Mythbusters and Guns

The myth from the movie Red where john Malkovich shoots and RPG with a .460 and it blows up, killing the shooter of the RPG.

Busted. That was a good one, though.

CoRoMo said:

Holy cow! I never knew they actually did this many gun myths. I've seen a few that the OP posted, the three I posted, but few others.

Never saw it. What did they determine? Which of those guys were chosen to fill the bag?

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They determined that it was busted, and the young lady likely got pregnant in the usual fashion.

can anyone find that entire episode? I have been wanting to watch the one where they make a pistol proof panel out of some ceramic tiles and cement but I can't find it anywhere.

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I think it's the "what is bulletproof" or the follow up/revisit to that episode. They did a couple. Adam tries to use thin plastic bags of cornstarch/water and fails miserably... "jamietile" works great.

If you have netflix seasons 1-9 are all avaliable, plus the "big blasts" collection. Also if you have Amazon Prime, they have all seasons available... I think seasons 1-5 are free and they have some additional content that netflix doesn't list.

I think they should get rid of Adam and Jamie and just do firearms myths with Kari full time.

I can't remember exactly but I think the phonebooks stopped smaller rifle rounds but didn't hold up to the .50 cal. They used a lot of phonebooks.

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Another was where they tested to see if a gun barrel could be cut off by a sword. Had to do with a WW2 myth that the samurai sword carried by Japanese troops could cut a barrel in half. I think they finally got a barrel to fracture in half by basically retempering it then hitting it with a sword.

Kari admitted to the transformation in one of the episodes. She called herself the granola vegetarian who loves shooting guns and cites the chopping down trees as the turning point.



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Shooting a playground merry-go-round to see if they could get it to spin, from that one movie. May have been part of that one where they were shooting guns away from people.

Starting a fire in an emergency/survival situation with black/smokeless powder.

Starting a car on fire by shooting the gas tank.

Two gun shooting, twice.

Hollywood gunfight durations, shooting out the floor around you/someone else to drop through.

Distance you can spot muzzle flash/how far away do you have to be in order to dodge a bullet.

Oh, yeah Quat made me remember a good one, different shooting stances from movies, like holding the gun sideways, holding it at the waist like they did in 40s and 50s movies, etc.

Quat beat me to the gas tank ignition one (which was not possible, even with tracers).

I think they tried the James Bond opening shot, where you shoot down another gun's barrel at range. I believe that was impossible.

They also had a test to see if a sword could split a bullet. I believe they were able to get a quality sword to split a handgun bullet (a .45 out of a 1911 if I recall) but the sword was damaged pretty badly. They tried a couple swords before they found one that could do it...

Shooting fish in a barrel.

The phone books car armor worked. .50 cal went through it but .50 will go through an Armor Personnel Carrier. Note a key word in Armored Personnel Carrier, big clue its the first one.

About those pesky trees...

I really wish I had photocopied this one cool picture... something I stumbled across in the mid-80s at my local library. It was a thin book, possibly an Arco book from the 50s or 60s.
It talked about various weapon systems. I believe in the section on mounted machine guns, they had a really cool picture of some US Military folk who dramatically demonstrated the might of a Maxim gun to a Hawaiian chief by cutting down a rather large tree - there was a neat group picture of soldiers, Hawaiians, the gun itself and an obviously dead tree...

The phone book armored car was my favorite episode EVER!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctauhnIjnso

Just remembered another couple; there was one test that Kari, Tori, and Grant did on diving through a doorway and firing at a bad guy while doing so, and one recently where they tested "does a knife beat a gun?" They found that someone within 16 feet or so could easily stab you before you could draw, even when expecting an attack.

As I recall, they said the Gunny couldn't have made the shot. I sent the show an email made up almost entirely of colorful Marine Corps language and haven't watched them since.

The problem with shooting through an enemy's scope is the angle. It has to go straight through. At long range, the trajectory will be coming down ever so slightly. I still think it is possible though

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That's why the story is so crazy; both shooters were aimed/zeroed directly at eachother. IIRC, Hathcock noticed a scope glint (something the other guy didn't have with his viewpoint) and got his shot off first. Otherwise, both would have been unaware of the other. Sort of a "stealth Mexican standoff"

TCB

Skribs said:

The mythbusters keyholed the bullet, but they didn't make it curve around solid barriers as suggested in the movie Wanted.

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The spin placed on bullet by the grooved barrel helps,to keep it flying straight. I had wished they had tried it in a smooth bore pistol barrel.

Didn't they do an episode about different shooting stances and the accuracy you get with them? For example, a gun in each hand while shooting at 2 targets, shooting "gangsta style" (gun tilted to the side), shooting one handed etc

There was one about Hollywood and MGs where they also drop-tested a MAC-10 down a flight of stairs a few times. Funny enough, it didn't go off even once.

Coop45 said:

As I recall, they said the Gunny couldn't have made the shot. I sent the show an email made up almost entirely of colorful Marine Corps language and haven't watched them since.

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They said they couldn't re-create it, which isn't exactly the same thing. They must have gotten a lot of letters like yours because they revisited it with period correct guns and made it work IIRC.

Did they use a vintage non zoom scope? Maybe easier to fire through an older one that possibly had less internal glass elements.

wickedsprint said:

Did they use a vintage non zoom scope? Maybe easier to fire through an older one that possibly had less internal glass elements.

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That's exactly what they determined. Modern scopes too much glass. Vintage scope they recreated it.

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They switched to a period scope and AP ammo (I think) and it worked. On one of the sniper shows on either History or the Military Channel, Hathcock was interviewed and I thought he said that the snipers always used AP ammo. Don't remember if it was .30 M2 or 7.62.

Sheepdog1968 said:

The spin placed on bullet by the grooved barrel helps,to keep it flying straight. I had wished they had tried it in a smooth bore pistol barrel.

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They did try it with a smooth bore, nothing they could do to the gun or bullet caused the bullet to curve. They got keyholes, but the bullets traveled in a strait path for the entire range.