"Do not try what you're about to see at home." "We consult with experts." "We take every precaution." "And we have years of experience in dangerous situations." "NARRATOR:" "On this episode of "Mythbusters"..." "I am gobsmacked." "NARRATOR:" "Adam and Jamie re-stage a backyard bonfire of ice and thermite that still baffles the experts." "Next, Tory, Grant, and Kari pump up the volume to try to trigger a car full of rifles with a thumping car stereo." " GRANT:" "Go off!" " Fire off!" "NARRATOR:" "From sound waves to shock waves, the hits just keep on coming." "GRANT:" "You know how to wreck a party." "NARRATOR:" "And then there's the myth of the gun with a gas problem..." "TABOR:" "Oh!" "NARRATOR:" "...where an awkward grip could cost you your favorite finger." "JAMIE:" "That gun has a heck of a kick." "NARRATOR:" "It's not for the fainthearted, but there's always room for a chicken." "Who are the Mythbusters?" "Adam Savage..." "Today's forecast..." "70% chance of science!" "NARRATOR:" "...and Jamie Hyneman." "It's fun yet deadly." "[Laughs]" "NARRATOR:" "Between them, more than 30 years of special-effects experience." " Joining them..." " [Elevator bell dings] ...Tory Belleci..." "Aah!" " NARRATOR:" "Grant Imahara..." " Aaaaah!" "NARRATOR:" "And Kari Byron." "That was a rush!" "NARRATOR:" "They don't just tell the myths." "They put them to the test." "Myth number one is a tale of two extremes." "All right, dude, time to fire up that dial-up modem." "We're going back to the Internet for this story." "Oh, well, if it's from the Internet, it must be true." "You don't have to be sarcastic." "This one's about thermite, and I think you'll like it." " What is it?" " All right." "These two guys..." "They take a bucket of thermite, put it on a bunch of blocks of ice, and light it with a fuse." "And it doesn't just burn like we've seen thermite burn." "The whole friggin' thing explodes!" "Watch this clip, man." "I think it's actually pretty credible." "NARRATOR:" "Thermite itself shouldn't explode, though it burns at ferociously high temperatures." "And you'd figure that ice would just melt, right?" "But this clip seems to show that when ice meets fire, the least of your worries is getting your socks wet." "YOUNG MAN:" "Oh, sweet." "Well, they sure made our job easier." "They showed us everything we need to set this up." "Absolutely." "11 pounds of thermite, 10 one-pound blocks of ice." "And a fuse and a pack of matches to set the whole thing off." "I love it." "Let's head out to the bomb range and try it out." "Okay." "NARRATOR:" "Now, these two know their thermite." "Who could forget the racing stripe they burned through the roof of a car for the "Better to End with a Bang" myth?" "But now, before trying to replicate the ice explosion," "Jamie wants to warm up with a trial by fire." "JAMIE:" "Now I'd like to fine-tune what you might call the thermite delivery system, but we can also have some fun here." "So what we're building first is a kind of pagoda from bricks and steel plates." "The idea is to see how many plates the thermite burns through once it's ignited." "NARRATOR:" "Thermite's a mix of fine metallic powders, but the ideal ratio is debatable." "Of course, we want the best burn for our buck, so this penetration test should be a great way to try out Jamie's special blend." "From here, it's all quite simple." "Jamie sets two matchbooks in the bucket, hooked up to a fuse." "Okay, this is thermite penetration test in 3, 2, 1..." "NARRATOR:" "If all goes well, we'll see a cascade of fire burning through a bunch of steel plates, and the thermal-imaging camera should enhance the experience." "ADAM:" "I've always wanted to see this thing in action just like this." "As far as I know, it's never been done before." "I mean, you see what happens after the fact, but we're gonna see the whole thing all at once." "NARRATOR:" "So this little pre-myth appetizer could go anywhere." "ADAM:" "There we go." " JAMIE: 1, 2, 3." " ADAM:" "Nice!" " Ohh." " [Laughs]" "JAMIE:" "Four plates." "Right, right." "The top one and three down." " That was pretty cool." " It was." "NARRATOR:" ""Cool" isn't the word." "At 4,000 degrees Fahrenheit, the burn is too bright to view at close quarters." "It's a major meltdown." "We could hang these up in a gallery." "We'll make like a million dollars!" "NARRATOR:" "So Jamie's special thermite blend is hot to trot." "Now to see if 11 pounds of it is enough to actually explode 10 blocks of solid water." "ADAM:" "Well, look, let's clean this up, get some ice blocks out here, and replicate that video." "That's what we're here for." "All right." "So, this myth comes from a viewer." "It's called "Woofer Weaponry."" "Try saying that three times fast." "Okay, besides being a tongue twister, what are we talking about here?" "This is that a subwoofer can actually set off a weapon." "GRANT:" "But not just any weapon." "A very specific type of combat rifle called an SKS." "Cool!" "Tell me more." "The story is that these Russian gangsters are driving around with these weapons in the back of their car." "Let's face it." "They're gangsters." "That's what you do." "And their car has this crazy booming stereo system." "They pull up next to these girls, and they try to impress them, so they crank up the volume." "The stereo system's so loud, the guns begin to vibrate, and suddenly... bang, bang, bang... all the guns go off." "Gunfire not being the best pickup line," "I'm assuming it scared off the girls." "Talk about embarrassing." "Yeah." "Awkward!" "NARRATOR:" "This viewer myth is simple and terrifying." "If and when the bass gets the car bouncing, the vibration is supposed to set off the SKS rifles." "And they could potentially keep firing bullets till the clips run out." "Well, I guess we need to get a car, install a super-loud stereo system, crank it all the way up, throw some of these rifles in the back, and stand back." "Well, if that doesn't work, there are these cars that are used for these sound-offs." "They're not really practical." "A gangster might not have one of these." "They're basically giant speakers on wheels." "Okay, but first up, I think we need to talk to an expert." "I mean, we need to find out more about this SKS rifle." "I mean, the myth is so specific." "It's really strange." "Definitely." "NARRATOR:" "So it's "get acquainted" time with the rifles renowned for their fickle firing habits." "GRANT:" "Any of you ever shot an SKS before?" " KARI:" "Nope." " TORY:" "Nope." "But I'm looking forward to it." "NARRATOR:" "Gunsmith Ben Murray knows exactly why these weapons occasionally shoot themselves." "So, what is it about the SKS rifle in particular that makes it so key to this myth?" "It has a free-floating firing pin, as opposed to a spring-loaded firing pin." "And I can show you that." "I can disassemble it right quick." "This is the bolt assembly that houses the firing pin, and, as you can see, it moves forward and backwards." "TORY:" "So that just slides around in there." "That's correct." "So if there is no spring and that pin does vibrate enough, could it potentially set a round off?" "I suppose it could." "So there might be some truth to this myth." "Maybe." "NARRATOR:" "In most semiautomatic rifles, the spring simply holds the firing pin at the rear of the housing until the hammer strikes it, driving the pin onto the primer and firing the bullet." "But the SKS, with no spring, has a firing pin that floats free and could bounce around, potentially causing an accidental discharge." "There's plenty of verified incidents to support the claim." "But we want to know if something as simple as sound waves could really dislodge those springless pins." "So, that kind of looks like a problem." "Yes, there's quite a few in our country that have this free-floating-style firing pin." "In fact, that's why we came up with a spring-loaded firing pin to replace it." "NARRATOR:" "So Ben's fixed the problem, but to properly test the myth, we're using guns without the springs." "Now, before we start testing to see whether or not subwoofers will set one of these off without using the trigger, we need to make sure ours work." "So that's all we're doing today." "We're just shooting guns." "This day can't suck." "NARRATOR:" "Tory and Grant figure five guns should make a mythical carful." "So, on with the testing." "And when the bullets run out, they can justify their jubilation." "Now, remember when I said we're not shooting these guns just for our own enjoyment, but it's actual scientific research?" "Well, it turns out it's true." "I mean, we have several of these guns, but the gun I was using jammed twice during the test." "Ready for the next?" "I've had a jam." "So, that means we can't use that gun for when we do the experiment with the subwoofer, because if it does jam during our subwoofer test, it makes it an invalid test." "See?" "We're not just out here shooting guns for the fun of it." "This is serious scientific experimentation!" "NARRATOR:" "With six guns tested and five selected it's time to fit a car we call the Great White with a thumping sound system." "KARI:" "So, what size stereo you think we can get in this thing?" "I don't know, but we want this thing to vibrate a lot." "Well, we've got no shortage of space." "You could probably fit like four bodies" " in the back of this trunk." " GRANT:" "Yeah." "NARRATOR:" "Naturally, they source the best and the bassiest system in town." "[Tires screech]" "TORY:" "I'm a little embarrassed about this car." "I think they're gonna laugh at us." "GRANT:" "Dude, I'm laughing at us." "TORY:" "Oh!" " That is sick!" " GRANT:" "Wow." "Hey, Kenny, Paul." "How are you guys?" "Hey." "Welcome to Auto Sound." "The myth that we're working on involves a guy with a really big car stereo and a special type of gun in the backseat called an SKS." "Car stereo was so loud that when he turned it up, it set the gun off." "You think it could happen?" "I've seen everything from nosebleeds to cracked windshields, so it's possible." "NARRATOR:" "Not quite your standard sales pitch, but those cracked windshields sound promising." "TORY:" "Ooh!" "What is that?" "SCHLEIPFER:" "This is a 12-inch square driver from MTX." "It's the 8500 series." "It's gonna handle about 750 watts rms, and it's square because it has more surface area, which means it's naturally gonna have more output." "More speaker, more output." "And I think it's gonna do what you guys need it to do for your application." "You got to see our car first, and then you can make that call." " Okay." " [Laughter]" "NARRATOR:" "One thing's for certain..." "A stereo like this way outclasses the car they drove up in." "TORY:" "This is perfect!" "[Laughter, stereo system blasting]" "NARRATOR:" "Not for the first time the Mythbusters are playing with fire." "ADAM:" "There we go." " JAMIE: 1, 2, 3." " ADAM:" "Nice!" "NARRATOR:" "They're set to test a dubious and dangerous Internet video that seems to show exploding ice." "JAMIE:" "The clip shows what is purportedly 11 pounds of thermite in a metal bucket, sitting on top of 10 blocks of ice." "They light the thermite, it does what we expect thermite to do, but then all of a sudden..." "poof... out it goes in a big explosion, flinging bits of metal everywhere." "Now, we're gonna do exactly what they did and see if we get the same result." "NARRATOR:" "It's hard to believe that mixing fire and ice could ever end in a boom." "Retired FBI man Frank Doyle thinks that concealed gunpowder might be the cause of the conflagration." "Well, I'm a little skeptical." "And I think they've done something a little iffy." "All right." "Well, there's only one way to find out." "NARRATOR:" "Frank sets the fuse." "Adam sets the scene." "Let's get behind the barrier and replicate a couple of Internet pyromaniacs." "NARRATOR:" "And Jamie lights the wick." "JAMIE:" "This is thermite and ice." "In 3, 2, 1..." "We're good." "NARRATOR:" "Needless to say, never try this yourself." "We've got all the safety gear, the expertise, and the blast screen." "ADAM:" "This is killing me." "Don't tell me." "What the heck?" "NARRATOR:" "This is close to a worst-case scenario, when the explosion you're expecting to happen doesn't." "ADAM:" "I think it's a dud." "NARRATOR:" "So Jamie slips into something less comfortable, but way more fireproof." "He and Frank fashion a new fuse." "Then Jamie takes a furtive walk, knowing the old fuse could catch at any time." "ADAM:" "So, Jamie's put on the full fire suit to protect himself to replace another fuse and matches, because, well, we don't know." "He could touch that bucket, and it could all go off." "So it's a little bit touch and go right now." "NARRATOR:" "Jamie wastes no time setting the new spark." "ADAM:" "He's lit it." "NARRATOR:" "Let's hope it stays lit." "This experiment should confirm or bust the myth of exploding ice." "ADAM:" "Well, looks like the match is going off." " There it goes." " There we go." "I'd say that was an explosion." "[Laughing] I'm pretty sure that qualifies." "NARRATOR:" "And Adam's found the source of that thunk that shook the blast screen." "[Laughs]" "In the popular parlance, we call this piece of ice a "hunter-killer"" "because it went all the way from ground zero to our blast chamber!" "Luckily, it is ice-proof." "NARRATOR:" "Some chunks of ice flew as far as 150 feet." "The brick pallet is a smoldering ruin, and there's no trace at all of the galvanized steel bucket." "ADAM: [Laughing] Look at that." "That tells the whole story right there." "I am a believer!" "NARRATOR:" "But what actually made the ice go boom?" "The truth is, no one really knows." "JAMIE:" "Experts I've talked to are speculating that heat from the burning thermite is decomposing the water into hydrogen and oxygen, which, in the presence of a source of ignition, namely hot thermite, is exploding." "Now, I sort of have a problem with that, because that requires that a whole bunch of hydrogen and oxygen be instantaneously created, and I don't know that that's possible." "There is another explanation..." "I'm just speculating... and that is that something in this reaction is aerosolizing all the thermite." "You know, the steam or something is throwing all this powder up into a cloud of thermite, and that's exploding." "We don't know." "It's a mystery." "But one way or another, that was a heck of a bang." "NARRATOR:" "Here's their video, and here's ours." "So it's myth confirmed." "No black powder, no hidden fireworks." "Just fire and ice." "They've got the guns, the car, and a sound system that could shake loose your fillings." " All right." "You ready?" " Yes." " KARI:" "Think so." " Ohh!" "GRANT:" "Oh, yeah!" "So unassuming, and then bang!" "You filled up the whole trunk!" "That's bass, baby!" "[Laughs]" "Oh, my eardrums!" "Look at the rust coming off the top of the roof!" "Oh, my God!" "We're gonna tear this car apart." "NARRATOR:" "But first, they want to spiff it up with a high-speed, pimped-out paint job." "TORY:" "There's gonna be all these hot-rod enthusiasts going," ""That's not how you paint flames on cars!" "What are you doing?" "!"" "You know what I got to say to that?" "So what?" "NARRATOR:" "Just like a tattoo, it's more about the bad-boy attitude than the art until you get inside." "You know, some people have a hula girl or a Chihuahua bobblehead on their dashboard." "We have us." "NARRATOR:" "Yeah, not quite the gangster image, but they should be good indicators of the turbulence caused by that thumping bass." "[Up-tempo music plays]" "Pimped, prepped, and pumped with a trunk full of high-grade hardware, the Shark rolls up for its first-ever rifle recital." "If all goes to plan, there won't be an encore." "KARI:" "Tory and Grant were kind enough to test all of the SKS rifles for us and make sure that they all work properly." "[Gunshots]" "Now we're at the Alameda County sheriff's bomb range." "We love this place because it's a wide-open space where we don't have neighbors to complain about the noise and we can shoot all the guns we want." "All right, so we've amassed our gangster arsenal." "We have our blanks, but, as we know, we need to treat this like live ammunition." "Let's load up our guns and get 'em in that vehicle." "Sounds good to me." "NARRATOR:" "So the rifles get spread from the backseat to the front, some close up to the speakers and others at a distance." "This is gonna serve as mission control for our experiment." "We have a portable music player with all our test tones preloaded." "We've also got a frequency generator and an oscilloscope so we can dial in any specific frequencies we want to test." "Inside the car, there's a microphone that's connected to the spectrum analyzer and dB SPL meter." "And that will tell us not only the frequency but also how loud it is." "And finally, and perhaps most importantly, there's a live video feed to tell us if any of the guns have gone off as a result of our sound." "NARRATOR:" "The sound won't be music as we know it, but a series of tones designed to test and push the acoustic limits of the system and maybe fire those guns." "All right." "This is gonna be a low-frequency sweep starting at 20 hertz at 95 dB SPL." " Ready?" " Oh, yeah." "Here we go." "[Whirring]" "NARRATOR:" "To keep it simple, hertz indicates the pitch of a note, and decibels measure the volume." "95 decibels is roughly as loud as a motorcycle revving its engine." "So far, not one round has fired off." "GRANT:" "We're not all the way through the sweep yet." "[Frequencies alternating]" "NARRATOR:" "But the signs aren't good." "The bobbleheads are barely bobbling, so we'll change tack." "All right, next I got a tone that alternates... wee, woo, wee, woo." "Yeah, we want to see that pin fire off one of these bullets." " All right, you guys ready?" " KARI:" "Ready." "Crank it up, Grant." "NARRATOR:" "If this works, they can expect to hear multiple gunshots at any moment." "Is that it?" "You see anything?" "[Pulsating tone]" "Okay." "Come on." "Let's make that car vibrate." "Not one round has gone off yet." "KARI:" "Not one wiggle." "TORY:" "I mean, the gun's not even shaking." "Okay, so that didn't work." "What would be the next step?" " Louder." " TORY:" "Louder." "I like that." "Let's go louder." "NARRATOR:" "It's time to raise the stakes." "Grant cranks the decibels up to an ear-shattering 130." "That's close to the level of a jet engine as heard from just 100 feet away." "GRANT:" "There you go." " Whoa!" " That's what I'm talking about." "Look at those speakers." "Uh-uh-uh-uh!" "Look, the gun is actually vibrating." "GRANT:" "Well, no, no." "It's the camera that's vibrating." " Whoa!" " Oh!" "There's dust and everything getting knocked all around!" "It's crazy!" "Whoa!" "Oh, my God." "The camera cut out!" " We lost image." " Oh, no!" "NARRATOR:" "Seems like everything's busted but the guns." "Still, Grant sees a little room to maneuver." "For all these tests, the guns have been horizontal, on the various parts of the car." "Now what we're gonna do is change their orientation, so instead of being horizontal, they'll be vertical, and that way, we hope that the pins will be in a better position to set off these blanks and, hopefully, get a result." "NARRATOR:" "Grant's enlisting the force of gravity to help dislodge those pins." "It might not help, but it sure won't hurt." "[Vibrating]" "TORY:" "You know, if this doesn't do it, I don't know what will." "Well, it's definitely working." "You can see that speaker just vibrating." "TORY:" "Wow, look at that gun." "The gun looks..." "The gun's shaking!" "Yeah, I think it..." "Heck, yeah!" "[Laughs]" "Come on." "Go off!" "Fire off!" "Shoot that gun." "There's a lot happening in there." "Gosh!" "TORY:" "Still not firing." "NARRATOR:" "But once again, none of the SKS shooters go bang." "Mind you, there was some collateral damage." "TORY:" "And this stereo system was crazy." "I mean, it was vibrating the entire car, so much that it actually bust the gas line." "It's now leaking fuel." "So this car is done." "But that doesn't mean the myth is done." "It just means we got to find out if this is even possible." "NARRATOR:" "Now to investigate one more way you can hurt yourself with a handgun." "[Gunshot]" "What you got there?" "[Chuckles] This?" "This is a pretty grisly depiction of the dangers of mishandling a firearm." "You mean like when you shoot yourself?" "No." "Merely by having a poor grip." "Check this out." "That's nasty." "NARRATOR:" "The severed thumb is so nasty, we can't show it on TV." "It's a graphic myth, so here's the tale in graphic form." "This beast of a sidearm is a hunting pistol designed to bring down big game, and some of the gas that propels the bullet also escapes between the back of the barrel and the front of the cylinder." "And therein lies the myth." "If you have a digit in the wrong place at the right time, the force of the blast could blow your thumb clean off." "I'm having a hard time believing that this could happen just from misfingering a gun." "Well, that is what we have to figure out." "Okay." "NARRATOR:" "Out on the range, gunsmith Frank Tabor has brought along the cannon in question." "So, Frank, according to the myth, the guy lost his thumb 'cause he held it like this." "Do you see any immediate problems with that?" "Oh, yeah." "You have that gap between the cylinder and barrel." "When you've got a 2,300-foot-per-second cartridge, there's a lot of gases, and it comes out that just like a cutting torch." "So you think there could be some real damage." "Oh, yes." "NARRATOR:" "Adam sets Jamie a tasty target to test out the weapon on high-speed video." "Frank slips one in the chamber, and Dirty Jamie lines up a clean shot." "[Laughs]" "TABOR:" "Wow." "That was something!" "ADAM:" "That takes care of your watermelon problem." "[Gunshot]" "NARRATOR:" "It's another notch on Jamie's belt of dead fruit and vegetables, but he did get a feel for the firearm." "JAMIE:" "That gun has a heck of a kick." "Now, I have to be honest, I was a little afraid of it at first, thinking that it was gonna, like, hit me in the head afterwards." "So, I can kind of see how somebody might want to grab it in an unusual way to make sure they had ahold of it." "NARRATOR:" "Now it's Adam's turn to take a shot, feel the force, and maybe make a prediction." "ADAM:" "It's not that I'm lactose-intolerant, but if milk gets in my way, I'm gonna take care of the problem." "Cocking." "NARRATOR:" "That's one expiration date that was way off the mark." "ADAM:" "The high-speed camera remains one of my favorite tools on the show." "If you look really closely at the close-up of the gun firing, you can clearly see gases shooting out of the space between the cylinder and the barrel." "This is where we'll be looking for damaging amounts of energy." "NARRATOR:" "If the story behind the gruesome photo is true, the man's left thumb went south due to a clumsy grip across the cylinder." "But after handling the hardware," "Adam's best bet is a thumbs-down." "ADAM:" "While it's an impressive amount of gas you can see coming out of the gun on the high speed," "I still don't feel like it's gonna sever a finger." "NARRATOR:" "Well, they've got the gun, the bullets, and the venue." "All they need now is a disposable digit." "All efforts to fire five rifles via the vibrations from an upscale car stereo have failed to end in a single gunshot." "You know, if this doesn't do it, I don't know what will." "NARRATOR:" "So the next-to-last resort is a visit to Meyer Sound." "These audio experts already helped us prove that sound alone can't make you lose your bowel control just be like "Pbht!" All over myself." "NARRATOR:" "And that the human voice can break glass." "[Screeching]" "Yay!" "I did it!" "GRANT:" "But today, we've brought our rifles to them to see if they can help us figure out a sweet spot, a special frequency, that will cause the SKS rifle to discharge." "SKS." "NARRATOR:" "Here to help is Roger Schwenke, and once he knows what the myth entails..." "Well, if it's the firing pin that's unique about this gun, then let's isolate that and see what happens to it." " Okay." " Great." "NARRATOR:" "So Tory strips out the pin, and Roger opens the test chamber." "GRANT:" "So, resonant frequency is the frequency at which an object will begin to vibrate in excess of the energy that you put into it." "For example, with our" ""trying to break a wineglass with your voice" experiment." "At many different frequencies, a wineglass vibrates, but at one specific frequency, it begins to vibrate a lot and eventually shatters." "That is what we're looking for in our firing pin, and if we find that, then there's a chance this gun just might go off." "Do it." "Do it now." "NARRATOR:" "So Roger fills the chamber with pink noise." "That's a whole range of different frequencies blasted out together." "TORY:" "It's like an earthquake." "NARRATOR:" "And the volume's cranked way up to 150 decibels." "KARI:" "And you see the speaker moving, and it looks like it's vibrating, but the pin doesn't look like it's separate." "Yeah, it looks like the whole mechanism's moving, but the pin is not going up and down." "Yeah." "Still a little hard to tell." "What is the accelerometer reading?" "It's responding about the same at all frequencies." "What does that mean for us?" "Well, it's not resonating." "It's moving, but it's not resonating at any one particular frequency." "NARRATOR:" "The pin hasn't moved inside the housing." "That's good news for the Russian mob and a kick in the pants for the myth." "But maybe testing the pin alone wasn't the best plan." "So..." "TORY:" "I put the gun back together." "We've loaded it with the blank." "I have the gun pointing nose down with the safety off." "That way, it gives us the best possible chance for this gun to go off accidentally." "Okay, hit it, Roger." "Bring on the noise." "That is menacing." "TORY:" "And this is with the safety off, so it's giving it the best possible chance." "But still, it's not firing." "GRANT:" "Yeah, if this happens at all, it should happen fairly quickly, and it's not happening." "NARRATOR:" "So Roger pulls the plug." "The resonant frequency theory fails to fire." "But if you think it's over, if you truly believe we'll end this myth with a shameful shudder, you so don't know this show." "This myth is all about escaping gases, some of which propel the bullet out of the barrel." "But some that escape right here, from this tiny little space between the cylinder and the barrel..." "It's those that could cut your finger off, man!" "NARRATOR:" "Or so the story goes." "Despite the high-speed gas shots and a shocking photo of a severed thumb," "Adam thinks this myth is, well, a myth." "But Jamie begs to differ." "JAMIE:" "When I first heard about this story," "I wasn't so sure that a revolver would be capable of blowing your thumb off through the side like that." "But having reviewed the high-speed footage," "I kind of think it will." "NARRATOR:" "The gun is firmly secured in a clamp that's screwed down tight to the benchtop." "Now all they need is a stunt thumb." "ADAM: [Laughs]" "If you think these look gruesome, you don't know the half of it." "But the best way to tell you how these are made is to show you how they were made." "I remember it like it was yesterday." "NARRATOR:" "Faced with the task of replicating that miracle of evolution, the human hand, the Mythbusters' first thoughts naturally turned to dead chickens." "ADAM:" "I touched this chicken before I touched anything else." "You want to take the meat home?" "NARRATOR:" "Adam's stripped a whole cooked bird... not for the meat, but for the bones." "He traces a template over his left hand and even marks the three joints in each finger." "ADAM:" "I managed to get almost all the bones I need out of a single rotisserie chicken." "NARRATOR:" "Jamie's building his own version of a stunt hand, also made entirely from poultry pieces." "And while Adam sutures a carefully crafted left thumb," "Dr. Hynenstein shows he's lost all sense of proportion." "JAMIE:" "It's actually the left hand." "You know, that's the thumb and the four fingers, and I've picked them so that they're the correct lengths and everything." "Shall we have a show of hands?" "JAMIE: [Laughs]" "Oh, no." "High five!" "[Both laugh]" "NARRATOR:" "As the dominant hand," "Jamie's massive mitt of chicken meat gets to take the first shot." "It's wired securely onto the gun butt, with care taken to place the thumb in precisely the right..." "or, rather, the wrong position." " I love it." " All right, let's do it." "NARRATOR:" "Frank loads the gun and cocks it." "With the trigger tied to a string, all Jamie has to do is [Chuckles] pull it." "The gun is hot." "You're good to go." ""Handgun Horror" in 3, 2, 1!" "[Gunshot]" " [Chuckles]" " Ah." "No decapitation." "Definitely damage, but, yeah, it's still there." "I think that your drumstick bone is way too robust for a human hand." "What I see on the chicken hand and what I see on the high speed is that the gases are coming out, and they're definitely having an effect." "I have no doubt you'd be burned by this, but I don't see any decapitation." "NARRATOR:" "Lucky Jamie's skin is thicker than the chicken's." "He's even prepared to offer some... sage advice." "The major amount of gas is right out through the middle there." "Okay." "So if you want to be sure it cuts it off," " that's where to put it." " All right." "Here we go!" "Adam's anatomically accurate avian appendage in 3, 2, 1!" "[Gunshot]" "NARRATOR:" "To the naked eye, this looks like real damage." "Now for the expert analysis." "Oh!" "Ohh!" "Ohh!" "Ohh!" "NARRATOR:" "O-kay!" "ADAM:" "Wow!" "NARRATOR:" "What Adam means to say is, they've shredded one chicken finger and shattered another." "ADAM:" "This one is torn to shreds." "And what about that one?" "That is cut almost clean through." "Wow!" "NARRATOR:" "There's no doubt about it." "Adam's carefully constructed chicken hand had the right-sized bones to simulate human fingers." "They even had three joints, right where they're meant to be." "ADAM:" "That is totally clear." "Those gases have cut through that finger absolutely." "That is one of the more gruesome things we've ever filmed on high speed." "Well, it doesn't get any more definitive than that." "Nope." "It's confirmed." "Totally confirmed." "JAMIE:" "Well, let that be a lesson to you." "If you've got to have a handgun, make sure you know how to use it." "ADAM:" "I can't believe you can eat buffalo wings so quickly after that." "What do you mean?" "I'm gonna cook up Frankenhand for dinner." "ADAM: [Laughs]" "[Chickens clucking]" "NARRATOR:" "After failing to trigger these unstable Russian rifles with a red-hot car stereo..." "Not one round has gone off yet." "NARRATOR:" "...Kari, Tory, and Grant take one last shot at this myth with a truck that's tailor-made to pump up the volume." "Now I know this car didn't do what we needed, but I think I have some renewed confidence in our back-up plan." "TORY:" "Oh, my God!" "That is loud out here!" "How's it inside?" " Ridiculous." " What?" "!" "NARRATOR:" "So far, they've pushed the decibels way up to 150, but this car peaks at 160." "That's actually louder than the gunshots they hope to hear." "GRANT:" "Now, handling the mid-bass frequencies, we've got four 10-inch Thunder8500 subwoofers in a custom fiberglass enclosure." "But that's not all, because the real meat are these two 22-inch JackHammer subwoofers." "Each subwoofer has two amplifiers, for a total of 17,200 watts." "If you're talking about sound-pressure level in a car, this is it." "NARRATOR:" "Once again, the guns are armed with blank cartridges and spread around the car." "TORY:" "We're ready to go." "The guns are loaded." "The safeties are off to give us the best possible chance for this to work." "NARRATOR:" "But Kari seems a little gun-shy." "KARI:" "I'm having some serious doubts that something even as powerful as the SPL car's gonna do it." "But I would really, really like to be proven wrong here." "NARRATOR:" "The sound system's been preloaded with three different test tracks." "The first is a bass sweep, and, remember, this is 30 decibels higher than anything they tried in the Great White." "GRANT:" "Starting the sweep." "[Vibrating]" "Wow." "That thing is shaking like nuts." "Oh, my God." "NARRATOR:" "But the one sound they're not hearing is gunfire." "Time to try the alternating tones." " [Frequency alternates]" " Whoa." " That's it." " [Frequency alternating]" "Look what it's doing to the camera." "Things are really moving, but no discharge yet." "TORY:" "No." "159.5?" "!" "[Laughing] Yeah!" "And this is way crazier than a gangster vehicle would have." "There's no way a person could be sitting in there and listening comfortably." "Absolutely." "NARRATOR:" "The last track is loosely called "Music."" "It's unlikely to top the charts, but it's seriously loud." "Still no gunshots." "But you can see the speakers moving like crazy, and all the dust in the car is blowing, as if it's just air." "I hope that's dust." "That's not smoke, is it?" "TORY:" "It looks like smoke." "Do you think..." "No, we would have heard a gunshot." " You think?" " I don't know." "You know what?" "It's starting to smoke." "Is that normal?" "NARRATOR:" "No, it's not." "This is the last and loudest of the tests, and everyone's hoping a gun's gone off." "KARI:" "So, we thought maybe..." "Maybe there's a possibility we didn't hear the discharge, maybe a gun went off, and it's just filling the car with smoke." "GRANT:" "Oh." "TORY:" "No, that smells like electrical smoke." "That doesn't smell like gunfire." "NARRATOR:" "In fact, the smoke came from quickly heated resin in the woofers." "It normally cures in the first few months, but we've pushed a brand-new speaker way too hard." "The system's fine, but the myth has run its course." "All that remains is to check the weapons." "TORY:" "All right, this is the last gun." "Didn't discharge." "GRANT:" "This is why we can never have anything nice." "I'm calling this one busted." "Yeah, I mean, we threw a massive amount of sound at it, and the gun still didn't go off." " Busted." " Yeah, busted." "Dang, I wanted this one to work!" "Ah, it's beautiful!" "[Chain saw revs]" "NARRATOR:" "They're using 10 times the ice and 10 times the thermite." "JAMIE:" "'Cause this thing right here is a little bit more macho going on here," "I'm not gonna use a torch to ignite it." "I'm gonna use these things, which are fuse igniters, and they work kind of like so." "And then I'm gonna leave." "Quickly." "All right, Jamie." "We are all in place in the bunker." "You may fire when ready, sir." "Supersized thermite in 3, 2, 1..." "[Scratch]" "NARRATOR:" "Now, here's the thing about thermite." "Being volatile means it's also unpredictable." "And this tub full of red powder is taking its own sweet time." "Thermite's kind of, uh..." "I hate thermite." "NARRATOR:" "But when it works..." "ADAM:" "Whoa!" "Whoa!" "Whoa!" "Whoa!" "NARRATOR:" "...there's nothing like it." "ADAM:" "Wow!" "[Laughs]" "I'm glad we didn't approach that." "ADAM:" "Wow!" "There is nothing left." "JAMIE:" "No." "That was a thunk." "ADAM:" "Wow!" "It's like somebody blew up an igloo." "ADAM:" "Look at this debris field." "Explosives that move really quickly tend to rip and tear things." "Explosives that move slowly move things." "And that's what this did." "It moved slowly but very powerfully, and it just spread all this ice all over the field here." "ADAM:" "I think we're working on a pretty good formula here." "You see something crazy on the Internet and want to know if it's true." "So you send it to us, we try it out and find out, yes, it's true!" "This is what we do on "Mythbusters."" "We blow it up so you don't have to." "NARRATOR:" "Tory, Grant, and Kari have busted the myth that vibrations from a souped-up car stereo triggered a bunch of dodgy rifles." "But Tory's found a related myth that's easy to test and guaranteed to end with a bang." "Well, we've come a long way accidentally setting off one of these SKS rifles, but we're not done yet." "There's one other thing I want to try." "What's that?" "Apparently, during this turf war, a bomb goes off in a gangster's house and wipes out his entire gang." "Now, after the explosion, the police go through the debris and find these SKS rifles with empty shells next to them." "However, nobody in the neighborhood heard gunshots before or after the explosion." "So the idea is that the shock wave set off the weapons." "Apparently so." "NARRATOR:" "The guys know that a springless SKS could be seen as an accident waiting to happen." "But where sound waves failed to set the firing pin aquiver, a high-explosive shock wave might do the trick." "To find out, they build a mock living room and carefully place four loaded rifles just where you'd expect to find them." "Now we're going to deliver a special package of C-4 to this scene." "We're gonna be safely down in the bunker when it goes off, and after a big explosion, we're gonna see if the percussive force from a bomb can actually set off any of our firearms." "Either way, we're getting destruction." "We're all pretty happy about that." "Special delivery for Mr. Buster." "NARRATOR:" "If sound waves can set a speaker cone dancing like this, just imagine the percussive force of a high-explosive shock wave." "TORY:" "You know the thing that's bumming me out about this?" "Is we're probably gonna damage these guns." "But I guess if you want to make omelets, you got to break a few eggs." "NARRATOR:" "Let's hope they finally break something." "J. D. Saunters back to the bunker as our guys weigh the odds." "TORY:" "All right, quick predictions." "Okay, I think if any of the guns are gonna go off, it's the one in Buster's hand 'cause I've got his finger on the trigger." "I don't think that any of the guns are gonna go off." "I don't think that this is even enough energy to make them go off." "All right, this is explosion setting off SKS rifles." "All right, Kari." "Take it away." "In 3, 2, 1!" "Whoo!" "GRANT:" "Nice!" "KARI:" "Nice one, J. D." "TORY:" "That never gets old." "NARRATOR:" "It's the blast we were begging for, but did it trigger even one of the guns?" "GRANT:" "Wow." "You know how to wreck a party." "TORY:" "Now, the easy part..." "finding the guns." "KARI:" "Look, there's a hole right where the package was." " All right, should we check 'em?" " Yeah." "TORY:" "That one didn't go off." "Let's check Buster." "All right." "Show us what you got." " Okay." " TORY:" "Look at that one." "The safety actually went back on." "KARI:" "Nope." "Didn't fire off." "All right." "That was the one that was in his hands with the finger on the trigger." "NARRATOR:" "Two guns down, and two to go." " Ohh!" " Ohh!" "The round went off!" "Oh, my God!" "Yay!" "NARRATOR:" "It's no surprise that a C-4 shock wave has the edge on one of the world's best and loudest car sound systems." "But at least we've got a result." "GRANT:" "Last one." " Didn't go off." " But you know what?" "One did, and one out of four, I say this is plausible." "Yeah, I mean, the gun fired as a result of the explosion." "Plausible." "I'd buy that." "Plausible." "That is crazy." "I can't believe it worked!" "NARRATOR:" "After days of disappointment, this should at least send them home happy, and the message couldn't be clearer..." "It's unsafe to leave loaded guns in exploding rooms."