Narrator: On this head-spinning episode of "MythBusters"...
[ Adam laughs ]
...Adam and Jamie fire up a fearsome explosive...
Jamie: That's one way to cut up a watermelon.
...as they test a military myth...
You're not nervous about making the shot, are you?
...that C-4 is a serviceable cooking fuel...
Mmm. It's not bad.
...but if subjected to heavy-hitting action...
Oh! It's on his shoe!
...creates a culinary catastrophe.
There it goes... pouring right onto the C-4.
Meanwhile, Kari, Grant, and Tory...
Chin up, buddy. It's gonna be over before you know it.
...mull a martial-arts myth
that a fabled flying guillotine...
Somebody's losing a finger on this shoot.
Narrator: ...can decapitate and capture your cranium.
You ready? Let's do this.
Who are the MythBusters?
Adam Savage...
70% chance of science.
...and Jamie Hyneman.
We're gonna have an adventure.
Between them,
more than 30 years of special-effects experience.
Together with Tory Belleci...
Wasn't ready for that one, Kari.
...Grant Imahara...
Something just touched me!
Narrator: ...and Kari Byron.
Let's do it.
Narrator: They don't just tell the myths.
They put them to the test.
MythBusters 9x17 - Flying Guillotine Original air date October 26, 2011
Sync and corrected by atrn97g www.addic7ed.com
What's with the stove?
It is our next story.
- It's about cooking? - Sort of.
It is a military myth,
and it's about replacing your normal cooking fuel
with something usually considered far more destructive.
With explosives?
Not just any explosive... your favorite.
Well, that would be C-4.
Exactly.
The myth is that C-4 is so stable,
you can light it with a match
and it will burn and cook your lunch.
And it doesn't explode?
It won't.
Although you're told not to stomp on it
or drop your pot on it
'cause that could make it blow up.
Well, that would make for some hot chili.
Indeed.
C-4.
Not just the explosive of choice for the MythBusters...
When in doubt, C-4. [ Laughs ]
...but also the military.
But can C-4's power be used another way...
to cook with, without exploding?
Well, that's great.
Well, there's two parts to this story.
One is that supposedly you can light C-4 on fire
and it will burn without blowing up,
and the second is, is that you better not drop a pot on it
or stomp on it while it's on fire
'cause that could make it blow up.
I think we should test both of those.
Sure. [ Laughs ]
So, to find out if this myth is cooking with gas,
or just a flash in the pan,
the guys head to the safety of... you guessed it...
a bomb range.
Now, before we get down to the business of testing this myth,
let's reacquaint ourselves with C-4, shall we?
For this is not simply a stable, high-speed explosive
in a plastic medium
that you can mold into the shape of a bunny and blow up.
[ Squeak! ]
Oh, no. This is versatile stuff.
Let's take a look at a simple C-4 detonation.
Narrator: This is why the military likes C-4.
It can make things go away.
That's one way to cut up a watermelon.
But it's also a precision device, too.
Adam: This piece of metal bent into a "W" shape
is going to cut this bar cleanly in half.
That's right. "W" stands for "whupah!"
Man: 3, 2...
That is beautiful. Look at that nice, clean cut.
I could do a little better with a saw,
but it does, indeed, work.
Now that we've seen how it detonates,
it's time to tackle our story, which, simply stated,
is that this stuff... C-4 plastic explosive...
is stable enough to actually light on fire
and heat your lunch with,
that it will not blow up, even if you set it on fire.
That's what we're about to test.
Narrator: Okay, why might burning C-4 explode?
Well, heat causes molecules to become excited.
The greater the heat, the more the molecule mania,
and that can cause instability and possibly an explosion.
So, from the safety of their bunker,
and ignited by a remote, neon transformer...
You ready?
Igniting C-4,
seeing if it burns without blowing up,
in 3, 2, 1...
- Yup. Jamie: - It's burning.
Wow. [ Laughs ] It's really burning.
It burns hot.
But blowing up, it ain't.
I don't think I'd want to be next to that. [ Laughs ]
I don't care what they say.
[ Laughs ]
Narrator: The C-4 burned at more than 1,000 degrees,
rapidly and without a kaboom.
That's very good news for this myth, so far.
Now that we know it burns, let's see how well it cooks.
Meanwhile, Grant, Kari, and Tory
are attempting to wrap their heads around
a mysterious martial-arts myth.
All right, Kari, what's with the cool costume?
Take a deep breath.
[ Both inhale sharply ] We're doing a kung-fu myth.
- Yes! - Yes!
Which one?
"The flying guillotine."
- Oh, I love that movie! - Yes!
That's the one where the guy has a weapon.
It's like a hat.
He throws it over the other guy's head,
and he pulls the chain, and it decapitates him!
Calm down.
Yeah, and not only that, but once you cut the head off,
you can actually retrieve the head back to the thrower.
Well, I think the cool thing is
that this might be more than a movie myth.
This might be an actual, ancient weapon.
It could work.
Narrator: Made famous by B-grade kung-fu movies,
the flying guillotine was a disc that, when thrown over the neck,
would decapitate and capture the victim's head.
But it might not just be a filmmaker's fantasy
because legend has it emperor Yongzheng
commissioned the device in 1722.
But unfortunately for the MythBusters,
no drawings of the design survive.
Okay, what a terrifying concept...
assassins that can behead you from a distance?
But you know what? The real problem right now is finding a design.
I mean, we've been through all these history books
and found nothing.
I mean, the only designs come from the movies themselves.
I mean, we're on our own on this one.
All right, well, why don't we come up with some prototypes?
We can incorporate some ideas from the movies
and come up with our own ideas and see which works best.
So, we might actually get to design
our own flying guillotine?
This is awesome.
Narrator: So, in order to test whether the mythical flying guillotine
was a viable assassination weapon,
they're going to divide and compete
to see if they can design their own flying guillotine
based on four parameters.
One... enough power to cut the head off.
Two... it has to be light enough to be thrown.
Three... it has to be safe enough to be deployed
without cutting your own fingers off.
And four... you have to have some means to retrieve the head.
Narrator: With each of them working alone,
it's going to test the team's prototyping skills to the limit.
Kari: Now, a traditional guillotine gets its cutting force
from the fact that you have a massive blade
traveling a long distance
to create enough force to chop a head off.
We have to make our devices lightweight,
and we only have about six inches of travel
to create that same sort of force.
Narrator: In their respective corners of the shop,
the guys begin by playing with ideas and concepts
that may or may not work.
All right, so, I had a great idea for a flying guillotine.
I asked the researchers to find me a bear trap.
Hopefully this would have enough energy
to actually crush through a person's head.
Clearly there's enough force, but...
[ Grunts ]
...throwing this through the air could be problematic.
Narrator: Meaning it's gonna be a "try it and see" kind of process.
Yeah!
Sometimes in the design process,
you just have to get in there and get your hands dirty.
Because there are no historical documents, no blueprints,
no plans for a flying guillotine,
we're just gonna have to figure this out as we go,
which is gonna mean a lot of trial and error.
Probably, mostly error.
Narrator: And that's immediately clear
from Kari's first fiddle with a fan
from an air-conditioning duct.
It's hard to use, it's getting heavy,
and I just don't think it's gonna work.
Narrator: So it's back to square one for Kari.
And likewise, on Belleci's bench,
this lethal-looking, scissor prototype he's made
is also a dud.
Uh, my flying guillotine doesn't work at all.
I mean, it kind of looks cool...
...but if you put something inside of it...
...like, that's the safest place to be.
Narrator: Despite the pressure of their early designs
failing on several fronts, the guys aren't deterred.
I'm gonna have to come up with a whole new design.
Narrator: After all, learning from your failures
is all part of the prototype process,
which is exactly what Kari does
by opting for a far simpler concept.
Picture a cigar cutter.
Basically, just have a blade on the rim of the hat that goes...
Takes the head right off.
Narrator: Meanwhile, using an authentic Ching Dynasty design app,
Grant has decided simpler is not better.
Grant: Now, what you need in order to cut someone's head off
with a blade is speed and power.
Now, we've got this ring
that's supposed to go over someone's head,
but that doesn't leave a lot of space
for the blades inside of it to accelerate.
So my solution is to actually cock the blades all the way back
and let them swing out and around.
Narrator: With his lawn mower of death
sporting five, highly sprung cutting blades,
Grant's ready to pull the pin.
Aah! [ Laughs ]
Narrator: That was close.
Kari: Okay, this could be the most dangerous experiment
we've ever worked on.
Forget car crashes, explosions, guns...
Aah! Aah!
...somebody's losing a finger on this shoot.
Don't cry wolf, Kari.
[ Laughs ]
'Cause then you're gonna get hurt
and no one's gonna rush to help you.
Narrator: Still to come...
Flaming C-4 feels the full force of the MythBusters.
This is gonna be fun.
Narrator: And the flying guillotines make...
Aah!
Narrator: ...headway.
- Yeah! - Nice!
Narrator: Can you cook your goose safely using C-4?
The military myth says you can,
and Jamie and Adam are hot on the trail to find out.
It's really burning.
So far, they've seen it does burn.
But that's not all.
Let's just pause and take a moment here to recognize
that we just ignited a high explosive and burned it,
and it didn't blow up.
This is gonna be fun.
Narrator: Given this is a military myth,
they're going to use a "ready to heat and eat" military meal.
All right. Time to choose what we're gonna cook.
So, what's for dinner, chef?
Well, we've got four choices...
spaghetti with meat sauce, pork sausage with cream gravy,
southwest style beef and black beans with sauce,
or... my personal favorite... the brisket entrée.
I'm going with pork.
We always go with pork in these explosive experiments,
don't we?
- Done. Let's do it. Here you go. - Okay.
Narrator: So, all that's left to do now
is retire to a safe distance and light the C-4.
We're good to go.
Here we go. Cooking lunch with C-4,
in 3, 2, 1...
We have ignition.
It's burning beautifully.
Wow, and that's it.
It's like two minutes, it burns out.
Yeah, it burns vigorously, but a little too quickly.
Let's see how hot we got the food.
Indeed, the proof of the pudding is in the eating.
Eating food cooked with C-4.
[ Laughs ]
It's not bad, but it's not hot.
No. It's kind of warm.
With the C-4-cooked MRE barely lukewarm,
the guys now want to scientifically test
how C-4 compares
with three other commercially available cooking fuels.
After all, if other fuels are better,
why would a soldier even resort to using C-4?
Jamie: So, these are our cooking fuels.
There are tablets that you might normally use while camping
made of hexamethylenetetramine.
There's a trioxane tablet,
which is issued by the military for their rations.
And there is chafing-dish fuel, which is basically an alcohol.
Each of the fuels will be ignited simultaneously,
and each will then attempt to do its best
to heat up an identically sized pot of water.
Adam: This is comparative cooking test, four fuels...
including C-4... in 3, 2, 1, go.
The neon transformer simultaneously sparks up
all four fuels,
each of which weighs one ounce.
The C-4 is definitely going.
Yeah, they're all going.
Now we wait.
But that wait isn't long,
as the C-4 burns itself out in two minutes...
Adam: The C-4's water is at 117 degrees Fahrenheit.
Everything else is burning along merrily.
Narrator: ...closely followed by the trioxane,
the fuel of choice by the military.
All right, trioxane got up to 120 degrees.
Narrator: And then the hexamethylenetetramine.
[ Laughs ] 149 degrees Fahrenheit.
Narrator: Finally, the chafing dish.
Ha! A measly 115 degrees Fahrenheit.
So, how did our C-4 do in the cooking fuel cook-off?
Not badly.
By this chart here, we can see that one of our fuels,
hexamethylenetetramine, did a spectacular job,
heating the water to a piping-hot 149 degrees.
The other two, the chafing-dish fuel and trioxane,
heated within a couple of degrees of C-4.
And you'll note, C-4 did the job a lot faster.
That tells me it not only burns, it is a viable cooking fuel.
Narrator: Kari, Grant, and Tory are going kung-fu crazy...
...testing the myth of the Chinese flying guillotine.
[ Laughs ] You think cutting my head off will kill me? Hm!
Narrator: Their first set of designs were uniformly successful...
...at failing.
That's the safest place to be.
Narrator: Tory's latest idea
is as clever as it is potentially deadly.
This one is a very simple design.
It's a steel ring sharpened,
but then there is a groove on the outside of the ring
that I have wrapped this cable around.
Let's see if it works.
Narrator: Okay. Stand back, everyone,
'cause Tory's ready to take his brutal saw disc
for a spin.
[ Chuckles ] Dude, that looks like it worked great.
All right, well, it cut through foam.
I wonder what it's gonna do to a neck.
[ Both laugh ]
Narrator: Meanwhile, Kari's pondering process is paying off, too.
What I've come up here with now is a kitchen knife
on top of a saw blade that's at an angle,
sort of like a traditional French guillotine...
two out of three headless frenchmen say it's the best...
that will work on either a spring load
or a really good yank.
Narrator: To test the cigar cutter,
Kari's rigged a rubber leg in a vise
to see if she can get a clean cut.
You ready?
1, 2, 3.
Okay, maybe not.
Ah, it looks like it worked pretty good to me.
It just takes a few yanks.
Narrator: Finally, despite a near, involuntary appendectomy...
Aah! [ Laughs ]
Narrator: ...Grant has persevered with his beautifully designed
but alarmingly heavy five-bladed mechanism.
Grant: Okay, keep your arms and legs clear of the ride at all times.
Here we go.
In 3, 2, 1...
[ Laughs ]
I feel a little queasy, I got to say.
Me too.
Narrator: Like a red-hot guillotine through ice cream,
the cantaloupe's no match for Grant's fearsome fruit slicer.
[ Laughs maniacally ]
Narrator: With the cutting component looking good
for each of the three designs...
Flying guillotine.
Narrator: ...there's one thing left to sort out,
the net to capture the head.
I know this looks like a guillotine cap,
but it's actually a salad bowl.
That's right, death by salad bowl.
So far, so good.
Narrator: Kari's concentrated on decoration for decapitation.
He looks like he's all dressed up for a funeral... his own.
Narrator: Not to be outdone,
Grant's final head-capture feature is also very... catchy.
Grant: I added this cage,
which allows you to connect all the pins together
to this disc with a spring.
You deploy the one spring that fires all the blades at once,
and then this cage also captures the head for retrieval.
It's done.
I call it...
"The Decapitron".
Narrator: Can these flying guillotine weapons
cut it in the real world?
Narrator: Could the mythical, Chinese flying guillotine
have been a real assassins' weapon?
Aah!
What better place for Kari, Grant, and Tory
to test their own designs than in a genuine, Chinese garden?
I don't think we could have picked a better environment.
This is awesome.
Tory: All right, now that we've each designed and built
our own flying guillotine,
we are here at Bamboo Giant to test three things
in order to confirm this myth.
First, its throwability.
Second, can it decapitate a head?
And if so, can it retrieve the severed head?
Narrator: Up first is throwability testing.
But with safety in mind, the weapons won't be armed.
This is our target. We have a head on a stick.
We're gonna see if we can actually land
our flying guillotine with accuracy and ease,
and we're going to do it from a distance of about 10 feet,
which is about as far as you would be
if you had to deploy your device.
Narrator: Each of the guys will take turns to throw.
First up, it's Kari with her designer cigar cutter.
Okay. This is the throwing test.
Ready?
Tory: All right, we're looking for a ringer.
Narrator: The cigar cutter flies.
Well, you got his feet.
Narrator: But on throw one, it's way short of the mark.
Grant's next.
His unwieldy Decapitron's
not exactly an aerodynamic masterpiece.
My design... it weighs in at a good seven or eight pounds.
So, as a secondary weapon,
I'm relying on blunt force trauma.
Narrator: Yep, and the first throw backs that up.
Oh! Super close.
That's another miss.
So, it's Tory's turn.
Tory: So, mine's pretty light,
and it's kind of shaped like a frisbee.
So it's gonna be easy to throw.
Whether or not I can hit my target,
that remains to be seen.
All right, spinning salad bowl of death.
You guys ready?
Let's see it.
- Ooh! - Ooh!
Narrator: That's three throws and three nos,
which isn't good news for the myth.
Can Kari do better in round 2?
Ready?
Tory: Yeah!
Narrator: This time, she nails it.
Grant: Good job.
Not to be outdone, Grant's beheading behemoth...
Whoo!
...scores a direct hit, too.
- Yeah! - Yeah!
Nice! [ Laughs ]
- You did it. - You got it.
That was awesome.
Narrator: Tory's second go.
The salad bowl soars.
Yeah!
It's over.
It's three for three in the throwing stakes.
The myth may still be alive.
On the benchmark tests so far,
they've all ticked the throwability box.
Next, it's weapons cocked and loaded
to see if their guillotines can achieve a decent decapitation.
This is where the metal meets the mannequin.
Their target is a pig's neck married to a synthetic head.
Kari: Mm, my favorite part of every show.
It's very anatomically correct...
Ohh!
...if he could just keep his head on.
Oh, it's even more of a horror show than usual.
Narrator: They'll each get one shot at decapitation.
This is my flying guillotine.
It is based on the traditional guillotine.
Now, they've been using this sort of technology
for hundreds of years to behead people,
so I'm hoping with a little bit of strength
and a little quickness,
I might actually be able to pull a head off.
Narrator: Without the weight or acceleration
of a traditional guillotine...
- Okay, you guys ready? - Yeah.
...hers relies on brute pulling power.
Ohh!
Did it work?
It looks like it cut a little of the bone and the skin,
but it more pulled the head off
than really cut through the neck.
Narrator: Tory's right.
It was, in fact, more dislocation than decapitation.
Kari: It cut trachea, it cut a little of the skin,
it cut a little of the bone,
but it did not get a clean decapitation.
Narrator: Grant's deadly Decapitron is next.
Mom, don't watch this part.
This is definitely the most dangerous part of it,
which is arming the device because it's all spring-loaded.
If something goes wrong,
it could actually fire all the blades off at once
while I'm holding it.
Narrator: With his hyperengineered Decapitron,
Grant's design has a minor flaw.
He has to pull vertically upward
for his cable to release the blades.
Gee, that thing might be more dangerous for the thrower
than the receiver.
And that means he needs a ladder to launch...
Kari: Oh, that thing is insane.
...hardly a handy assassin's weapon.
Grant: Ready?
3, 2, 1.
Now, that's a pain in the neck.
Oh, that looked cool.
Narrator: Despite being feared by melons across the land,
when it comes to necks, it's only cut skin-deep.
Not a clean decapitation.
And that leaves just Tory's salad bowl of death
still on the menu.
Not only is he a kung-fu master, he is also a beekeeper.
All right, ready to chop some heads?
Where did you get a gong?
We had one in the shop.
[ Gong crashes ] Ooh! Fight!
Tory: All right, here we go. Flying guillotine in 3, 2, 1.
Aah! Aah! Aah!
[ Laughing ] Ew!
That was gruesome!
Narrator: Gruesome, but impressive.
God, look at that. It cut through the bone.
Kari: And the trachea and the carotid artery
and... wow... it did a lot more damage than I expected.
That is promising.
Narrator: And that means Tory's is clearly the most promising
of the three designs.
It's light, it's sharp, and simple enough
that it could have been built in 1700s China.
Narrator: Oh, and what about head retrieval, you ask?
Simple.
With no decapitation, there can be no retrieval.
That one's still to be tested.
Narrator: Part one of the C-4 cook-off myth is confirmed.
C-4 can make a stable, reliable fuel.
Adam: It's burning beautifully.
So it's on to part two.
If that flaming C-4 gets some sort of impact,
will it lose its stability and explode to kingdom come?
An explosion is a chemical reaction,
and heat tends to speed up chemical reactions.
So it makes sense that if you're burning an explosive,
it's gonna make it more sensitive.
So, if we happen to be cooking with C-4
and what we're cooking with weighs, say, 7 1/2 pounds,
and it drops on the burning C-4, you might have a problem.
Narrator: With the heavy pot
raised to a height of 3 feet above the C-4,
it will stop with the force of 150 pounds.
This is a full pot dropped on flaming C-4 in 3...
2...
1, go.
[ Laughs ]
It just put it out.
Well, you know what they say.
A watched pot doesn't explode?
No, a dropped pot doesn't explode.
Thanks for ruining my joke.
It seems that even alight,
the C-4 is still too stable for a seven-pound pot
to prompt an explosion.
Adam: Well, the myth is
that a pot dropped on flaming C-4 will make it go off,
and we got a perfect landing, no explosion.
Not even... I don't even see the C-4.
Oh, wait a second. [ Laughs ]
There it is. No explosion at all.
Right now, it's not looking very good for the myth.
Well, that didn't work. What's next?
Well, I've heard two parts to this.
One is that you shouldn't drop a pot on the flaming C-4,
but the other is that you shouldn't try and stamp it out.
Stomping on burning C-4?
Well, I'm not gonna do that.
You can do that if you want.
Well, thanks, but no thanks.
I've actually worked on the perfect thing.
Editors, roll the montage of my robot stomper build.
Narrator: Okay, here's what Adam made earlier...
Ow!
Narrator: ...a pneumatically powered stomping robot.
I think he's ready for prime time.
Narrator: He certainly is.
There we go. I'm powering up the man.
[ Laughs ] Perfect.
Narrator: Now, for the second impact test
with Adam's robot designed to accurately replicate
the force of a human stomp.
Will that set off an explosion when it hits the burning C-4?
Make it like a nice, toasty marshmallow. [ Laughs ]
And then step two is to fire up robo-stomp.
In 3, 2, 1... stomp!
Ha! Perfect.
Oh! It's on his shoe!
Despite the impact of robo-stomp's pneumatic foot...
...the burning C-4 is still too stable to explode.
Look, you don't get much more real-world
than dropping a cooking pot
or stomping on the burning C-4 and nothing happens.
It's just too stable.
Clearly, we're gonna have to go to some ridiculous lengths
to get this stuff to blow up.
Exactly.
Narrator: So, did someone mention dropping a really heavy object?
So, why the anvil?
Well, this testing is all about determining
how shock-sensitive C-4 is.
When we drop this anvil,
we're looking at something like 1,500 pounds per square inch
being exerted on that C-4.
And that's quite an impact.
And if that doesn't do it, that says a lot about the myth.
Narrator: Indeed it does
because the anvil tops the scales at 90 pounds.
Adam: Looks like we have ignition.
Flaming C-4 with an anvil dropped on it in 3...
2...1...
Go!
Oh!
[ Laughs ]
Perfect landing. Nice work.
And no explosion.
I don't know what's gonna blow this stuff up.
We've burned it, we've smashed it,
we've smashed it and burned it.
I don't know what else to do to it.
Let's shoot it with guns.
Sure. Why not? [ Laughs ]
Back from testing,
it's clear that of the three prototypes,
Tory's flying guillotine
came closest to completing a decapitation.
Halfway through the bone! That is promising!
Narrator: But since close is not close enough to prove the myth,
it's time to refine his design.
Okay, so, we've left the bamboo forest
and we're back at our... Chinese palace.
We have one more test to do.
We want to see if we can actually achieve
a full decapitation... a throw, slice, capture, retrieve...
'cause, ultimately, we want to find out if this myth is plausible.
Narrator: Tory's prototype... the salad bowl of death...
slices as it spins against the neck.
Can he improve it to sever a head completely?
One thing that I noticed on my guillotine
is that it cut halfway through the neck bone.
I think it's because I have a straight edge on my guillotine.
So what I'm thinking is if I give it a saw edge,
cut grooves in the blade,
it'll help me cut through that bone.
Hopefully this will give me that advantage
to get a clean decapitation.
Narrator: To increase the cutting power even further,
he's also lengthened the pulling cable.
That way, I have the guillotine spinning longer,
and hopefully that will give me more cutting power
to get through that neck.
Narrator: And if they can achieve a beheading,
the final hurdle is to see if they can retrieve the head.
So Tory's attached a see-through net to do just that.
All right, so I added this
not because I want him to be a beekeeper,
but that way I can see the head get cut off as it's happening.
Narrator: No stranger to danger, poor, old Buster steps up one more time.
Chin up, buddy.
It's gonna be over before you know it.
And they're set to test.
All right, so, I made the adjustments
to my guillotine.
It's time to see if it'll cut a head off.
Okay, we have the exact same circumstances as before.
Yeah, we've got a same diameter neck, same distance.
We're ready to go.
All right. Let's do it.
Narrator: Like a mythical, martial-arts master...
Tory takes the head clean off.
And it's in the bag, literally, on just the first go.
- Ohh! - We got it!
Look. His head's in the bag.
It's a major achievement,
and it means Tory's improved design
has now met all three benchmarks
for the flying guillotine.
That gory success could mean only one thing.
There really could be something to this myth.
- You guys, that was amazing. - I know.
Not only did we create a real flying guillotine
from scratch,
but we achieved all the criteria for the myth.
Yeah, I mean, we landed it on the head,
decapitate the guy,
and retrieve the head in the net.
Yeah, we proved it on a basic level
against a static enemy,
but I don't think anybody's gonna be holding still
in a real, live combat situation.
- What do you have in mind? - I have a few ideas.
Oh, this should be interesting.
Narrator: Coming up in "cooking with C-4"...
Kind of makes you shaky when you're nervous.
And Tory's flying guillotine gets put to the ultimate test.
Kari: There's a guy behind you!
Narrator: So far, impact has failed to get burning C-4 to explode.
But is that all about to change?
So, we dropped an anvil on the C-4, nothing happened.
Blunt force doesn't work.
The only other thing that I can think of
that is a really hard, fast impact on something,
short of another explosive, is a bullet.
[ Gunshot ]
So, that's what we're gonna do.
We're gonna fire a speeding bullet into burning C-4.
Narrator: Will that high impact be enough to cause an explosion?
The first bullet we'll be firing with is...
your basic .308 caliber sniper round.
It's a 7.62 NATO,
and it flies through the air at 2,600 feet per second.
Narrator: That bullet at that speed
will give a staggering force on the burning C-4
of about 25,000 pounds.
Jamie: Oh, she's going pretty good.
All right, I am gonna fire.
This is shooting a regular bullet
at a flaming ball of C-4.
[ Gunshot ]
- Oh, I think you missed. - I missed.
All right, let's try that again.
Narrator: And with a few words of encouragement
from the peanut gallery...
You're not nervous about making the shot, are you?
- Like, you might miss, huh? - No.
- Not at all? - Nope.
Kind of makes you shaky when you're nervous.
[ Laughs ] All right, I think I'm ready to go.
Safety's off.
Don't miss.
I'm not gonna miss.
Shooting a flaming ball of C-4
with a regular, old bullet.
[ Gunshot ]
Damn it. It looks like I missed it.
So, with the score at C-4, 2, Adam, zip,
and Jamie too gun-shy to take a shot, the guys turn to a pro.
I'm an okay shot. Not a great shot. I'm okay.
I missed my first shot, nicked the second.
What we're about to do is hand over responsibility
for the shooting in this story
to sergeant Dan Powell, whose gun this is.
Hopefully he'll make the shots much better than we could.
Narrator: Sergeant "Dead Shot" Dan nails the target on his first shot.
The burning C-4 bounces, but a big boom there ain't.
Jamie: Well, there you have it.
A normal bullet did not cause burning C-4 to explode.
The next bullet we'll be firing with is this... a tracer round.
It's got a bit of phosphorus in its base
that allows the shooter to see the path the bullet takes.
It also flies through the air at 2,600 feet per second.
Narrator: A bullet striking with a force of 25,000 pounds
plus added heat from the burning phosphorus
means it's going to hit hard and hot.
You may fire when ready.
[ Gunshot ]
Oh! [ Laughs ]
That was a direct hit. No explosion.
Narrator: Once again, the bullet impacts the C-4, but...
Nothing.
Two bullets down and still no detonation.
The last round we'll be firing is this... an incendiary round.
Inside is magnesium aluminum alloy and barium nitrate,
which ignite upon extreme impact.
You see where I'm going with this?
Narrator: It's down to this shot.
Can the impact of a high-explosive bullet
finally make the difference to our burning C-4
and make it go boom?
All right, fire at will.
[ Gunshot ]
Nice!
[ Laughs ] That was beautiful!
Nice shot. No explosion.
Narrator: Really? No explosion?
Adam: I know what you're saying.
You're saying, "wait a minute, MythBusters".
"I see the bullet hit flaming C-4"
"and I see what looks like an explosion".
But it's an incendiary round. That's what it's meant to do.
In order not to confuse you,
we filmed this high-speed footage
of that same type of round hitting a blank metal plate.
I think that makes the point nicely, don't you?
Narrator: It does.
The explosive round may have exploded,
but the blazing C-4 did not blow up.
The bullets won't detonate flaming C-4.
Nope. We got to come up with something else.
We do.
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The MythBusters have proved
their flying-guillotine design works,
but only against a stationary victim.
Tory: Look! Head's in the bag!
Now they're taking it to the max by testing it in combat
and that means against an opponent...
a scarier, more real-life opponent
because this time...
He moves!
Just like any other real-life battle scenario,
your opponent is gonna be moving around to avoid the weapon.
And this guy is no exception.
He's got a mobile robotic base that we can control remotely.
Try and hit me. Huh? Oh, oh.
That's not the only thing we have in store for Tory.
An assassin lurking in the shadows.
This one's actually...
Narrator: So Tory's up against a moving robotic enemy in front
and a sneaky foe who can pop up any moment from behind.
The ultimate real-world test.
All right, now what do I need to do
to beat this obstacle course?
Okay, you have two minutes on the clock
to defeat two enemies.
You have to stay behind this line,
and your target is gonna be moving.
Normally there's no rules in battle, but all right.
Let's do it.
Narrator: Ladies and gentlemen,
in the grand palace of emperor Yongzheng,
known in some circles as "the M7 workshop,"
we have the famous kung-fu killer,
the master of disaster... Tory Belleci.
And his shadowy, evil opponent... the Fa Jin king.
You ready? Let's do this.
Honor and myth all hang on the next two minutes.
Kari: Flying guillotine in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.
[ Bell dings ]
Narrator: Right from the outset,
the robo-target's proving very elusive.
It's a far cry from the original static assassin test.
Tory: Oh, my God.
This is like some crazy, weird nightmare.
Narrator: And then suddenly...
Tory: There's a guy behind you!
...there's that sneaky assassin to contend with, as well.
But he doesn't last long.
You got him!
He wasn't decapitated, but he was at least disarmed.
Then it's back to the main target.
But before you can say "guillotine", time's up.
3, 2, 1!
Two minutes are up without a single decapitation.
But at least there was one knockout blow.
It's pretty hard hitting a moving target.
It looked hard,
but, hey, you got the one that popped up.
Your reaction time was great.
Yeah, you definitely
knocked out the assassin from the shadows.
Tory: That was so much fun.
I mean, this was like living out my fantasies...
having two attackers coming at me,
trying to take them down.
However, trying to hit a moving target, it's almost impossible.
Narrator: This weapon has proved plausible as an assassination device,
but no match for a foe in pitch battle,
so before we can sign this myth to the dusty vault of history,
let's leave the final word to Grant.
Despite that this guy looks like he's been defeated,
he actually survived and not only that, he won
because it's so difficult to deploy the flying guillotine
in a combat situation.
Definitely this is plausible as an assassin's weapon,
but in combat, no way.
Narrator: On the other side of the break,
it's time for C-4 to sizzle, "MythBusters" style.
There it goes... pouring right onto the C-4.
Narrator: Adam and Jamie have gone all out
testing the two-pronged military myth
that burning C-4 to cook with is safe...
Adam: It's burning beautifully.
It's not bad, but it's not hot.
...so long as you don't bash it while it's alight.
To test that,
- they tried dropping heavy objects on it... - Oh!
...they tried shooting it with high-impact bullets...
Jamie: Nice!
Nice shot. No explosion.
...but nothing's detonated the burning C-4.
So in a last-ditch attempt to cause it to explode,
they're ramping it up to the max.
Time to mix some thermite.
Narrator: Thermite... that high-intensity, extreme-heat material
that can cause explosive reactions.
Adam: Wow!
If anything's gonna super-heat the molecules in C-4
enough to set it off, then it's thermite.
Thermite is a mixture of two different metal powders.
One is the fuel, the other is the oxidizer.
Usually, that would be aluminum and iron oxide.
Now, when they're mixed together and ignited,
they burn with extremely high temperatures...
about 4,500 degrees Fahrenheit.
Narrator: They've proved that C-4
burning at just over 1,000 degrees won't explode,
but what about at 4,500 degrees?
Here's how our rig is going to theoretically work.
Up on the stand, I've got a massive flower pot
filled with about three gallons of thermite.
It will be ignited by a neon transformer...
the wires of which are right here.
Once ignited, that thermite will start to burn
and it will start to drip.
Where you ask?
Well, through the bottom of this flower pot, of course.
The molten thermite will drip through the bottom of this flower pot,
right onto our C-4.
We, of course,
will be waiting safely behind the blast panels
to see if the thermite makes the C-4 go boom.
Give me the C-4.
There we... ooh, ooh, ooh.
- Don't drop it. - I won't. [ Laughs ]
Here we go.
Narrator: So it'll be thermite
burning at a super-hot 4,500 degrees
pouring directly on to the C-4 beneath it.
Call it whenever you're ready.
Okay, molten thermite dripping on to C-4.
In 3, 2, 1, go!
Oh, it's lighting beautifully.
At 4,500 degrees, thermite burns with blinding intensity.
There it goes... pouring right onto the C-4.
It's a perfect hit.
It's just behaving exactly like we wanted.
Narrator: In spite of the extreme heat, there's no boom.
I can't think of anything else.
It's like you're not setting off C-4 by accident.
That's all there is to it.
I think that's all there is to it.
I think we've really done everything we can.
Pretty much. [ Laughs ]
Even when subjected to 4,500 degrees of pure heat,
the C-4 keeps its cool.
So, after all this testing,
what exactly will make C-4 go boom?
Well, the explosive in C-4 is RDX,
and you need a blasting cap to set off RDX.
The mercury fulminate in a blasting cap
moves really fast when it goes off.
It's something like 100,000 feet per second.
That's over Mach 100, which is really, really fast.
And we just can't achieve those kinds of speeds
with anything short of a blasting cap.
C-4 was designed specifically
to be a high explosive that was incredibly stable.
And I got to give it up.
It is more stable than I ever thought possible.
Narrator: So with the C-4 scientific certainty sewn up,
there's just one thing left to do.
Adam: Shall we call this?
I think it's time.
All right.
On the first count that C-4 can be ignited
and heat your lunch, how do you find?
I find that confirmed.
On the second count that said flaming C-4
should not be trod upon or dropped upon,
how do you find?
I find that busted.
I love it.
It's both busted and confirmed at the same time.
- Let's go back to the shop. - Okay.
You know, in spite of the evidence,
I just wouldn't stomp on that stuff.
No. Neither would I.
Sync and corrected by atrn97g www.addic7ed.com
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