360 How the Marines Train to Survive a Helicopter Crash
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Transcript
00:00Okay, guys, check it out. This is the real deal, buddy. Look. This is how the Marines train to survive a helicopter crash, man.
00:11Dude, who don't want to know about that?
00:31We train people to perform complicated underwater egress movements.
00:36We ask people to confront what can be some pretty primal stuff.
00:40Fear of darkness, confined spaces, fear of water, and all happening simultaneously.
00:45We take away their ability to see, and it can play a little bit into the things that they are afraid of.
00:51At Survival Systems USA, SWAT, Coast Guard, and Marine units learn basic steps for underwater survival.
00:59The primary tool is custom-built helicopter simulator.
01:03But in order to make these passengers safe, they'll be put in danger first.
01:08We'll experience what it takes to survive an over-the-water aircraft survival situation.
01:13And then we'll take a peek behind the curtain and get an even deeper understanding of what goes into creating and maintaining such a high-stakes training system.
01:22This is damage control.
01:30Copy.
01:38I'm Albert Bohemier. I'm the founder of Survival Systems. I started in 1982.
01:44When I was in the military, one of my jobs was air crew life support.
01:48And I knew that there were many problems with that equipment.
01:52And I also knew that the passengers had no training.
01:55After I left the military, I was flying to the Arctic, and I did attempt to land on top of a mountain and basically crashed.
02:02I survived the crash because of my military training and the way I had been drilled into,
02:10even though you don't think it's ever going to happen to you, always be prepared to react.
02:14I understood from personal experience that unless you're very ready, you may not do the right thing.
02:25Bohemier built this simulator so he could provide training for service members, first responders, and others who might experience forced water landings.
02:32And he built it in such a way that it accurately simulates real danger.
02:37Their training is called underwater egress, or simply water egress.
02:42The simulator is as realistic as we can make it without actually making it into a helicopter or an aircraft.
02:48The mechanisms operate the way that they do on the aircraft.
02:51So if a handle spins in the aircraft, the handle will spin inside the simulator.
02:55If you fly next to a door that's 22 inches across, the simulator exit for that door will be 22 inches across.
03:07So when a student shows up for training, they'll enter the simulator.
03:11And they'll either be seated next to an exit, or they'll be seated one seat or two seats away from an exit.
03:16So we have them buckle in.
03:17We assume that there's an overwater emergency.
03:20They get into a brace position.
03:22We have an impact with the surface of the water and subsequent rollover.
03:26Through the course of the day, we start with baby steps.
03:28We work on the easy stuff first, the procedures first, and then we start applying those procedures under more and more complicated scenarios.
03:47The most common and the biggest mistake that I see people make, they try to get that seatbelt off as quickly as possible.
03:57Dude, this is what it feels like, man.
04:00When that happens, you lose all reference to the rest of the airframe.
04:05It's very easy for a person to become disoriented and end up right side up inside of an upside down aircraft.
04:11Proprioceptive disorientation is a factor that impacts a person's ability to perform an underwater egress.
04:20It's our awareness of our body position in space.
04:25And under those circumstances, it's really difficult to figure out where you are relative to everything else and find the emergency exit.
04:31The average person doesn't know exactly where they are.
04:36Until they physically start the process of reorienting themselves.
04:41It's a bit like if you don't touch the edge of your bed and the headboard of your bed, you don't know where you are.
04:48If all you feel is blankets and sheets, it's the same thing in a helicopter.
04:54If you release your seatbelt, you don't know where you exit anymore.
04:58This disorientation is one of the most common causes of disorientation.
05:03This disorientation is one of the first and most critical issues trainees face.
05:07The technology they use was designed to guarantee disorientation once you hit the water.
05:12So we wanted to disorient the average human being 100% of the time.
05:19So as you were safely strapped into this machine, and you were elevated above the water, and we lowered you,
05:27we had to continue this speed of descent at the same rate.
05:31And once we were pulling you underwater and pulling you upside down, we had to make you lose your vision.
05:40When looking for the perfect pair of headphones, there's a lot to consider.
05:43You've got to come back, buddy.
05:44From how long they'll last.
05:45Lose your vision, make you lose your sensory input so that you didn't know anymore whether you're up, down, sideways.
05:52And now we start teaching you, how do I get out of here?
05:55There are several factors of disorientation happening simultaneously too, especially in a rollover situation.
06:01One, we have visual disorientation.
06:03We lose two-thirds of our visual acuity when we're submerged immediately.
06:07Color also starts to disappear as you descend through the water column.
06:11And red is the first color that disappears.
06:13It happens in 10 or 12 or 15 feet or so.
06:15And a lot of emergency exits, placards, handles are all marked red.
06:20So a person under those circumstances may be looking around and they're seeing purple or black or blue.
06:26The survival systems course retrains the brain to enact a series of simple processes when disoriented and under intense stress.
06:35The main things that we recommend that people do to help overcome that are, one, to stay in the seatbelt and buckled into your seat as long as possible.
06:42Because as long as you're buckled into the seat, you know where you are relative to everything else in the aircraft.
06:47And that's a good starting point for performing the egress.
06:49Secondarily, we recommend using an anatomical reference point to work our way towards an exit.
06:55I would tell people, if you're confused, touch yourself.
06:59And go, whoa, yeah, these are my legs.
07:02And if these are my legs, this is where my seatbelt is.
07:05This is my seat.
07:06If my seat is here, this is where my exit is.
07:08Ah.
07:09Once they jettison the exit, they need to make sure that they have an open exit to find their way out.
07:13So they'll grab the frame.
07:15Their other hand will come down and work the harness.
07:17They'll either spin it or they'll pull the latch and they'll release their harness.
07:21Once they've done that, now they can pull themselves out.
07:29So the disorientation can continue to affect somebody after they've performed the underwater egress.
07:34And we've seen this in the training environment where somebody will pull themselves clear of the exit and start swimming towards the bottom of the pool.
07:40Bohumier says he felt that disorientation when he crashed, too.
07:44During the disaster situation, after I crashed, I was completely dysfunctional as a human being.
07:52I couldn't think.
07:53I could not organize myself.
07:55The only way I could come to any type of structured reaction was to write down on my knee pad, I have crashed.
08:03I now have to survive.
08:05I have to make a plan.
08:07So I realized how training and being able to do emergency reaction
08:14to a threatening, life-threatening situation, how important it is that you've thought about it.
08:20The training he developed depends on the technology underlying it.
08:25Albert wanted to be absolutely certain that what he built would put trainees into the correct frame of mind
08:30and give them as close to a real experience as possible.
08:33He knew that lives depended on it.
08:37So it's a very nice, elegant, integrated system.
08:40The crane operator, the divers, the instructors, how they communicate
08:43and how they use the safety features that are built into the crane.
08:46Things like the redundant wire ropes, the weight of the crane, the emergency stop.
08:49They are all a nice, integrated system that allows all of the redundancies
08:54to make it easy for us to train somebody and not hurt them.
08:58They engineered a controllable system that safely emulates a dangerous environment.
09:05It also goes back to the classroom discussion with the instructor.
09:08Part of what we do, and I think we do it particularly well,
09:11is establishing rapport with the students in the classroom
09:14to have them come up to you and tell you, as the instructor,
09:17I don't know how to swim.
09:19Great, we can work with that.
09:21I know how to swim, but I am terrified of this.
09:24We can work with that.
09:25Just have faith in us and get in the simulator the first time.
09:27We will walk you through.
09:29And I always remember one of the Canadian military air crew who,
09:33he came and took a course and I was his instructor
09:36and he kept jumping out of the simulator.
09:38Every time we would call ditching and start lowering the machine,
09:40he would jump up.
09:42And at one point he got really angry and he left the site.
09:45He then came back the next day and said,
09:48listen, is there anything you can do to help me finish?
09:50And we did.
09:51We worked with him for almost a whole day
09:53until we could get him upside down on the water,
09:55he could stop his panic.
09:57Four years later, I was training in the pool
10:00and this dude came by and stood on the pool deck and said,
10:04hey, come over.
10:05And he said, Al, I just want to thank you, man.
10:07You saved my life.
10:09My kids have a father because of what you did.
10:11And he said, I was hateful.
10:13I was hateful to what you did to me in that machine.
10:16But he said, only during the final moment of death versus life,
10:22I understood why you guys designed your machine the way you did
10:26and also did the training the way you did.
10:29I had to crash to really understand it.
10:32Survival Systems has created a safe simulation
10:35and detailed system of protocols
10:37for one of the most dangerous things that can happen to you in a helicopter.
10:43Nothing they do here can prevent emergencies from taking place.
10:48But by training for dangerous situations,
10:51like ditching a helicopter,
10:53escaping an on-board fire,
10:55and other worst-case scenarios,
10:58they're providing helicopter pilots and passengers
11:00with tools that might just help them walk away from a disaster.
11:10Thanks, guys, for watching.
11:13Don't forget to subscribe.