Can An Underwater Explosion Really Launch Fish Out Of The Water? | MythBusters

[00:00:00]Next up, break out the popcorn cuz Carrie Grant and Tori catch a movie. Oh, >> so we're doing another movie myth. Which one is it?

[00:00:08]>> The cult classic Deep Blue Sea.

[00:00:11]>> Yes. Genetically altered man-eating sharks. Tell me, we're testing the scene when they blow the shark up.

[00:00:16]>> We're testing the scene where they blow the shark up.

[00:00:18]>> Yes.

[00:00:19]>> But there's a twist. They don't have any weapons on hand, so they maggyver it.

[00:00:22]Check this out.

[00:00:24]>> Yep. In this scene from the silver screen, the survivors of some mutant shark mayhem are desperate to finish the fish. So they turn to a harpoon gun, flares, and an electric charge.

[00:00:35]>> We ought to get about two and a half sticks of dynamite out of these flares.

[00:00:38]>> The question is, could this MacGyver style combo really equal a big boom?

[00:00:44]>> From up here, you ought to be able to see me spirit. When I do, you take this end of this cable, hook it up to the positive side of the boat battery, and boom. So, they have two and a half sticks of dynamites worth of black powder from the flares. And it looks like he's going to make a pipe bomb from the cylinder attached to the harpoon.

[00:01:02]>> But how are they going to ignite the black powder?

[00:01:04]>> It looks like he's going to just attach that metal cable to a battery and that's supposed to set it off.

[00:01:09]>> No way.

[00:01:10]>> Way. Because that's exactly what happens >> after upping the Jeopardy by pinning his friend to the shark.

[00:01:18]>> Now, what's he going to do? I mean, if he kills the shark, he can potentially kill his friend. But if he doesn't kill the shark, the shark can get away. Now he's in a dilemma. Kill the shark, kill the friend, let the shark get away.

[00:01:26]What's he going to do?

[00:01:27]>> He opts for the heroic sacrifice, of course.

[00:01:31]But our harpoon toading hero hesitates, perhaps fatally, because the genetically enhanced Super Shark makes for the hole in the fence he'd prepared earlier.

[00:01:46]>> Oh, wait. The hero's free.

[00:01:49]There's a spark. And boom.

[00:01:53]>> Wait a minute. Two and a half sticks of dynamite.

[00:01:56]>> Tower of water, blood, and fire.

[00:01:59]Awesome.

[00:02:00]>> That is a pretty crazy scene, and there's a lot of elements to test.

[00:02:04]>> Okay, let's break it down. First of all, we need to find out if you can ignite black powder with a car battery like they did in the movie.

[00:02:09]>> And we need to see if an improvised harpoon gun like that can go that distance and still be accurate. And then we need to find out more about these flares. Do they even contain black powder? And if so, do they have enough to make the mythical two and a half sticks of dynamite?

[00:02:22]>> And can that amount of black powder make the massive explosion that we saw?

[00:02:25]>> And the guy survived.

[00:02:26]>> Well, we definitely need to test that.

[00:02:28]>> Okay, that's five things to test for one scene. That's got to be a record.

[00:02:32]>> It's the deep blue sea quintet of myths with five separate testable elements.

[00:02:38]It's something to get your teeth into.

[00:02:42]But hold the phone because Tori is starting this myth by making a mark of a shark.

[00:02:48]I started off with a big block of foam.

[00:02:50]I put an outline on the profile and then a top view. Marked that out with spray paint. Cut that out with hot wires. From there, I went and took the foam cutting machine and shaped it down to more sharklike.

[00:03:05]>> Nicknamed Hugo because he's a huge O.

[00:03:09]He's a little cuddlier than his movie counterpart.

[00:03:12]And talking of the movie >> now, while Tori finishes up Hugo, Grant and I are going to start testing the first part of this myth, which is the ignition system. Can you ignite black powder with a battery and a wire? We're going to start with a proof of concept.

[00:03:24]>> And to explain the concept and method for proving it, here's our resident electrical engineer.

[00:03:30]>> Okay, so this is a setup for our proof of concept. Now, people would normally think that it's the spark from the battery that ignites a black powder, but in their setup, it's actually more likely to be the heat. So, what I'm going to do is hook up this battery to a pair of jumper cables. There's a thin wire between the two, and the heat should build up as a current flows through that conductor, and that should ignite the black powder.

[00:03:55]>> Sounds simple enough.

[00:03:56]>> You just touch the positive, and that should ignite, right?

[00:03:59]>> That's right. Everybody ready? Here we go. 3 2 1.

[00:04:06]>> Yep. As expected, the heat emitted by the current being forced through the wire is enough to ignite the black powder.

[00:04:13]>> That's proof of concept.

[00:04:14]>> Yeah, for this part. But now what we got to do is set it up like they had it in the movie.

[00:04:19]>> Well, as we expected, we generated enough heat to ignite the black powder.

[00:04:22]But the question is, will the setup in the movie do the same?

[00:04:26]>> That's the burning question. And some jump cuts later, they're all set to put the movie scene to the test.

[00:04:33]>> Okay, so here's a setup. We have a tank filled with salt water. Inside of the tank is an airtight metal canister.

[00:04:40]Inside of that is black powder. Now that's connected just like in the movie through a steel cable. Steel cable leads back to a 12vt marine battery. Then the other half of the circuit by a jumper cable leads all the way back to the tank and hopefully completing the circuit.

[00:04:59]And baboom.

[00:05:01]So, just like the movie, the metal cable runs from the black powder canister back to the battery. And the only feasible way of completing the circuit, creating the allimportant spark or heat is through the salty seawater.

[00:05:16]But Grant isn't exactly convinced.

[00:05:18]>> I don't think it's going to go baboom because you have a conduction path through the salt water and I just don't think the voltage is high enough to get that amount of heat to ignite the black powder. I guess we're going to find out.

[00:05:32]>> Even though Grant's got his doubts, the team still follows the Mythbusters safety mantra. When using explosives, duck.

[00:05:40]>> Ready.

[00:05:41]>> This is same ignition system as movie.

[00:05:43]In three, two, one.

[00:05:47]>> Nothing. A whole lot of nothing.

[00:05:50]>> I think that by now our hero has been swallowed and digested.

[00:05:53]>> I just don't think there's a good enough conduction path to generate the heat you need to set off the black powder.

[00:05:57]>> Not a very good start to the myth.

[00:05:59]>> No.

[00:06:00]Yep. Film physics have once again proved false. And part one of the test quintet has bombed.

[00:06:08]But with Tori's finished shark now foaming at the mouth, there's still four more parts to reel in. And down at the bomb range, it's time to take a shot at myth part two, the harpoon.

[00:06:20]>> What the heck? Whoa, look at that. What I have right here is the actual prop from the movie Deep Blue Sea. Now, I know it looks like a harpoon gun, but it's actually a linethrower that they've modified. They've added this tip and this cylinder. Now, since they modified it, we're not going to be able to use this anymore. But we have this, a real working harpoon gun, and this is what we're going to use to test to fire our harpoons into our shark to see if a harpoon will even go that far. And how far is far? Well, the range in the movie looked about to 100 ft.

[00:06:52]>> Man, that's far. But before Tori takes aim and fires, here's some harpoon 101.

[00:07:01]>> A harpoon gun is very similar to a rifle, but instead of a bullet, we're using a.38 special blank. Now, the blank once fired will create enough pressure to launch our harpoon, which is sleeved on the outside of the barrel, unlike a rifle where the bullet is inside the barrel. And this will hopefully launch our harpoon to our target. All right, we're ready to fire.

[00:07:20]We're loaded in three, two, one.

[00:07:25]YEAH. WOO.

[00:07:29]BULLSEYE. You know what's great is you hit him exactly where the guy hit him in the movie. I think I might have pinned his arm to the shark.

[00:07:38]Looks like we've confirmed this part of the myth. You can shoot a harpoon over 100 ft and still hit your target. And we pinned the dude to the shark. It's like double confirmed.

[00:07:48]I love this. Meaning part two of the myth gets the thumbs up, making it all to play for at one a piece.

[00:07:59]>> She may be the smartest animal in the world, but she's still an animal.

[00:08:05]>> Carrie Byron, >> come to mama.

[00:08:09]>> Do it.

[00:08:10]>> Tory Balleti and Grant Imahara.

[00:08:15]They're shooting at myths from uh the deep green sea.

[00:08:20]And so far in their quintet of chaos, it's one part busted, one confirmed. So, what's next? Now, for the next part of this myth, we're going to focus on the explosives, and those are contained inside of the flares. Now, we're going to stay here on the bomb range because it turns out taking a flare apart is pretty dangerous.

[00:08:42]Remember in the movie they casually crack open a box of 10 flares to harness so much gunpowder that >> we got to get about two and a half sticks of dynamite out of these flares.

[00:08:52]>> But how much black powder is there in a flare?

[00:08:55]>> Now we don't know how much black powder is in one of these flares. So what we need to do is find out how many of these flares we need in order to make two and a half sticks of dynamite.

[00:09:05]to find out Grant and not Tori for obvious reasons is going to very carefully cut open some flares. In order to protect myself, I'll be wearing the fire suit. Uh that's in case the black powder ignites. I've got a tubing cutter. What I'll do is attach that to the flare and crack it open. Take out the flare part and then pour the black powder into a tray where I can measure how much black powder there actually is inside of the flare. All right, remember if you catch on fire, stop, drop, and roll.

[00:09:35]>> What's clear immediately is that opening a cartridge flare isn't quite as easy as the movie made out.

[00:09:41]>> It looks as though The Martian has figured out the Earth tools.

[00:09:45]>> In fact, it takes a full 12 minutes for Grant to crack it.

[00:09:49]>> Okay, I think I'm through.

[00:09:53]>> With the dangerous part over, Grant measures the amount of black powder, and it's pitiful. These are exactly the same type of flares they used in the movie.

[00:10:02]However, the big difference is that there's only 1 and 1/2 g of black powder in here. It's not like like the guy did. Yep. The numbers just don't add up. The mythical 2 1/2 sticks of dynamite is about 450 flares worth, not the 10 they harvest in the movie.

[00:10:24]And that means number three hits the busted bin.

[00:10:28]Okay, so where do we go from here?

[00:10:30]>> Well, I think it's time we blow stuff up.

[00:10:32]>> I think we're going to need three booms.

[00:10:33]>> The more the better.

[00:10:35]>> One using the amount of black powder they could physically contain in the canister used in the movie.

[00:10:39]>> Then another one using the two and a half sticks of dynamite they mention in the dialogue. And if that doesn't get us the same kind of explosion we see in the movie, I say we do whatever it takes. So with Hugo and tow, the team hit the road. their destination, the secret backcountry quarry where they had their last TNT party.

[00:11:05]>> You guys ready to blow up a mutant shark and save the world? You bet. We're back at the Cory Lake. This time, we're going to blow up a shark and we're going to show a few different things. We're going to show one, uh, is the bomb he made in the movie going to make that big of an explosion?

[00:11:20]Two, is it enough to kill a shark? There should be enough black powder in this flare to give us two and 1/2 sticks of dynamite. And three, if you're in the water and you're that close to the explosion, are you going to survive?

[00:11:33]This is going to BE A GREAT DAY. Except we're going to destroy Hugo.

[00:11:40]>> Yep. Hugo will be going out with a bang.

[00:11:42]But first, it's this fish's last swim.

[00:11:48]>> He's gaining on us. He's going for carry. He likes the girl.

[00:11:54]>> That's a great idea. How you getting back on the boat?

[00:11:56]>> I haven't thought about that yet.

[00:11:58]>> Next, Hugo gets that sinking feeling as the team weighs him down, positioning him 10 ft under, about the same depth as the shark in the movie.

[00:12:07]>> He's going.

[00:12:09]>> Oh, that was sick.

[00:12:12]>> In the water, the shark looks even more menacing. But the shock wave from the blast could be our hero's biggest concern. Now, to find out if our hero is going to actually survive this crazy blast, we have this. Now, this rig was created by New Mexico Tech. They have installed OCO pressure discs. Now, at 500 PSI, these things will burst. 500 PSI is certain death for the hero. So, we're going to be able to find out from 15t increments how far away our hero has to be from the blasts to be able to survive.

[00:12:46]New Mexico Tech is a world leader in explosion technology and these custommade rigs and OCO rupture discs are the perfect addition to this test.

[00:12:56]>> So, let's go in easy.

[00:12:58]>> So, 50 ft from Hugo, the first rupture rig is delicately placed in the water.

[00:13:05]>> All right, the buoys work down.

[00:13:08]>> 50 ft represents the distance from the shark that the hero was at the time of the explosion. But to cover all bases, the team positions rupture rigs at 100, 150, and 200 f feet away.

[00:13:23]It's been a monumental effort, and finally, everything's ready for some shark obliteration.

[00:13:29]>> Sharks in position. All the rupture discs are in position in 50ft increments.

[00:13:33]>> All we need to do now is strap some explosives to that shark and blow him up. Frank, >> Carrie, Grant, and Tori are mimicking a five-point movie myth with an explosive fishy finale.

[00:13:54]And with three of the quintet accounted for, duck, because here come the big booze for our deep blue sea exploding shark myth. Here's the plan. First, we're going to use the harpoon that they use in the movie, completely filled with black powder, as much as we can stuff in there. If that doesn't give us our movie explosion, then we're moving on to what they said they have, which is the equivalent of two and a half sticks of dynamite. Now, if that doesn't work, then we move on to a special Frank concoction, which is going to give us the movie explosion that we're hoping for.

[00:14:25]Remember in the movie, a small canister of black powder liquefies the shark. And at 50 ft away, our hero survives. But what about in real life?

[00:14:36]This is the harpoon from the movie. Now Frank has made us a canister, the same dimension.

[00:14:41]>> Your father wanted you to have this when you were old enough.

[00:14:45]It's elegant weapon.

[00:14:48]>> It works.

[00:14:49]>> Now, to give this myth the best possible chance, we're going to fill this with black powder. But this only holds 28 gram. Now, to get an explosion, two and a half sticks of dynamite worth, you need 681 gram of black powder. This is nowhere near 681 g. But we're going to do this first because that's what the movie did. And see what happens? Out on the water, Frank carefully lays the charge. But will 28 g of black powder really shake the shark?

[00:15:17]>> This is going to be shark explosion.

[00:15:19]Ready to fire in 3 2 1 fire.

[00:15:27]>> Uh, Houston, we have a problem.

[00:15:29]>> I love it when they try to hit the button and the bomb doesn't go off.

[00:15:33]That's the best part.

[00:15:34]>> Everything points to a misfire. At least until Frank calls the team in for a closer look.

[00:15:41]>> That's it.

[00:15:41]>> That's it. What you see is what we got.

[00:15:43]>> So, it went off.

[00:15:44]>> It went off and that's what we have left. It was less than exciting. It was so less than exciting. We thought we had a malfunction, but as you can see, we didn't.

[00:15:52]>> So, sorry, Houston. We didn't have a problem.

[00:15:57]The same size canister is used in the movie 28 g didn't even cause a ripple.

[00:16:03]>> It did no damage at all.

[00:16:05]>> There are three things we're looking for to confirm our mutant shark explosion from the movie. First of all, a tower of water. Big explosion. Second of all, we have to see completely obliterated shark. And third, our hero has to survive. Tower water. Uh-uh. Little bit of smoke. Obliterated shark. Just a little bit of a flesh wound. He's coming back to eat you. Finally. Did our hero survive? Absolutely. So, one out of three. Not so good for the myth.

[00:16:30]>> So, what now?

[00:16:32]>> We're going to up the stakes. And this time, we're going to go with what the guy said in the movie, which is 2 and 1/2 sticks of dynamite worth of explosive. Frank's preparing a vessel that will contain this amount of black powder. And we're going to set that off and see what happens to our shark, our hero, and also if we get the same kind of geyser.

[00:16:52]>> Of course, there's a problem here. 680 g of black powder, the 2 and 1/2 sticks of dynamite is now so big and weighty, it could never have been fired by the harpoon. But that's Hollywood for you.

[00:17:06]>> This is mutant shark with the equivalent of two and a half sticks of dynamite. On your go, Frank.

[00:17:11]>> Fire in the hole. Three.

[00:17:14]Two. One.

[00:17:17]YEAH. DID >> YOU SEE THAT?

[00:17:20]>> YEAH.

[00:17:21]>> It blew the BUOYS OFF THE SHARK.

[00:17:23]>> AWESOME.

[00:17:24]>> Quite as big as the movie, but >> I think the shark is dead.

[00:17:30]>> Yep. As the team go in for a closer look, it's clear that Hugo has gone belly up.

[00:17:36]>> It's not looking good for Hugo. That's his stomach right there. Oh my gosh. But much like McJagger, Carrie can't get no satisfaction.

[00:17:47]>> 26 Dino is definitely a better blast.

[00:17:49]And we got to see a little bit of a boom. It was still not the 100 foot in the air tower that we saw in the movie.

[00:17:56]So though that shark is maybe in two pieces, he's not completely decimated and liquefied in the air like it was in the movie.

[00:18:04]>> In other words, part four of the quintet also bites the dust. And that means it's time to go large.

[00:18:12]This is it. This is the one we've all been waiting for. This is where we're going to get the huge explosion that we see in the movie. Now, the first one we tested, it gave us hardly anything. Then we did two and a half sticks of dynamite. We destroyed the shark. But still, we didn't get that giant tower of water splashing into the air. Now, we're going to get that. And we're probably going to kill the shark and kill the guy all in the same moment. This is going to be awesome. So, for the grand finale, Hugo, like Humpty Dumpty, is pieced back together. But not for long because this next boom will be big.

[00:18:46]>> He's kind of in one piece.

[00:18:48]>> We were out here and we did surfing with explosives and we used 200 lb of cast boosters.

[00:18:56]>> Go.

[00:18:56]>> Well, we're going to crank it up a few notches today. We're going to use 400 lb of cast boosters and we're going to decimate the shark. It's going to be magnificent.

[00:19:07]>> You heard it, folks. Stand by because this is going to be magnificent.

[00:19:16]>> In three, >> Carrie, Tori, and Grant have made a shark called Hugo Bubble and Trouble.

[00:19:24]And now they're going to turn him into Rubble with 400 lb of TNT.

[00:19:30]>> Set for this is kind of cool. We've got Frank out there on the boat with his crew strapping two body bags full of 400 lb of explosives to our shark. We're standing at the perimeter at a safe distance so we can watch this blast. We have a feeling that the tower of water might hit the top of that hillside.

[00:19:45]>> Yep. Hugo is going to be Hugh gone.

[00:19:49]>> This is Exploding Shark. 400 lb of explosives. On your go, Frank.

[00:19:53]>> Fire in the hole.

[00:19:55]>> Fire in the hole.

[00:19:57]>> Yeah.

[00:19:58]>> Three, two, one, fire.

[00:20:04]>> Ah, Houston. Me again. This time we really do have a problem.

[00:20:09]>> Oh, this is every bomb tech's worst nightmare.

[00:20:12]>> Oh god.

[00:20:14]>> Oh, >> 400 lb of explosives just sitting there.

[00:20:19]Misfire. This is really, really stressful. This is the part of explosions I really, really hate.

[00:20:24]>> This is a really, really dangerous situation. probably the most dangerous kind of situation for these guys because uh they don't really know what has gone wrong, but something's gone wrong and the explosives are already rigged out there. So, they're going to check it out and maybe see if the blasting cap came out.

[00:20:42]>> Very carefully, Frank and his team move in. They have to remove and replace the faulty blasting cap.

[00:20:51]One false move and they're dead.

[00:20:53]>> You kidding me?

[00:20:56]This is like the worst experiment ever.

[00:21:00]>> But after 40 breath holding, white knuckled, cold, sweat minutes, the team thankfully are good to go on take two.

[00:21:10]>> YEAH, >> THIS is it.

[00:21:12]>> We're ready to commence countdown.

[00:21:15]>> Go ahead, Frank. Start.

[00:21:17]>> Fire in the hole.

[00:21:19]FIRE IN THE HOLE.

[00:21:22]3 2 1 4.

[00:21:32]>> Now that is what I call a Hollywood boom.

[00:21:39]>> Crazy.

[00:21:39]>> That went that went like what what 500 ft at least.

[00:21:44]>> I don't think the shark made it.

[00:21:46]>> I think the shark is liquefied.

[00:21:48]Explosion 3 delivered a nearperfect match for the movie scene.

[00:21:52]>> Look, there's a big chunk out there, >> sending shark debris all over the lake.

[00:21:58]>> Want to see it again?

[00:22:03]That was exactly what I imagined it would look like. I mean, that explosion was huge.

[00:22:11]I think that's my new favorite explosion. The spray of water probably went like 500 ft in the air. Those buoys went at least 600 feet in the air. It was raining down shark. And that was definitely more than two and a half sticks of dynamite.

[00:22:26]>> You go. Is you gone? Tori's going to cry tonight.

[00:22:31]>> A You go.

[00:22:35]>> So, having at last recreated the Hollywood explosion, they can finally answer the last part of the myth. Would the hero have survived?

[00:22:45]Remember in the movie the team estimated he was 50 feet away. So the closest rupture rig is the crucial one.

[00:22:53]>> That is totally ruptured. All of them.

[00:22:55]All >> blown all the way through.

[00:22:57]>> All four of them are ruptured.

[00:22:59]>> 50 ft. That deer would be dead.

[00:23:02]>> All right, let's go check out the 100footer.

[00:23:05]>> 100 ft is also in the death zone.

[00:23:08]>> So that's 100 ft all ruptured. You'd be dead at 100 ft. It turns out that to have survived, you'd have had to have been 150 ft away, way further than the movie hero.

[00:23:19]>> We checked the rupture disc at 50 ft.

[00:23:22]Every single disc was completely burst.

[00:23:25]100 ft, same thing. 15200 still intact.

[00:23:29]So that means for us there is certain death at 50 ft and at 100 ft. So we think our hero is completely obliterated.

[00:23:36]>> And you know what that means? Part five of the myth is busted and it's time to wrap things up.

[00:23:43]>> That explosion was insane.

[00:23:44]>> Yeah, I think that's my new favorite explosion. Okay, so we started out this myth by breaking it down into five parts and the ignition system, the amount of black powder from the flares, the size of the explosion, and the hero surviving all busted.

[00:23:57]>> The only thing that actually worked was the harpoon gun.

[00:23:59]>> Yeah, but even the harpoon gun was problematic. I mean, the amount of explosives you would need to get that big of an explosion. I mean, the harpoon would never even fly. It would be too heavy. you would just be like.

[00:24:10]>> So, while this has been a totally cool myth to test, and I love the way we broke it down, this one is totally and completely busted. I agree.

[00:24:17]>> But can we see the explosion again?

[00:24:19]>> Heck yeah.

[00:24:28]>> That was crazy.