Superheroes Are Real: "There are only 400 smokejumpers in the entire United States, and maybe only half of those are actively jumping fires on a regular basis. Here’s how you get to be one of them: First, love fire enough to build your life around it. Spend five years as something literally called a “hotshot,” doing hard and hot work on the biggest fires all around the country, using your Pulaski (a sort of ax-hoe hybrid) and chainsaw to remove all possible surface fuel and dig down to mineral soil in an 18-inch line that encircles the fire. Or else get yourself hired on to a helitack crew and rappel out of a helicopter and into a wildfire. Once you’ve become acquainted with the hard work and 20-foot-high flames and you’re still somehow left wanting something even more impossibly intense, then go ahead and send in your application to become a smokejumper.
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