MYTHBUSTERS 10th Anniversary Season

[Forbin]

There are semi-auto hunting shotguns aplenty. They usually only have 5-shot magazines, though. Even in NJ, most sport shops have a few AR-15s available, though you can only get 10-shot mags in this state. But most states still allow hi-capacity mags like 30-shot ones, since the useles Clinton ban lapsed. The AR-15 is the single most popular rifle purchased in the US, so there's no shortage of them.

The average handgun today is a 9mm semi-auto with a magazine of 12-15 rounds. Go to any sporting goods store and the handgun case will have more semi-autos than revolvers. It's simply what modern guns are.

 

[Christopher]

^Well, that's really disturbing. And it leaves me with no explanation for why the Mythbusters stuck with single-shot weapons. Maybe as part of the fictional presentation of the myth? In zombie movies/shows, are the characters more frequently armed with shotguns or semiautomatic pistols?

 

[ThunderAeroI]

My Guess: They didn't want to show how effectively you can mow down a group of people. Sort of would prove the point as to why no weapon like it need exist in the first place and I doubt Discovery wants to deal with the Gun Lobby.

 

[Trekker4747]

Well, yeah, in most movies characters use single-action guns. Still, even with semi-auto weapons I doubt Jamie would have faired much better. The only thing that would've really worked was going full auto and then having multiple weapons ready to go to. A full-auto magazine would be spent in seconds. So either more magazines would be needed with some serious skills in speed-loading/reloading or multiple weapons.

Giving Jamie all of the benefit, however, I don't think he would've faired better than Adam.

 

[Reverend]

It could also have been a safety issue. While those face masks are sufficient protection for a single shot to the head, if they starting spraying the crowd with a full auto paintball gun, it's possible one of them may have failed.

IMO the way they staged it was appropriate because you'd want to conserve your ammo and try to make ever bullet a headshot, so a full-auto isn't as useful as you might think. Even if you happen to be standing there with a minigun, you're going to run out of ammo pretty fast and you can bet the horde will gain more ground every time you reload.

Plus for course every time you hit a leg, you can turn a walker into a crawler, which creates a new type of threat. Worse, if you hit the throat and sever the head you've just created a snapper. While immobile, they can still bite and present a nasty threat if you need to walk through the bodies to escape.

 

[Trekker4747]

Yeah, full-auto would have been a waste but semi-auto would've been more useful. You aim, shoot, then move to the next target mostly by just moving the gun laterally a bit. (Since all the heads would be virtually on the same plane.) But with the single-action gun he had you have to shoot, stop and lower the gun to re-cock it, re-raise it and the re-aim from scratch.

Semi-auto could've made some difference, not likely enough to change things in the gun's favor but it'd net different results.

 

[Forbin]

Here's me about 20 years ago clearing the bowling pin table in 5.54 seconds with my semi-auto .45:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uqsn2U0GsIk
I'm only an average shooter - there are people who can do that in about 2 seconds. But I'd guess an average Joe could nail one zombie per second with a semi-auto, especially with a rifle.

 

[Reverend]

Zombies may be slow, but their heads are moving targets--more so than the living thanks to their tendency to shuffle--and unless you're either a hardened veteran or a sociopath, you're going to have trouble focusing. Plus they're coming at you from all sides you're you're constantly going to have to be looking around, picking the most immediate threats. It's a fair bet they won't all be lined up in a tight little firing arc for you. That all shaves seconds off your reaction time and the more of them there are and the longer it goes on for the more those seconds will mount up.

As for the heads all being on the same plane; yeah, in small groups at range you're going to get little variance, but the more there are and the closer they get, the further you'll have to shift your aim vertically.

 

[Forbin]

True enough - especially the legless ones that are dragging themselves toward your brains!

 

[Christopher]

Just to go off on a tangent here, I've been rewatching old episodes on Netflix, and it's driven home one thing that's always bugged me about the show. Namely, I've always hated the closing line of the title sequence: "They don't just tell the myths -- they put them to the test." What bugs me there is: to whom are they being contrasted? Is there anyone who "just tell the myths?" What would be the point? It's always struck me as a spurious comparison. I really, really hate that line.

I also keep wondering about the line saying that Adam and Jamie have "over thirty years of special-effects experience" between them. But that's what the narration said when the show began a decade ago. So shouldn't they cumulatively have over fifty years of FX experience now (i.e. an additional ten years apiece)? Granted, M5 Industries no longer produces special effects due to its full-time commitment to Mythbusters, but a lot of what MB does is applied special-effects knowledge, I'd say. At the very least, I think they did continue doing some FX work for a few years after the show started, so their cumulative FX experience probably adds up to at least forty person-years. (Although this is interesting, from their Wikipedia page: "The company now performs research and development work for various other companies, which include developing electric vehicles, various lifesaving devices, and other useful gadgetry." Good for them!)

 

[intrinsical]

Would a scatter shot or buck shot perform better?

 

[Forbin]

Would a scatter shot or buck shot perform better?

One would assume that's what's loaded in any shotgun. It pretty much guarantees a hit at close range, but you're still only going to hit one zombie. At the range Jamie was shooting I don't think buckshot would disperse more than a couple of inches.

 

[Forbin]

I also keep wondering about the line saying that Adam and Jamie have "over thirty years of special-effects experience" between them. But that's what the narration said when the show began a decade ago. So shouldn't they cumulatively have over fifty years of FX experience now

Ah, but the statement that they have OVER 30 years is still true!

 

[davejames]

This episode actually turned out to be a lot more interesting than I expected. It was cool seeing just how quickly someone would be overcome if a zombie hoard was approaching from all directions (unlike in the movies or Walking Dead where they conveniently take their turns coming towards you).

And yeah in a real situation Adam would have had to exert a lot more force with his axe to kill someone, but I'm not sure a gun would be much better, since they'd eventually run out of ammunition-- or jam up completely, which you hear about fairly often in news stories about shootings (and would be even more likely in the zombie apocalypse when people wouldn't have as much time to clean or care for their guns).

If it was me, I'd probably just take my chances with an aluminum bat.

And I especially loved the bit with the barn door. I knew there would be a lot of force produced from all those people, but I didn't expect the door to come crashing down as quickly as it did those first few times. Using the barrels to prevent people from being crushed was pretty inspired as well.

 

[publiusr]

That may all be useful in handling angry crowds.

A large entrance should have a huge cube of concrete poured directly in front, so as to put an object between door and cube to really brace it.

 

[Reverend]

Would a scatter shot or buck shot perform better?

One would assume that's what's loaded in any shotgun. It pretty much guarantees a hit at close range, but you're still only going to hit one zombie. At the range Jamie was shooting I don't think buckshot would disperse more than a couple of inches.

Well it's not enough to hit a zombie, you need to destroy the brain, so I think in anything other than point blank range, birdshot is going to be useless. Even buckshot may be of limited use as accuracy drops off rather sharply at the 10-15m mark IIRC.

Of course the whole point of a shotgun is that it's not meant to be accurate, so it's far from the optimal weapon for this kind of job. It's been a while since I've read WWZ, but if memory serves the author reasons that the best ranged weapon for this kind of thing is a small calibre semi-auto rifle. Even then, when faced with a large horde the idea is to form a firing line or square.

When faced with horde alone the best thing to do is not use a gun a all if at all possible. Mostly, stay quiet, stay hidden and the weapon of first recourse is always a blade....I really need to read that book again sometime. All this talk of killing zombies is making me all nostalgic!

 

[Forbin]

It also helps to have a friend in a wheelchair!

 

[davejames]

Well if I do ever have to fight zombies, I hope it's the ones from Walking Dead. You can smash in (or slice off) their heads with hardly any effort at all, it seems like.

 

[Trekker4747]

Watched the Thanksgiving special on the Science Channel. During the commercials there were ads for a Pumpkin Chuckin' show on tonight hosted by the Jr. Team. In the promo we see a family eating a T-Day dinner which is interrupted when a pumpkin crashes through the house and on the dining table. The Jr. Team comes in shocked exclaiming the pumpkin went a mile. Seems an odd commercial to make given the team's history with projectiles going unexpected distances into people's homes.

 

[Forbin]

"I eat ONE foot, and I'm branded a cannibal for life!"