaning
up light muddy footprints on a laminate floor. We then took the
vacuums home to see how they performed in less controlled
settings and to review app functionality.

80 November/December 2020 PH OTO G R A PH BY T R E VO R R A A B

 Home
12

i R O B OT R O O M BA i7+ $800

Navigating with vSLAM, the i7+ constantly

logs landmarks in your home to under-
stand where it’s been and where it hasn’t.
It was the fastest, most efficient model we
tested, vacuuming effectively in an orderly
fashion. With smart mapping turned on
via the iRobot Home app, the i7+ learns
the floor plan and builds a map so you can
set it to schedule, prioritize, or skip spe-
cific areas. The i7+ sucked up sawdust,
flour, rice, and kidney beans in 17 min-
R O B O R O C K S 6 M A X V $750
utes. When the battery gets low, the i7+
returns to its base to recharge and empty
Just released this June, the Robo-
its bin into a disposable bag. We were able
rock S6 MaxV is the first robot
to schedule or initiate impromptu vacuum-
vac available with a poop-avoid-
ing through the app by pressing the button
E U F Y R O B OVAC 3 0 C $300 ance system. ReactiveAI obstacle
on top, or by voice command when the i7+
avoidance can identify common
was linked to Alexa and Google Assistant.
Eufy’s RoboVac 30C uses a simple “bump- obstacles based on learning devel-
and-go” navigation technique, which oped using thousands of images.
heads in one direction until it knocks into The S6 MaxV navigates using a
something. Because of this, the 30C takes combination of LiDAR, vSLAM
longer to clean, though it costs much less (visual Simultaneous Localiza-
than others with mapping and advanced tion and Mapping), as well as
navigation features. In our test, it picked infrared imaging in the dark to cre-
up all the flour, rice, beans, and sawdust ate sophisticated maps and then
in 20 minutes. Because it cleans by time sweep through the room in an
and not by how big a room is, it continued orderly, efficient fashion. It can
cleaning for another 31 minutes before also mop as methodically as it can
we sent it back to its charging base. Its vacuum. The app allows you to
remote control can use all features except store up to four floor maps, cre-
scheduling, which requires the free Eufy- ate cleaning schedules, set which
Home app. The provided magnetic strips rooms are cleaned first, and iden-
used to set exclusion zones worked ade- tify no-go zones for vacuuming
quately. The RoboVac 30C is a relatively and mopping. If you have pets that
inexpensive and effective, albeit simple, occasionally have accidents or you
vacuum that’s best for individual rooms leave shoes in the middle of the CO U R T E S Y E U F Y; CO U R T E S Y I R O B OT; CO U R T E S Y R O B O R O C K ; CO U R T E S Y S A M S U N G
and smaller homes due to the longer time floor, the S6 MaxV will give you
it takes to clear an area. peace of mind when away.

SA M S U N G P OW E R B OT R72 6 0 PLU S $899

Unlike other robot vacuums, Samsung’s POWERbot has a flat front with a rotating
brush that extends the full width of the unit, which means it will reach square into
corners from both walls—without any side brushes—and then work its way through
the rest of a space in a neat pattern. We noticed it had a lot of, well, power, push-
ing things it bumped into on hard floors more than the other vacuums—especially
when backing up. As far as cleaning goes, the POWERbot did equally well on carpet
and laminate, and it adjusts its suction power according to different surfaces. Sam-
sung provides a remote that can direct the vacuum to specific spots and schedule
daily cleaning, while the app offers more flexible cleaning schedules where you can
set the days of the week individually. Its setting specifically for pet hair, along with
its powerful suction and ability to get into corners, makes it a strong option for peo-
ple with furry family members.

82 November/December 2020
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 13
// SIMON TOP M A N, 66, M A N AGING DIRECTOR OF ACME W HISTLES, BIR MINGH A M, ENGL A N D //

MADE HERE
Watch the complete MADE HERE
video series on YouTube.

A
WHISTLE’S SOUND IS MORE
than a noise. It’s a sound of
authority. It’s a distinctive
message, whether that’s a
warning, a penalty, a call
for help, or a sound among
an orchestra.
It’s something I never knew when
I first started at ACME Whistles in
sales in 1982. I was fortunate enough
to take over a decade later, and before
and after that time, we have always
strived for innovation in the many
markets we serve.
Today I might speak to a top ref-
eree organization. Tomorrow I might
speak with police and security peo-
ple. Then bands and orchestras. Then
dog trainers. It makes for a very inter-
esting and varied life because you get
a wide variety of products that are
essential for a person’s duty.
Because people often want new
sounds, we constantly get to inno-
vate. We made whistles for the
Titanic, we made whistles for World
War I to be heard in the trenches,
and we will continue to fashion new
whistles because there will always be
a need for an authoritative sound in
many disciplines that only a whistle
can provide. After 150 years, we’re
still reinventing the whistle.

For a referee’s whistle, brass strips are cut into three

HOW pieces—back, side, and knob—using an 80-ton press. The
IT’S
O L I V E R H O D G E S/ P O P M E C H V I D E O

trio are tied together by hand and then soldered from the inside
DONE using an electromagnetic field from an induction coil, sealing the
joints. After that, the whistle is soaked in nickel solution, and an
electric current coats the brass with nickel.

88 November/December 2020
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