Mythbusters Do it Again

[Gun Geek]

A recent Mythbusters (Discovery Channel) episode tackled the hollywood myths surrounding what happens when people get shot. They do not fly backwards 20 or 30 feet. You surprised?

The Mythbusters got their favorite test subjects (a dead pig and buster the crash test dummy) and proceeded to unleash lots of lead. The subjects were hanging from a finely balanced sharp hook so that any movement would cause them to fall to the ground.

The bullets mostly just went through the pig and didn't knock it off the hook. They shot it with a slug and hit bone - pig dropped striaght down. The crash test dummy got to wear a vest. He didn't move when shot either.

[Merlin Orr]

Sorry but you are wrong.... I saw Gene Hackman get shot in the right eye last night by Sharon Stone and he turned a complete backflip and landed 15 feet back!

[EricW]

The only "problem" is that Richard Davis was standing guys on one leg, then shooting them in the chest with a 308 YEARS before Mythbusters figured it out.

[shred]

You're just jealous Erik (in his Adam Savage persona) got to shoot a bunch of full-autos.

Mythbusters hardly ever does anything relevatory, but they do what they do in a nice mass-market-appealing manner.

Woulda been cool for them to throw in some of the old clips of Davis shooting himself with the .44 though.

[ErikW]

I liked them debunking free energy machines, especially their antagonistic attitude. "Don't send me any e-mail!"

They shoot at the Chabot range, where a local USPSA club shoots.

What are the gun-related myths they've done? I know there are more than these:

- aircraft decompression

- exploding auto gasoline tank

- bullet knock-down

[shred]

- What is bulletproof? A good one in which they blow holes through the 'blast shield' they'd been hiding behind all season

- Ice (and frozen meat) bullets, re: undetectable assassins / JFK

- .22-replaces-fuse (it even pops)

- Tree Cannon

[ErikW]

Was the ice bullet thing busted but meat bullet plausible/confirmed?

[bobert1]

Ice bullet was definitely BUSTED

[Vlad]

Penny from the top of the Empire State building was rather amusing. They used a 6.5mm Mauser (if I remember correctly) shooting blanks and with a muzzle attachment to shoot pennies. The placed the penny in a strange device at the muzzle and used the blanks loaded at different levels to get different speeds out of the penny. FUN!

[M.E.Anglin]

On the Ice bullet,they used the same powder charge as a regular round, I think it might have been going a little to fast, even a real bullet will desinegrate if going to fast, I wonder what would of happened if they slowed it down????

I thought about adding a little gelitin with it???

[TMC]

I liked the chicken through the airplane windshield.

Thawed chicken, through 1 pane of glass and craked the second.

Frozen chicken, straight through 14!

[folsoml]

Their playing card throwing machine was pretty cool too. They've truly got the best job in the world though.

[SmittyFL]

I'd like to see them experiment with hollowpoints. I don't know if it's come up here but this guy http://www.theboxotruth.com/8/ shoots different stuff to see what happens.

He shot hollow points through jeans and rags and it didn't expand. A buddy of mine pulled a MG 180 gr. JHP just sticking out the back of a 4 x 4 that holds our practice steel. I'm sure it was him that missed and not me. But anyway it was in near perfect condition. Probably could have been reloaded again.

Not trying to turn this into a tactical topic in the least, but kinda makes me wonder if hollow points are worth anything. Unless the person you're shooting is naked.

[Matt Cheely]

Unless the person you're shooting is naked.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Haha. I can just see that being too darn funny....

[benos]

That guy's fun.

[kimel]

<MajorThreadDrift> FWIW...the "hollow point" in a MG 180 is a by-product of the manufacturing process and not necessarily designed to expand. Stack that up against something that is designed to expand like a Hydrashok, Silvertip or Gold Dot and you will see something entirely different.

Same goes for the Sierra Match King bullets. They don't necessarily expand worth squat but their Game King bullets expand like crazy. I have seen rock chucks shot with SMKs move quite some distance before succumbing to loss of blood. Similarly sized rock chucks hit with a SGK dropped right where they stood repeatedly. That is why Sierra tells you that SMKs are not hunting bullets.

</MajorThreadDrift>

I am starting to notice signs that the Mythbusters, having achieved fame and fortune, are starting to decline content wise. Hopefully they will pull it up a bit for the next season.

[sfinney]

I get annoyed with them when they proudly proclaim "myth busted!" after a short and very narrow focused "experiment" on a subject...... its one thing to say something is unlikely to happen, based on the limited tests that they conducted, in those exact restricitve conditions..... but to say something CAN'T happen based on few junior high level tests is downright close minded and to assumptive..... just bad scientific process.

But they ARE entertaining to watch.

[robomanusa]

On the Ice bullet,they used the same powder charge as a regular round, I think it might have been going a little to fast, even a real bullet will desinegrate if going to fast, I wonder what would of happened if they slowed it down????

I thought about adding a little gelitin with it???

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Your right about that.

I have desintegrated several hornady sxsp's that I bought to load in my wifes 223. They do not hold up to 220 swift velocities and never make it out of the barrel at around 4200fps, LOL

but they do work good at 3100fps from the 223

[Vlad]

On a related note Penn and Teller took on the JFK myths in last weeks "Bullshit!". Though not using ammo, Penn's 3 shot time with the Carcanno was 3.8sec vs the "impossible" 5.6 and then they shot a specialy prepared melon to show you why JFK's head moved back as opposed to forward.

They seem more progun whenever I see them. In the first season they made fun of a "survival school" by pointing out the the money would have been better spent by buying a case of ammo.

[M.E.Anglin]

thanks for noticing ROBO, one day i am going to try it at slower speeds

[Clay1]

On the hollow point issue, I think that in one of this months NRA publications - probably the Rifleman they discuss the 6.5 mm round and it's application. It is being loaded with a hollow point bullet that is not designed to expand and it is a military round.

On bullets coming appart before they are supose to take some SX 22 cal bullets and drive them hard in a swift and they just come unglued at a certain velocity point.

[sargenv]

(off topic kinda...)

Back 15 years or so.. I was a witness to see what happens to Sierra JHC 115 gr 9mm bullets pushed to about 1400+ fps. These things shed jackets like crazy and we found bullet jackets embedded in the paper targets we were shooting at @ a distance of only 25 yards away. This was an early 9mm major load (before I knew what IPSC was) fired from a Sig 226 loaded long. I believe he used Gecco Brass (Fiocchi?) since it had the most case capacity and a big case full of Blue dot (some huge amount for a 9mm case, 9 gr or more? Don't try this at home.. This was in the days before Blue Dot was reformulated. Apparently it has different density now than it did 15 years ago. He was accused of firing a 45 (hey, you with the 45, stop firing so fast!) when he got a little bit out of hand on the slow fire range.

(back on topic)

Lately I've not been wathching mythbusters, I think one of my favorite episodes was the cannon made of a tree stump with a carved stone cannon ball. I especially liked it when they plugged that cannon and put several pounds of black powder into it to "see if it could take an overcharge".

Of course it shattered into little bits and pieces

Vince

[ErikW]

Vince you'd really like the episode where they fill a cement mixer truck with a few hundred pounds of ammonium nitrate. I just wish they'd use their slo-mo cameras on that one.