Heads up! MYTHBUSTERS season premiere tonight at 9 Eastern!

[Christopher]

CmdrAJD wrote:

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...and the special underwear Adam made for Kari.

Ohh, that phrase would sound so much more enticing if I hadn't seen the actual clip...

[CmdrAJD]

Yes, I decided it was better to leave it in there without comment.

[Christopher]

Bubble wrap jump: I could guess right off the bat that the viral video was faked. The fact that the "jumper" had no neck protection of any kind was a dead giveaway; even if the bubble wrap had protected his body, he probably would've broken his neck. The fact that "Buster" (and I have a hard time thinking of the Simulaid by that name) landed headfirst despite being in bubble wrap just confirmed that. Also, the figure in the viral video doesn't bounce on landing, so the moment of landing must be where they did the cut between the dummy they dropped and the actor lying on the ground. It does look like there's a bit of an abrupt jump from the falling figure to the figure lying flat.

I wonder why they never used the term "bubble wrap" in the episode, instead using terms like "bubble pack" and "bubble packaging." Is Bubble Wrap a trademark?

I wonder why the different sizes of bubble wrap reacted differently to the fall of the human analog. This show doesn't go into as much detail about the science and the reasons behind things as it used to, and I miss that.

And that human analog test with the big falling pipe looked dangerous -- it bounced alarmingly toward Adam a few times. Why didn't he just move further back?

The revised design they came up with, with the crumple cones, was interesting, what with the physics and engineering involved. But it did turn out to be awfully unwieldy.

The part where Adam had himself wrapped up and dropped was pretty tense, with a real sense of danger. That may have been a bit manufactured by editing, since some of the same footage was used in the leadups to both the aborted drop and the successful one. But it did seem like a rough situation for Adam. And that close-up shot of his face at the moment he was dropped was gasp-inducing. That was pretty scary.


Ejector seat flip: I'm surprised there was no callback to the classic ejector-seat build Adam and Jamie did a few years ago. But I recall that one was rather low-powered -- air-propelled, I think -- so it wouldn't have worked here anyway. Even there, though, they put in a Lexan panel between the driver and passenger sides for safety.

I guess I don't have much else to say about this one. The myth simply didn't work, so they showed us how Hollywood fakes it. No real surprises -- except how dangerous the nitrogen ram rig was. Considering that this is a pretty standard item in the special-FX toolkit, I wouldn't have expected it to be so hazardous.

[Trekker4747]

"Bubble Wrap" is, indeed, a trademarked term. (Though you could probably make argument for it being a genericized trademark.)

The myth with it was actually a bit surprising in how very little protection it offered and how much it'd take to really offer any meaningful protection. I was also surprised Adam put himself on the line for this (and more so the insurance and such allowed it.) I think this is the most Adam's put himself "on the line" for testing the myth since the lawnchair balloon myth way back in the pilot episodes.

The ejector seat flip wasn't too surprising. It did give a chuckle on how torched the car was by the end of all of the testing.

[chardman]

"Bubble Wrap" is a registered trademark of Sealed Air Corporation LINK

[Mr. Adventure]

Actually remembered to record this tonight. Do you think Adam actually went into that final rig without them testing it first or did they just play that up for TV?

The final ejector flip using the nitrogen cannon felt rather flat to me. I mean yeah they did it but it didn't seem very satisfying.

[Christopher]

Mr. Adventure wrote:

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The final ejector flip using the nitrogen cannon felt rather flat to me. I mean yeah they did it but it didn't seem very satisfying.

Perhaps because the explosion had already happened earlier, so it was anticlimactic?

Anyway, I forgot to mention that one thing that surprised me about the bubble wrap(TM) thing was how heavy the wrap got in such large quantities. You don't expect something like that to reach a crushing level of weight.

[Redfern]

I was going to comment how could it be "crushing" since only a small percentage of the material rested above Adam, but then I realized since it encircled him, even the mass below would pull upon the material to the side and that above our intrepid MythBuster. It would be like having a lightweight 9but strong) board sitting across his chest, but the board has cables at both ends and suspended several feet below are two 150 pound weights. Even though the weights are below, they pull upon the board that is resting upon Mr. Savage.

Sincerely,

Bill

[Christopher]

^Yes, exactly. It would probably have eased the weight on his chest if they'd rested the wrapping on the ground, but they had to be able to reach under it to put the final layer on, and then they had to move it outside and lift it.

I'm tempted to propose a revisit; when they said "There's no way to use bubble packaging to survive a 35-foot drop," I wondered, "What about a parachute?" Though 35 feet probably isn't enough height to enable a parachute to fill and decelerate someone.

Now, maybe if the bubbles were filled with helium...

[Christopher]

"Duel Dilemma": It's hilarious and fun when they test old sayings like "Never bring a knife to a gunfight." It's just so wild to see them bringing a metaphor to life.

It's also interesting to contemplate how many skills Adam & Jamie have picked up over the years, given the show's insistence that the hosts perform the tests themselves rather than just letting the experts do it. Though I'm surprised that Jamie wasn't already a master knife thrower.

It's also odd that they just used a water balloon as the "knife" substitute, since its mass distribution and aerodynamics wouldn't be anything like the knife. Couldn't they have made a rubber knife or something? Still, it didn't seem to affect the results much. Adam got pretty good at shooting and dodging.

Now, one thing they did get wrong was using a modern gun. Movies to the contrary, the kind of guns they had in the Old West weren't accurate enough for a quick-draw duel to be very practical. A real "gunfight" at the time would've been more like an ongoing shootout. If it comes down to speed, a gunman would probably miss on the first shot (and possibly several subsequent shots) and the knife-wielder would have plenty of time to throw the knife or to close in and stab the other guy.

Which is kind of the gist of the second part of the myth, though they didn't put in in those terms, just in terms of charging someone who hadn't drawn his gun yet. It was pretty interesting how effective charging with a knife was, though it would be harder in the scenario I just mentioned where the gun is already drawn but just not accurate.

And I bet that charging at Adam and stabbing him with a knife repeatedly was satisfyingly cathartic for Jamie...

On the kendo myth that the first person to move will lose, I don't think I agree with their interpretation that it's simply about reaction time. I think it's more about strategy -- being the attacker puts you off balance or forces you to expose yourself, and that can put the defender at an advantage. So I didn't enjoy this part as much as the rest. Although it was kind of funny to see Adam and Jamie spend a day thwacking each other on the head, except that it was really rather painful and not very good for them. And I think it's awesome that Adam basically invented laser tag for swords.



"Fire Dragon": Oh, I love these historical-Asian-weapon myths! And this was really a fascinating one. I guess I can buy their premise that the historical drawings weren't accurate engineering plans, so probably got the details wrong. Still, I wonder if they jumped a bit too quickly to the more modern tailfins and such.

Tori's "quiver" rig for the second stage worked surprisingly well. Usually one expects them to have some false starts, but the arrows launched perfectly both in the bunker and in the desert. When that bloom of smaller smoke trails shot out from the big smoke trail, it was the biggest "Wow" moment I've had on this show in years.

That was a good idea of Tori's (I think it was his, or at least he was the one who said it onscreen) to compare the 2-stage rocket to the rocket arrow by itself to see if it was really an advance, an important part of testing its plausibility as a weapon. Though as they determined in the final test, it didn't have much in the way of accuracy or large-scale reliability. (And I bet the reliability would've been much lower if they'd used period rockets and fuses.) But it seems to me, as they briefly alluded to, that a lot of the impact of the fire dragon would've been as psychological warfare, a "shock and awe" tactic to frighten the enemy. For that matter, simply putting out the word that they had such a weapon could've been potent propaganda.


Now, my question is, what would happen if you brought a knife to a fire-dragon fight...?

[Forbin]

By a silly coincidence, I was watching an old episode of Hunter yesterday - Hunter chased a bad guy down a dock. At the end of the dock, the bad guy, with nowhere to go, turned and pulled a switchblade. Hunter already had his gun out so he rolled his eyes and said "Yeah THAT'll work."

[Forbin]

Incidentally, a couple of decades of reading about self-defense with firearms, particularly articles and books by Masaad Ayoob, I kinda knew where the knife bit would end up. A sufficiently motivated (adrenlin, drugs, plain crazy) assailant can cross a room in less than a second. If you don't have your gun out, your screwed.

[Christopher]

^Ahh, but how fast can you run away? That's often the best self-defense technique there is, at least if you don't have anyone else to protect.

[Redfern]

I particularly found Jamie's yelling to be amusing. He's usually so sedate. So to hear him primally bellow as he charged Adam was a hoot! Of course, thr question arises, how much of it was a conscious action to unnerve Adam compared to "reflex"?

But that "face plant" was so unlike Jamie! Usually, Adam wind up being the unwitting pratfall "artist". At first I wondered if he got snared by his cables, but the slow motion replay revealed no such entanglement. All I can say is, "OUCH!"

Sincerely,

Bill

[Forbin]

Christopher wrote:

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^Ahh, but how fast can you run away? That's often the best self-defense technique there is, at least if you don't have anyone else to protect.

Very good point!
But of course, you need somewhere to run away TO, which isn't always an option, if, say, the bad guy is between you and the door.