Tropes Examined by the Mythbusters: Difference between revisions

 

 

These are the scenarios tested in which they have concluded any of the following: the myth depicts a (1) reasonable situation which could very easily happen by accident, (2) an urban legend that is easily replicable (though not always recommended) and/or (3) a situation whose real-life occurrence (however unlikely) has been documented through credible eye-witness or video evidence.

 

* [[Beach Bury]]/[[Buried Alive]]: Tory took over 80 minutes to dig himself out of dry sand, Grant gave up after ten minutes in wet sand, and neither were tied up. If you're buried like that and have no aid, you're dead.

* [[Bedsheet Ladder]]: While actually climbing it is not that easy, they're strong enough to work. Oddly enough, they also tested whether toilet paper or [[Rapunzel Hair|human hair]] could be used instead, and both of those proved plausible.

* [[Delicious Distraction]]: You can distract an [[Angry Guard Dog]] with a steak. Kari was able to walk in an enclosure, open a safe, take what was inside, and probably would have made it out if Tory didn't throw the steak inside. They did advise against [[Don't Try This At Home|viewers repeating the stunt]] shortly afterward as dogs can be trained to ignore this sort of thing.

* [[Duct Tape for Everything]]: ''Three'' episodes to date devoted entirely to what they could do with duct tape, with a comment from Jamie that they could do an entire ''season'' based on duct tape alone. So far, they've managed to lift a car, seal a potato cannon, provide backing for a steel cannon, build an ''entire'' black powder cannon, tape Adam to a board using just twenty pieces, plug a boat leak (but only dry, since taking on water would prevent the adhesive from working), build a boat (in that they made sheet layers of it and then formed it around a frame for the boat cover and sail), made a bridge, repaired a heavily damaged car, and also stopped a car from starting by duct-taping it to a telephone pole. In the third episode, they used duct tape as a tool for survival on a (not actually) deserted island. They made clothing (sandals, and a sun hat for Adam), made containers for water, created a giant SOS, used it to get/carry food and water, created shelter and beds/hammocks (as well as a few other amenities), and ultimately built a canoe with an outrigger that survived seven hours on the ocean without leaks, including breakers near the shore. They also tried to stop a car traveling at 60 miles per hour with a duct tape barrier, but that was busted. The original myth called for just a single roll of duct tape, but even when they ramped it up to around a hundred rolls, the barrier still would not hold.

** At first, the barrier itself held up pretty well, but the anchor points ripped themselves out of the concrete barriers they were attached to. Then they secured it a bit better<ref>We never did get to see how they did it. Used duct tape perhaps?</ref> and hit it again; it snapped quite cleanly.

** In another episode, they repaired a badly damaged airplane using duct tape. They then went one step further by building the skin of an airplane almost entirely out of duct tape.

* [[Edible Ammunition]]: Certain varieties of cheese are hard enough to be shot out of a cannon and puncture canvas ship sails. There's actually historical precedent for this; specifically, in the 1840s, the Uruguayan Navy ran out of ammunition while defending Argentina. Instead of surrendering, they simply loaded the cannons with stale Edam cheeses. ''And won.''

* [[Electrified Bathtub]]: Yep, you ''can'' electrocute someone by dropping an appliance into the tub. The iron provided the highest amperage at the heart, at 32 milliamps. An extra big [[Don't Try This At Home]] warning on that one (it is a common suicide method, after all).

** Although they also found that most modern electronics have failsaves against this sort of thing. Still, not a good thing to try and replicate.

* [[Get a Hold of Yourself, Man!]]: A hard slap will help get one's mental faculties back on track, but only if the person is tired or stressed out. It's not recommended if one was suffering a more serious condition.

* [[Glass-Shattering Sound]]: It takes a bit of doing and perhaps a bit of fiddling with the sound equipment but it is possible for an amplified human voice to shatter glass. A trained singer can actually do it ''unamplified'', but the glass needs to be very close to the mouth for maximum effect.

*** For the curious: the sharp point concentrates all the force you put into swinging the hammer into one spot on the glass.

** Also, #2 can (sometimes) be an unrealistic occurrence, as the car may invert (perhaps even multiple times) as it sinks into the water, making it far more difficult to keep sufficiently calm while the car is sinking. That said, if it's too late for option #1, and #3 is impossible, option #2 can work as a last resort.

*** Jamie and Adam decided car inversion ("turning turtle") was worth its own test and did so. Adam said he conceded that if the car turns over as it's going in, the hope for escape is severely slashed.

* [[Powder Trail]]: A powder trail can be used as a fuse to detonate a barrel of black powder. However, the speed at which it burns changes dramatically depending on how wide the trail is, ranging from an almost instantaneous flash to slower than walking speed, which makes it difficult to measure how much time you will have to get away.

** [[Weaponized Car]]: A forward facing machine gun is accurate enough to hit an opposing car with practice. Adding remote aim makes it usable with far better accuracy.

* [[Spy Tux Reveal]]: Jamie was able to swim a fair distance in scuba gear, take it off, and look perfectly immaculate in the tuxedo he had worn underneath.

* [[Slap Yourself Awake]]: It even sobers you up a bit.

* [[Variable Terminal Velocity]]: (Sub-variety) ''Skydiving'', with streamlining it's possible to catch up to someone who has been falling several seconds before needing to deploy parachutes. However, it's not possible to hear each other speak while skydiving, and there's not really enough time to carry on a meaningful conversation anyway.

 

These are the myths that are based on a sequence of events that, however unlikely, is not impossible concerning the portions of the myth that were tested. These myths, by default, have no documentation to prove its plausibility. The term is used primarily to provide a stepping stone between a confirmed and a busted myth. Generally speaking, if the myth is "X ''could'' happen", then "Confirmed" means that they were able to exactly reproduce the scenario, and "Plausible" means that they weren't able to exactly reproduce it, but were able to come close enough that it's not a great leap that it could happen. On the other hand, if the myth is "X ''has'' happened", then "Confirmed" means that they were both able to reproduce the scenario and find supporting documentation, and "Plausible" means they were able to reproduce the scenario, but were unable to prove that it actually has happened the way the myth states.

 

* [[Rings of Death]]: They were able to successfully decapitate a stationary target using a razor-sharp ring, but it proved impractical on moving targets.

* [[Scope Snipe]]: Plausible with Vietnam War-era scopes and armor piercing ammunition; busted with modern ones. The modern scopes have more parts in them and the glass is curved to a different degree than the older scopes, thus giving the bullet more obstacles to blast through.

* [[Silver Bullet]]: Although lead bullets are cheaper and more effective, silver bullets work. However, their efficiency in neutralizing werewolves remains unproven.

* [[Trash Landing]]: With the caveat that the majority of dumpsters contain items that would be uncomfortable at best (fatal at worst) to land on; in a "best case" scenario (a dumpster filled with mattress foam), Adam pulled off the jump-and-run-away perfectly.

* [[Wall Crawl]]: Adam's suction-cups-and-vacuum-pumps rig got him partway up the wall of a skyscraper, though he lacked the stamina to get much further.

 

 

The Mythbusters criteria for "Busted" isn't "scientifically impossible", more "could not be replicated in the experiment devised." They have found multiple myths which have some basis in reality, but the actual logistics involved or the specific details of the myth render it busted (For example, lighting something on fire with mirrors is possible, but lighting a moving, watersoaked boat on fire with hundreds of mirrors is not). Similarly, they acknowledge that on paper something might very well be possible but could not be replicated and there is no documentation on that [[Million-to-One Chance]] of it happening. As mentioned above, any documentation immediately puts a myth in the "Confirmed" slot.

 

* [[Air Vent Passageway]]: Climbing through a metal venting system using magnets and/or suction cups in a stealthy manner was rather thoroughly busted. ([[Crowning Moment of Funny|"Why, Thor the God of Thunder is trying to enter my building!"]]) However, in another episode, Jamie and Adam did manage to escape Alcatraz by climbing through its ventilation system (which consisted of extremely large gaps between the walls).

** The test was performed a second time with three archers at full draw firing one by one at random times. The martial artist did manage to catch an arrow, but it took dozens of attempts.

** It was also noted that if you have the time to see the arrow coming at you and the reflexes to react, it would probably be more practical to just move out of the way.

* [[Banana In the Tailpipe]]: Shoving something in a car's tailpipe will ''not'' cause it to explode, no matter what [[Beverly Hills Cop|Axel Foley]] or Hollywood tells you. Nor will it cause the car to stall; the blockage will simply be ejected first.

* [[Blade Brake]]: ...or at least the ship sail variant. The blade catches on the seams in the sail and bounces out, while a one-piece sail with no seams doesn't provide enough resistance to slow you down or hold your blade in it. They hypothesized though that maybe an ideal butter zone between the two could be possible.

* [[Blown Across the Room]]: A bullet simply does not have the mass required to produce the kind of impact needed to send its target flying backwards. Any bullet that ''does'' have that kind of kinetic energy would also send the person ''firing'' the gun flying an equal distance in an opposite direction. The difference is that the grip of a pistol and the stock of a rifle will push at the shooter on a relatively wide area, while the bullet impact the target with the same force, but concentrated on a very small impact area.

* [[Brainwashed and Crazy]]/[[Hypno Fool]]: Only a part of the human population can even be properly hypnotized in the first place, and you can't ever be hypnotized against your will. Adam was able to overcome some of his debilitating fear of bees through hypnosis, but that was only because he himself wanted to in the first place.

* [[Breast Expansion]]: There is no truth to the myth that implants will inflate at high altitudes. Both fake and real breasts ''will'' inflate if exposed to the vacuum of space... but since a side effect of this act includes death, its practicality as a form of cosmetic surgery is somewhat low.

* [[Bullet Catch]]: They tested both the classic magician's "catch in teeth" and the "ninja swats bullet out of air" versions. You're dead either way.

* [[Bullet Sparks]]: Hollywood does it by using firework-loaded projectiles.

* [[Bullethole Door]]: It takes a good deal more ammo and time, and much higher powered weaponry, than in the movies. By the time you can chew through a wall or floor, whatever you were trying to get away from will have long since caught you, filled out the paperwork, and be home in bed.

** It should be noted wound ballistics is rather more complicated than firing at slabs of meat, and there are plenty of cases of rounds being stopped entirely by a single human body. Ballistic gelatin tends to be used for study, with twelve inches of penetration considered the ''minimum'' acceptable amount for a pistol round; this simulates reaching the target's heart after passing through an arm. Further, there are some rounds designed not to penetrate but spread out or tumble in the body to cause more damage.

** However, note that they shot at the target straight on while in real life, this is rarely the case. A shot that doesn't hit straight on will effectively have to travel through more 'armor' than a straight on shot (the same principle as slanted tank armor). So while it's ''possible'', it's not exactly reliable as you can't often control the type of bullet being shot at you, the angle at which it hits you at, and other such factors.

* [[Explosion Propulsion]]: No matter what type of explosive they used and how much, they just couldn't get Buster to fly further than he already could via an explosion. Not even a makeshift glider could propel him any further.

* [[Fruit Cart]]: While you can drive through one, the car is not driveable afterward.

** There's also the fact that the testing was performed at a military facility that was built with specially hardened concrete. The gun may well have worked on a more conventional building, but for the circumstances as tested, no dice.

* [[Grievous Bottley Harm]]: Specifically the claim that an empty beer bottle will do more damage when used as a weapon than a full bottle, which was busted. (The extra head trauma that comes with being hit by a heavier bottle is far more dangerous than possible lacerations caused by the empty one.) The idea that [[Captain Obvious|getting hit with any sort of beer bottle is not good]] was Confirmed.

* [[Implausible Fencing Powers]]: Given the right circumstances, they managed to break a sword with another sword; however, it still got labeled "Busted", as they didn't get the clean cut so often seen in movies (rather, they bent the blade until it snapped). It also took incredibly superhuman strength from the testing machine to do even that. Finally, it ruined the cutting blade, which anyone experienced in using bladed weapons (or a modicum of common sense) would have pointed out immediately.

** In theory, with a ''really'' bad sword, you could shatter it, but even most ornamental swords are made to not shatter that easily.

* [[Impressive Pyrotechnics]]: Not so much a single myth but numerous examples of real-life high explosive explosions being less impressive than Hollywood balls of flame. The best example would be where they blew up a car Hollywood-style (complete with Adam diving in slow motion away from the ball of fire) then stuffing the remains with C4 and obliterating the entire vehicle in a split second.

* [[Improvised Zipline]]: Busted in the case of using your pants to zip down a ski lift: There's too much friction, the angle of the lift isn't steep enough, and either the pants or your grip will fail first.

* [[ISophagus]]: Dental fillings are not radio receivers, but they ''can'' generate a slight electrical current depending on the filling.

* [[Leap and Fire]]: Not even a Mossad agent could shoot accurately like that, or shoot fast enough. That's why they always show it in slow motion. At full speed, you just look like an idiot who wants to get shot. And unless you want to break your arm by landing on it with all your weight, you probably want to land on something soft.

* [[Perpetual Motion Machine]]: Jamie and Adam took on several "free energy" devices in one episode. All of them failed.

* [[Pinball Projectile]]: They ''did'' get their bullet to ricochet three times and hit a cardboard Jamie cutout. However, the specific myth called for the shooter dying from his own bullet, and after three bounces the bullet was moving too slowly to do more than annoy.

* [[Projectile Toast]]: Toast doesn't always land butter-side down.

** Note: Largely depends on how it is dropped and from what height. Being brushed off a counter causes the toast to rotate. The average height of counters, between 3 and 4 feet, means it falls just far enough to go through half a rotation, which results in butter side down. Dropped from a vertical position 30 feet above the ground is 50/50.

* [[Pyramid Power]]: Pyramids don't have any preserving powers. Milk, fruit, and flowers in pyramids have been spoiled at the same rate as those that weren't in pyramids.

* [[Quicksand Sucks]]: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6BhVebTMiiY Tested] by creating a quicksand rig and standing in it.

* [[Saint Bernard Rescue]]: For one, Saint Bernard rescuers of this type don't exist. Two, drinking alcohol while your life is in danger from exposure to cold is a really, ''REALLY'' bad idea. This is because while it does make you feel warmer, for a brief time, it does so by allowing blood to flow to the extremities more easily, thereby warming up your arms and legs at the cost of lowering your core body heat faster. Thus, your fingers and toes will warm up for a bit, but you're going to freeze a lot faster in the end.

** In fact, lowering blood flow to the arms and legs is exactly what your body does in the cold, because they act as radiators, bleeding off heat. In extreme circumstances, sacrificing a few fingers or toes to frostbite is better than freezing to death, and alcohol undoes this procedure. That said, alcohol is legitimately administered ''after'' a rescue once the victim is near a heat source, specifically to promote blood flow to the extremities to prevent or reduce frostbite.

* [[Stun Guns]] (variant): The conductive-water "aqua-zap" failed miserably.

* [[Tree Buchet]]: Despite trimming branches, using a tether to stop the tree at its apex, and pulling back to maximum, they could only fling Buster less than 100 feet. That being said, they tested the myth in California, instead of using trees native to England.

** Liquid gasoline is also ridiculously hard to ignite, even with a blow torch (which is ''why'' it is used in automobiles). Gasoline ''fumes'', however, can be lit ''very'' easily - '''even with a snuffed-out match'''. So don't let it stand around and evaporate.

* [[Viewers Are Goldfish]]: Well, they busted the part about a goldfish having only a three-second memory (Adam's tank's roughly three-second ''lifespan'' was a side issue).

* [[Women Drivers]]: Both sexes can be equally bad at maneuvering a car.

 

 

== Other tropes tested ==

* [[Abnormal Ammo]]: Yes they fire a bunch of strange stuff normally, but there ''was'' a segment centered around pirates using [[Abnormal Ammo]]. Bottles of rum, silverware, and a peg leg were all busted, while steak knifes were barely plausible. Big old nails, however, proved damaging (earning a "Plausible"). But when they fired a chain, the target pig was ''annihilated''. It had nearly been ''torn in half'', and the chain was still completely intact, earning a confirmation. This is [[Truth in Television]]: Chain shot, two small cannonballs connected by a chain, was designed to destroy the sails and rigging of enemy ships at close range.

** Grenade in the Fridge: Busted. While a fridge will protect you from a grenade in the most pointlessly literal sense, you are now in danger of being killed by a high-velocity chunk-of-fridge. (From ''Monk'')

** Other objects (a wooden table, a car, a Dumpster, and a cinderblock wall) were tested for their ability to resist bomb blasts. The table splintered heavily but still prevented the bomb blast from being lethal; the others were all successful in blunting the blast damage.

* [[The Coconut Effect]]: Busted for [[Kung Foley|punching]] (the sound alone is nowhere near as loud, and requires some touching up with various methods), Confirmed for rattlesnakes (that is, they made the same noises they do in the movies), plausible for silencers (The sound was reduced to a similar degree as shown on film, but the sound itself is different than the "thwip" effect we hear), and busted for explosions (Explosions made the same way in movies, with gasoline, make more of a "foomfph" sounds than a "Boom").

* [[Deadly Rotary Fan]]: They demonstrated that a ceiling fan would not be capable of actually decapitating a person, but their modified industrial fan fitted with a lawnmower motor would certainly be lethal to anyone who got too close, even if not actually capable of slicing through their spinal column.

* [[Firing One-Handed]]: With a handgun at shoulder level, aimed normally, it actually does work nearly as well as their control (the two-handed Weaver technique).

* [[Gangsta Style]]: It's cool, but very inaccurate, and thus busted.

* [[Hangover Sensitivity]]: Used as a method for testing the myth that drinking both beer and liquor will give you a worse hangover than drinking only beer (that myth was busted).

* The [[Hindenburg]]: They debunked the idea that the Hindenburg's paint job was what caused the explosion and fire, rather than the hydrogen contained inside. They "built 1/50th scale Hindenburg models to test this myth. The model that contained hydrogen gas burned twice as quickly as the model without hydrogen. While the painted skin did burn vigorously, it is not what caused the Hindenburg to burn as quickly as it did." However, the theory that the paint on the zeppelin could have burned like thermite (a self-oxidizing combustible material) actually had some basis in fact; there were some brief thermite reactions as the first two zeppelin models burned. (This "busts" a common counter-argument, that the paint could not have been at fault because it could not have burned like thermite.) In fact, the model with the correct paint job AND hydrogen burned almost exactly like the real one.

* [[Mind Control Device]]: They tested a number of them. Most of them were busted, though a couple were deemed plausible, but just barely. A rotating magnet seemed to have an effect on the test subject's brainwaves, but it might have actually been having an effect on the EEG machine they were using. And a remote hypnosis machine seemed to show a minor effect. In either case, neither would allow direct control of a person's mind.

* [[No Sense of Direction]]: If a person is blindfolded and has their ears plugged, they will be unable to travel in a straight line. An ordinary person with their sight reduced (not eliminated) can easily get lost in unfamiliar territory (in a similar fashion), though wilderness training can help avert this.

* ''[[Shrek]]''/''[[Father Ted]]'': You can't make a functional candle out of earwax. It takes dozens of people worth of earwax to produce something remotely resembling a candle, but it fizzles out quickly. [[Nausea Fuel|And you wouldn't want to eat a cake attached to it, either.]]

* "Like a lead balloon": Busted. It is possible to make a balloon out of lead, fill it with helium, and have it become buoyant. You just need to use really thin foil, and the care and patience of a saint. [[Crowning Moment of Awesome|And they actually made it happen]]. No speculation on [[Led Zeppelin|Jimmy Page's reaction.]]

* "Like shooting fish in a barrel": Confirmed. Even if the bullet touches none of the fish, the shockwave it creates passing through would severely injure or kill every fish in there. Going after it with a [[More Dakka|gatling gun]] was just for [[Rule of Cool]]. Possibly moot, since the proverbial barrels would have been packed with fish which were ''already'' dead and pickled anyway.

* "You can't teach an old dog new tricks": Busted. Old dogs could be taught new tricks, albeit with some difficulty.

* [[Polish the Turd|"You can't polish a turd"]]: Busted, at least if the idea is making the turd shiny, though the point of the adage is more that it won't stop being a turd. You can do it (at least with some species' droppings) solely with water, patience, and hopefully a lot of hand soap afterwards.

** Some variations of the phrase included "like ''stealing'' candy from a baby". That's actually really easy since babies sleep a lot and don't take any serious precautions to prevent having their candy stolen. Sometimes they don't even notice it's gone. Kids these days just don't have the patience and foresight to plan these things out properly. Walking right up and grabbing the candy in broad daylight, of course you have to expect complications.

* Double Dipping: Busted. Dipping a chip a second time after dipping and consuming spreads no more germs than dipping once. In fact, a completely valid interpretation of the evidence says that any germs added to the dip by double dipping will only be statistical noise compared to the amount of germs already inside the dip.

*** [[Nausea Fuel|It's still disgusting, though.]]

 

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[[Category:Just for Fun]]