This was the finale, right? I remember hearing that...
Lethal Weapon toilet bomb: Okay, not the most savory of subjects, but they covered it pretty well. In some ways it was surprisingly realistic, in others not so much. Sitting in, err, that position for as long as was shown would be unsafe (and wouldn't he get pretty dehydrated going without food or drink for 12 hours?), so that part went on implausibly long, perhaps the one truly busted part of the myth. And the liquid nitrogen would evidently have prevented the detonation altogether, at least until it thawed, so the film was greatly understating the effectiveness of that technique.
By the way, the use of liquid nitrogen for neutralizing bombs has been around in the media for a long time. It was used in the 1969 Mission: Impossible episode "Live Bait," for example. So given that it actually worked here, maybe it's been a tried and true technique for decades.
I think what impressed me the most was how good a job the cast-iron bathtub and bomb blanket did at protecting Buster. I'm wondering what's in a bomb blanket. (Google-Google-Google) Okay, apparently they're made of Kevlar and "ballistic fibers," and seem to be mainly for containing shrapnel, but apparently have some ability to redirect or absorb a shock wave as well.
http://www.global-security-solutions.com/BombSuppressionBlanket.html
http://www.bulldogdirect.com/bomb-protection
As someone who writes action scenes from time to time, I find it useful to know that you can survive a bomb blast if you're in a sturdy enough enclosure. As long as it isn't superheated by a nuclear explosion or tossed miles through the air like the fridge in Indiana Jones 4.
Like Jamie, I've never actually seen the Lethal Weapon movies, but I'm aware of some of the memes they generated. So I was kind of wondering if Jamie was going to say something about getting too old for this, err, stuff.
Flying in V formation: I found the idea of this interesting, but the testing was kind of routine. It was cool to discover just how far back a plane's vortices and turbulence can stretch -- miles for a jetliner. Which is no doubt why airports don't have planes take off in too quick succession from the same runway -- they want to give the wakes time to settle down.
I'd say it doesn't seem like a practical technique for commercial aircraft; they'd have to stay far enough apart that it would be difficult to maintain the formation and gain fuel efficiency. But it seems like something that could work for groups of fighter jets or something. In fact, isn't it sometimes done already in those contexts?
I was wondering if the struggle to stay in the wake in the "conga line" position would actually expend more fuel due to all the adjustments. It seemed it kinda did for at least the rearmost test plane. I remember a similar principle from a car myth they did once, though I forget which one -- that something that was supposed to increase fuel efficiency required so much starting and stopping and speed variation that it burned more fuel overall.
Some of the flight tests looked pretty dangerous. I know they went with expert stunt pilots, but still, it seemed like a risky position for the Mythbusters to be placed in. Although it seems they made sure to keep Kari in the safest position, the lead plane. Maybe because she's a mother and has a child depending on her, they're more reluctant to put her in danger than Tory or Grant?
Lethal Weapon toilet bomb: Okay, not the most savory of subjects, but they covered it pretty well. In some ways it was surprisingly realistic, in others not so much. Sitting in, err, that position for as long as was shown would be unsafe (and wouldn't he get pretty dehydrated going without food or drink for 12 hours?), so that part went on implausibly long, perhaps the one truly busted part of the myth. And the liquid nitrogen would evidently have prevented the detonation altogether, at least until it thawed, so the film was greatly understating the effectiveness of that technique.
By the way, the use of liquid nitrogen for neutralizing bombs has been around in the media for a long time. It was used in the 1969 Mission: Impossible episode "Live Bait," for example. So given that it actually worked here, maybe it's been a tried and true technique for decades.
I think what impressed me the most was how good a job the cast-iron bathtub and bomb blanket did at protecting Buster. I'm wondering what's in a bomb blanket. (Google-Google-Google) Okay, apparently they're made of Kevlar and "ballistic fibers," and seem to be mainly for containing shrapnel, but apparently have some ability to redirect or absorb a shock wave as well.
http://www.global-security-solutions.com/BombSuppressionBlanket.html
http://www.bulldogdirect.com/bomb-protection
As someone who writes action scenes from time to time, I find it useful to know that you can survive a bomb blast if you're in a sturdy enough enclosure. As long as it isn't superheated by a nuclear explosion or tossed miles through the air like the fridge in Indiana Jones 4.
Like Jamie, I've never actually seen the Lethal Weapon movies, but I'm aware of some of the memes they generated. So I was kind of wondering if Jamie was going to say something about getting too old for this, err, stuff.
Flying in V formation: I found the idea of this interesting, but the testing was kind of routine. It was cool to discover just how far back a plane's vortices and turbulence can stretch -- miles for a jetliner. Which is no doubt why airports don't have planes take off in too quick succession from the same runway -- they want to give the wakes time to settle down.
I'd say it doesn't seem like a practical technique for commercial aircraft; they'd have to stay far enough apart that it would be difficult to maintain the formation and gain fuel efficiency. But it seems like something that could work for groups of fighter jets or something. In fact, isn't it sometimes done already in those contexts?
I was wondering if the struggle to stay in the wake in the "conga line" position would actually expend more fuel due to all the adjustments. It seemed it kinda did for at least the rearmost test plane. I remember a similar principle from a car myth they did once, though I forget which one -- that something that was supposed to increase fuel efficiency required so much starting and stopping and speed variation that it burned more fuel overall.
Some of the flight tests looked pretty dangerous. I know they went with expert stunt pilots, but still, it seemed like a risky position for the Mythbusters to be placed in. Although it seems they made sure to keep Kari in the safest position, the lead plane. Maybe because she's a mother and has a child depending on her, they're more reluctant to put her in danger than Tory or Grant?
