Scariest Explosion Adam Savage Ever Witnessed
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 14 ม.ค. 2025
- What’s the scariest explosion Adam Savage witnessed during filming? Would Adam change how firearms were portrayed if he were filming MythBusters today? Also: Would he fly on a U2 spy plane again, and what song would Adam choose as the opening theme of MythBusters? Adam answers these questions from Tested members AlChemicalLife, vinylkey, Charles M and heyben138, whom we thank for their support! Join this channel to support Tested and get access to perks, like asking Adam questions:
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Fuel-air explosive, I believe, is the technical term. I used to do pyrotechnics and special effects and have done powdered and liquid fireballs. Both are fun, but when done right those powder fireballs are hard to beat for the giant cloud of fire you can get...
Adam, guns don't kill people, people do. People need to look after each other and each others welfare to stop these killings from happening...
There's a great video over on the Periodic Videos channel in which they literally drop glowing charcoal into a cauldron of LOX.
The LOX causes the charcoal to burn bright, with the remnants eventually sinking to the bottom of the LOX and going out.
I actually found it rather pretty to look at.
Seen your video on super glues and wanted to tell you that in most automotive parts stores I've been seeing JB weld makes a superglue that is cured with UV light. I've used it to glue a lot of things back together and if you are good with the light you can also make bridges and "glass" fillers
Beatles imagine ... because you always did what if things
"Particulate explosions are particularly pernicious" is an awesome sentence.
I was just looking for this comment! 😂 I couldn't stop laughing! ❤
Alliteration is absolutely awesome.
Was about to type this lol.
Perhaps: Particulate Pyrotechnics are Particularly Pernicious.
(But I’ll totally give Adam a pass on this one since it was already so good.)
Ok everyone, say "Particularly pernicious particulate explosions" 10 times fast! 😄
Mythbusters never portrayed guns like toys. They always showed how important safety is.
exactly, education is the best way to be safe around firearms, or anything that can be dangerous. Its the lack of understanding, lack of knowledge and lack of respect for things like guns, that cause accidents. We need more exposure to firearms, more education at the mainstream level, and through that exposure and education, will a greater level of understanding and respect for them be achieved.
If only certain actors could accept this level of responsibility.
@@LoneWolf051 100% agreed. Treating firearms as mythical tools for destruction doesn't help anyone. The tragic topic we never seem to talk about is the kid finding dad's loaded gun in the closet and killing their sibling--because they didn't understand how it worked or how to keep safe around them (as well as dad being a jackass for not securing his things).
I have three young kids. One of them is old enough to have his own air rifle and the others are not far behind. I've showed them all, from a very young age, what firearms are, what they look like, how they operate, and how to safely handle them--and of course, never to touch them without adult supervision! They know there is nothing inherently dangerous about these machines, but they've been taught that in the wrong hands or with poor judgment, they're a tool which can cause devastating trauma. I've taught them appropriately around power tools, kitchen appliances, etc. as well.
Demystifying firearms and teaching safe & responsible handling is the single best thing we can do to save lives, especially the lives of children.
The Mythbusters were not, and are not "gun guys", by any stretch. So many of their 'gun myths' could have been answered by a real gun guy before the first commercial break.
@stay_at_home_astronaut most of the myths could, but then we wouldn't be watching this video because every episode would be 15 minutes.
One counter I'll toss out regarding "explosions you don't expect" being the scariest are the explosions you *do* expect, but that don't happen. Approaching an explosive object that should have gone off but didn't is always terrifying, no matter how small it may be.
yeah, my ears immediately perked up when i heard that part, and my mouth wanted to say "the Scariest Explosion is the thing that SHOULDVE exploded, but didnt"...cuz now, you know that it CAN explode, just not WHEN it can or will
Adam/Tested, just wanted to say that I have 9 nieces and nephews, and many of them have asked me about guns for various reasons. I have used Mythbusters as my first example of explanation on how to handle and be safe around guns, while also being educational, specifically because of the care you guys took to remain gun positive while also dealing with the risks. I do not think you guys could have feasibly handled gun safety better in the time you were dealing with it, and you should be proud.
T-Rex Arms (on YT) has a great beginner series on handling firearms. One of the best virtual trainings I've seen.
One time my father is a master machinist and was once transferred to a new location and after the regular tour he walked around and looked at things a bit more in detail and he noticed that in this entire facility every single horizontal beam was covered in a layer of extremely fine metal dust. These were also areas where the workers would weld a lot and everything from small to large scale so oxy-acetylene torches were used. So when he saw this dust he gathered everyone of his new subordinates, went to one of these beams and took a pinch of dust which he let fall to the flame of a torch. He said that before anyone would start welding again, every beam would have to be cleaned. Needless to say, there was no disagreement.
metal powder IS FUEL! so few people know this when it comes to grinding/machining metal. absolutely insane.
our shop teacher taught us how dangerous metal powder could be in one of the coolest ways ever. he took a plate, stuck it with an arc welder to heat it up, then broke the connection. then, he dumped a bunch of metal powder from a little bucket that he’s built up over the years onto the plate to let it cook up nice and warm. THEN, he took an oxyacetylene torch, opened the oxygen valve a full turn, and pointed it at the hot filings. FWOMPH. massive flash (thank god he told us to put our lenses down), spray of sparks, and the plate now had a three-inch wide crater of bubbled semi-liquid metal in the center. went from half-inch thick to maybe two-thirds.
"Playing with nitroglycerin" is not a phrase i thought id hear today 😂
How about, "Playing with Thermite!" 😂 Myth Busters got to play with Thermite a lot!
@@paulvamos7319 To my understanding thermite is a lot more controllable at least in the sense of when it will go off
@@paulvamos7319thermite is pretty controlled though... its hard to light off and doesnt explode 😂
@@paulvamos7319I've played with thermite and done thermite welding. However, I've never had the privilege of playing with nitroglycerin 😂 huge difference between the two, honestly.
My dad was a welder long time ago, he told me a story about him and a colleague. They were welding panels on the side of a silo, it was a tricky job and not very safe. During this job my dad saw the silo bulge a bit and a second later a panel that his colleague was standing in front of blew of the silo and knocked the wind out of the guy. They forgot about the dust particles in the silo...luckily they could both walk away from it.
As a USAF F-16 mechanic who worked with LOX, I cannot confirm or deny how violently various foods will explode when thrown into the afterburner of a jet after being dipped in Liquid Oxygen.
an oxygenated hot dog is about 70% of the way to a frag grenade lmao.
I bet Twinkies were up there. All that spongy cake, all that hidden surface area...
I helped a science teacher set up a small explosion involving a tin, a candle, some flour and I think a bicycle pump (this was almost 20 years ago!) the resultant explosion was… staggering. It was for a demonstration for his class, happened outside in the playground and the kids were stood waaaaay back. Definitely a woah moment.
I had lots of backyard fun doing that as a kid. Never was a paint can, a garden hose, a funnel and a candle so much fun. Children's science experiment books were different in the 60s.
As junior students, we used to demonstrate these on parent's days, along with handmade electric motors.
@@randyshoquist7726 we tend to get a bit more upset when our kids make things go bang these days!
Yep… similar to bottle rockets..
@@owensparks5013 same school, different science teacher (they were all mad) built a canon out of a large poster tube, cotton wool, some hydrogen and I’m pretty sure the same bicycle pump. The projectile was a tennis ball. We tested it, nearly took our heads off when the tennis ball bounced off of a wall and shot over our heads. Demonstrated it to the kids, upset some parents. Not for the reason you might think though, the kids were at a British Army School in Germany and their parents were Tank Regiment soldiers. They got upset because we hadn’t invited them!
As an adult, I've never been very interested in guns. As the son of a former policeman and hunter, I grew up around firearms and served in the military. In both situations safety was much more rigorous than I see in most firearms advocates. I'd say my father was probably more vigilant than even the military standards, based on how often he popped me in the head if I pointed a rifle any direction other than where it should be. He ran too many accidental shooting calls. When I watched Mythbusters, I saw that Adam and Jamie had an appropriate respect for the risks in handling them. It always seemed like experiments in controlled situations, not careless advocacy. Firearms are interesting marvels of physics and a huge part of history and entertainment. If anything, I thought Mythbusters demonstrated why they should only be used responsibly, under strict controls. Repeatedly, they showed how firearms could be dangerous to people who may have only seen them used in media, without showing realistic consequences.
To add to that, part of the problem is that most people only see firearms being used in an irresponsible way, i.e. only in movies. Look at virtually any movie poster - from vintage James Bond to the Terminator - nearly every one has the actor gripping the gun with his finger on the trigger, often pointed at himself or others. Add to that how unrealistic and mostly unsafe the actual use of firearms in action sequences are. Instead of shielding young people from firearm content, perhaps more consistently showing a healthy, accurate, and safe use of firearms, instead of the fetishized fantasy portrayals of modern media, is the better route.
That firearms statistic he cites is deliberately disingenuous. It calls children 18-20 year olds to include self and gang violence. It is the result of manipulation of the data for a particular headline.
@@mf-- I think focusing on the precision of his statement might be missing the point. Something can be true, without being precise. The increase in school incidents is not debatable. If anyone owns a firearm, they should take a safety class and lock it up. No student should touch a firearm without supervision and in a controlled situation. The times are different than they were when I was young. Unthinkable things are reported on so much that the unthinkable can become accessible to immature or unstable people. Young people confuse the ability to inflict suffering on others as a means to gain power or a method to gain respect.
It's worth noting that Adam said "it would be part of the conversation" - which I understood to mean it would be part of the decision-making during production. Not necessarily that it would change what we saw on the show.
The blend of safety and excitement that mythbusters showed is one that as a child you don't really get to appreciate fully. But as I've gotten older I appreciate that safety and fun were never juxtaposed. It was never "safety is getting in the way of our fun" but rather, "safety is facilitating more fun"
“We were playing around with nitro glycerin…” Sentences we don’t want to hear. LOL
I have a feeling that the Venn Diagram of "Watched Mythbusters enough for it to leave a mark" and "Commits Crime" or "Uses firearms nefariously" has vanishingly little overlap, if any.
Depends on your definition of 'crime'. If its 'offence punishable by prison time', then sure. But if its 'does anything illegal' then approximately everyone is guilty of something. Speeding, pirating digital content, violating some byzantine local law that never got taken off the books, etc. Its almost impossible to have not broken at least one law by about age 10.
@@dgthe3 That is a very important distinction that you make and I appreciate that you make it rather than just use the second half of that like I see so many do when the conversation comes up.
I still remember the cement mixer explosion. I had my new speakers for about a day and man, was I not ready for that one. Good times.
That’s the one that impressed me the most! That cement truck just disappeared!
I think my favorite part of that is when they said they forgot to push the button on the slow mo camera so the slow mo is just frame by frame of the normal camera.
I highly recommend watching some of the animated recreation videos produced by the USCSB (United States Chemical Safety Board). They have their own TH-cam channel, and have featured several particulate explosion accidents, including the Imperial Sugar explosion of 2008.
Adam: “...to see if liquid oxygen was safe enough to...”
Me: “No."
Just no, liquid oxygen? ADAM
Have some self preservation instincts, please
I never thought you all glorified guns in anyway. Always appreciated the safety you put into handling them. Cheers
I always felt that they appreciated guns but also thoroughly respected and treated them as the deadly objects that they were.
I was close enough to a grain elevator when it popped off. The thump was impressive. It was more impressive when we determined that it was about 20-25 miles away.
You're NOT responsible for the actions of people hellbent on doing harm to others! If that were the case, then you'd have to shut this entire channel down! You guys were ULTRA serious on Mythbusters when it came to handling firearms!!
Mythbusters was always consistent in portraying guns as the dangerous weapons that they are. Taught kid me exactly how to respect them.
"Am I missing an eyebrow" is conspicuously absent from this video.
that line's so iconic i mentally read it with the pause between "missing" and "an eyebrow?"
@@soulreapermagnum because that is how it's read
I imagine it's because it wasn't super scary in the moment but rather just startling. I don't know that for sure but his laughter afterwards leads me to believe so.
For decades, firearms were trailing far behind vehicles when it came to child deaths. As recent as 2019, firearms were still far behind vehicles, with vehicle deaths very slowly reducing and firearm deaths very slowly increasing. Then 2020 happened, which had no noticeable effect on firearm deaths, but dropped vehicle deaths so sharply that it fell below firearm deaths. So the reason firearm deaths are on top now isn't because of some sudden increase in firearm violence, but because a lot of people suddenly stopped driving, and thus stopped hitting kids with their cars.
It's very sad that guns are one of the top causes at all but the effect of quarantine on the statistics is important to remember, yes.
4:50 Correction for the stat cited here: This is ONLY true if you include 18 and 19 year olds as "children" (sometimes these stats will even include 19 and even 20 year olds!). This stat is clearly skewed by gang violence. If you don't include that, leading cause of death among children goes to car wrecks and then various medical conditions.
Particulate explosions were a significant hazard and regular occurrence when I worked in a metal powder mill decades ago, the roof was explosively vented to reduce rebuild costs…
Ironically, while the local fire brigade hated our location (not only for the metal powder, but lots of molten metal furnaces which don’t react nicely to water anywhere near them), they really detested the nearby flour mill, which would have put a serious dent in the town of 100,000 population if it had gone up in flames.
We had a plastics factory go up in my city, apparently the fume extractor had failed weeks prior and management had refused to do an emergency replacement on it. It killed 9 workers, 2 bystanders, levelled the silo and vaporized the roof/ac/fan on it into fine dust. The explosion was heard 2 cities over and destroyed windows in a 2km radius. I guess the fumes got dense and warm enough to self ignite, which set off the rest of the plastics, luckily most of the explosion went up, not out as the factory was beside a lot of medium density housing and a highway. The silo design saved lives there.
My city has/had a famous flour mill that exploded several decades ago. What remains of the structure is a museum now, and as part of their tour they actually educate kids and adults on the dangers of flour explosions and similar things, which is probably the only reason I'm aware of particulate explosions being highly dangerous.
I can't believe that he didn't mention the concrete mixing truck explosion...
I was expecting this to be the one that scared him the most
I don't think it was scary to him. They knew what was going to happen. The scary part comes from the potential dangers of something most people don't realize the dangers of.
They were wayyyyyy off in the distance and it was controlled.
I loved that episode 3.2.1. Poof
@@Berm_Blaster Yeah, when you know what to expect things get less scary. Its the 'oh my god, I had NO idea' stuff that scares you.
Elfman is the man when it comes to musical scores that stick in the head. Been an Elfman aficionado since 1980 and the Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo (something he's embarrassed about now).
Why would he be embarrassed? They were an imaginative masterpiece of bizarre kitsch. I
An interesting fact is that firearms are not as available today as they were in the 30's-70's (you could mail-order one straight to your home, which you cannot do now), nor is there any real difference in the capabilities of them. What has changed is the way society acts and how people deal with their problems. Kids these days see killing people (regardless of method) as a viable means to deal with their problems, or even for having fun (70yr old man bludgeoned to death by kids using a traffic cone). It's almost like they have been conditioned to believe there are no consequences for actions.
Stop thinking that taking away a weapon will solve the reason. It won't. Taking away a weapon only deprives those who would use to defend themselves of their lives. Address the hate, both inward and outward, first.
Not really an explosion but I know you reacted in terror when the water heater blew through the several floors of the faux house. Perhaps it was the awesomeness and insanity that a water heater could blow through rafters with ease.
If I remember correctly they didn’t think that it would go so high and were worried where it would land. So yeah, I’m sure it was terrifying.
Thats the thumbnail for this video i think. I remember Adam saying that he hated the tension of not knowing when it would go off...
One local commercial building inspectors has a photo taped to his clipboard of a site he visited after a water heater did similar.
I got mildly nervous after that one.
My bed was 2 floors above our water heater.
This was the first one that jumped to my mind too. I think its because water is one of those ubiquitous things that its easy to get caught off guard by how destructive it is. Though to be fair its more heat and pressure in that case and not the water specifically but still. A water heater is such a benign object to blow a house to bits.
It's a shame to hear adam repeat the "bullets were the leading cause of death in children" thing, because it's not true.
There was a point during covid where nobody was allowed to go out and do anything (thus artificially reducing the numbers of other deaths) where, if you counted adults as children (artificially inflating the numbers of gun deaths) and weren't picky about homicides vs suicides (which obfuscates the actual issues) that yes, you could have claimed that. But to get there requires such a twisting of the numbers that there's not really any way to call it an _honest_ look at the issue.
@@Arikayx13 "To try and remove suicides ..... is to cherry pick the data around death by firearms" That is insanely dishonest when you know damn well that that the majority of those people would've found a different way to kill themselves.
So happy to fond this channel. Adam, your enthusiasm is so contagious and happiness enducing and is needed so much.
Not me shouting at the screen like it's a Jeopardy episode when Adam said "She Blinded Me With Science" and Howard Jones.
We dont have a gun problem we have a country that doesnt separate psychotic people from society almost every shooting the person involved was known to be crazy and showed many signs of violence
Weird that Adam says they would change the portrayal of guns when they showed proper respect that made guns look fearful and scary. I thought the M1 Garand was some illegally devastating gun that only a national television show could get a hold of. Nah, its America's rifle that anyone can get.
He's pandering to the ignorant hoplophobes that make up an unfortunately large part of the modern demographic. The show properly portrayed the respect and safety-conscious mindset that is appropriate when dealing with firearms.
Paper dust in a paper mill is also one example..
Paper and pulp mills usually go up from the alcohol not from particulate explosions.
"we did some small scale experiments with liquid oxygen"
*insert spongebob YOU WHAT! gif here*
When you say licensed music for the Mythbusters OP, I can't look past Weird Al's "Dare to be stupid" :)
It may just be me, but I thought of Lulu's "Boom-Bang-A-Bang"...
Sorry, I'll get my coat...
Out in Galvaston, maybe more like a town outside of it I can't recall exactly, but I remember pulling into port there years ago and the taxi driver pointed out an anchor and plaque/memorial some ways inland, supposedly it was the location the ship's anchor landed when a grain carrier exploded there years and years ago
Edit: Ah I was mistold or misremebered, looks like this was actually a 1947 bulk carrier explosion of ammonium nitrate, but without a doubt, in particular bulk carriers, LNG carriers, and ammo ships have these concerns to worry about for sure
The town is Texas City just north of Galveston. And it was loaded with fertilizer, iirc.
1947 Texas City explosion, ammonium nitrate rather than grain.
It was ammonium nitrate. A lot of firefighters lost their lives that day.
On the subject of potentially VAST dust explosions.... I did some work in a 'well known' MDF/particle board manufacture plant, stuck the job out 3 days. I was crawling under machinery to clean... While it was on.
Now these were oil fired presses, lot of hot things in horribly close proximity to a lot of chemicals including formalin and naturally Formaldehyde/ formalin laced wood dust. Your eyes burned just working in there, next to the press room were massive vats of chemicals including formalin/Formaldehyde the place was a giant bomb... It had it's own fire service, unfortunately a chocolate teapot if it exploded they were in the blast radius. So you can imagine safety there is tip-top. Nope, they have had a major fire every year, deaths, horrific injuries, and polluted a river.
Why are all the MDF factories so terrible? It almost feels like industry standard to be awful and polluting. Our cabinet vendor has gone through a dozen MDF plants looking for safe and environmentally friendly ones... but after a death, an EPA fine, or a fire they realize the plant lied to them. Apparently they stopped switching because all of them were the same stories over and over, so they quietly dropped the environmental tag from their MDF door lines.
@@littlekong7685 Because it's cheaper to pay out death benefits than to maintain cleanliness. That simple.
Isn't the leading cause of death from firearms still accidents? I know shots in anger have increased but I'm pretty sure death from accidents or poor safety standards still kills more.
Based on FBI 2019 data, the leading cause of firearm deaths is suicide (approx 2/3), followed by gang violence (approx 80% of the remaining third). Of the remainder, accidents due to poor safety practices. Firearms are NOT the leading cause of death among children. That statistic is intentionally misleading because they include 18 and 19 year olds and the last time I checked 18 and 19 year olds were considered adults in the eyes of the law, not children. Remove the 18 and 19 year olds and the leading cause of death among children remains the same as it has for many decades. Accidents such as falling out of a tree, falling off swings, athletic accidents, etc...
I worked with LOX when I was in the Air Force. That stuff is very scary if you aren't careful.
I think Weird Al would've been a good pick to make an opener for Mythbusters.
There was a feed storage building in my hometown that exploded after a fire broke out, thankfully the firefighters hadn’t gone in yet
The scariest explosion for me was repeatedly demonstrating the difference between igniting a balloon filled with hydrogen and igniting one filled with 66% hydrogen and 33% oxygen in my science class. The first time the H2/O2 went off it took me by surprise and blew three of the labs ceiling tiles off; the heat and pressure from that was... amazing(?) and was so scary that every year I've done it since it's always made my cheeks clench more than they should.
Both gases are extremely explosive, but when combined are inert. Chemistry is awesome.
At 4:30 with your glasses off, you appear to be reading your phone with _just_ your left eye...?
One of the strangest things about the uptick since 2017 in school shootings and mass shootings at schools is that gun ownership percentage hasn't really changed more then a percent or two. I think part of it is like bridge jumping suiciding, it gets widely covered and that causes those thinking of suicide to use that option knowing it will get covered. Ever since the media really toned down bridge jumping the number of suicides that way has drastically decreased.
it is way over covered, and the data to get the "leading cause of death" headline is thinking of included up to 19 years old.
it's almost all gang on gang death, probably in the cities where it's not legal to carry for defence (or near enough to make no difference)
I've seen the "child age" used for gun deaths go as high as 25 years old.
I think that the phrase "PLAYING AROUND with nitroglycerin" might sorta point to something important.
Awesome, one of my favorite TV presenters is a huge fan of my favorite musician. Thomas Dolby lived in the Bay area for years and used to windsail at the Golden Gate State Park.
That experience and looking over at Alcatraz inspired him to write one of the best songs I've ever heard called 17 Hills dedicated to the Bay area.
Feels like you should never use the words ‘playing around’ and ‘nitro glycerin’ in the same sentence 😂
C&H sugar in Crockett showed me a safety video about particulate explosions at sugar mills. I was there doing Ultrasonic NDT on the rails for their cranes that unload sugar off the ships. Had to be cleared by DHS to get on the dock. Right under the bridge.
Automotive Paint booths. I mean what could go wrong, highly atomized paint suspended in MEK, with 90Kv of electricity. LOL. Yea, booth fires are SCARY AS FRIG. It's why Deluge system pour 3000+gallons and keep going until somebody shuts it off. Saw one once...I never want to see one again.
Many would point out that its not our gun culture that is the main cause of our current problem with mass shootings. Rather its our warring culture, and the way our government has dehumanized many cultures/peoples around the world
I used to live in a lumber mill oriented town and the local plywood factory had a sawdust fire rip from one end of a hundreds of feet long building to the other. Weirdly no one was seriously injured.
When you’re speaking about best explosion, I am a retired fire chief. We had company that made sawdust in all different particle size and we had a dust explosion that about 18 inch I-beam twisted pretzels and took a cyclone off the top of the building that was 20 foot diameterdust is there very explosive and this company had all kinds of safety equipment, including blasting, diverters, and all kinds of detection system management the whole area people just underestimate the potential of energy that is there
Mythbusters' potrayal of gun safety is responsible for an entire generations knowledge of gun saftey...from remote triggers in shipping containers to personal protective gear to being willing to talk about what they do to the human body. Especially in contrast to some other shows that were specifically about guns.
Even watching Mythbusters now with my kids, I never feel like the show trivialized guns, or made them seem like not a weapon created for destruction. The entire show was always very respectful of their capacity and I will always appreciate that.
In 1878 the Washburn A flour Mill exploded in Minneapolis. The blast could be heard 10 miles away, it also threw granite chunks 8 city blocks. The fireball was said to be hundreds of feet high. Two more mills close by also exploded and two across the Mississippi burned. The amount of flour in America fell by a quarter to a half after the disaster depending on who you asked.
The museum built in the ruins is very much worth visiting! Minneapolis resident here, I've been to the museum a couple times and it's a good way to see just how dangerous these things can be, as well as learning a lot more about Industrial Revolution flour milling than most people know
Blinded Me with Science was Thomas Dolby's song. Howard Jones was annother ( also quite good) musician.
Howard Jones recently appeared on Live At Daryl’s House. There was an instant where I had to separate him from Thomas Dolby when I saw it. Thomas Dolby went on to do work in cell phone ring tone compression by founding a tech startup in San Mateo, CA. Adam should know better. 😅
Dust explosions are no joke. The paper mill where my father worked for his entire career fought a constant battle against dust build-up in places where you wouldn't expect it, and as one of the plant engineers, he was always involved. One summer the company sent him to an offsite training couse on boiler and hazmat safety, and among the photos of blown-up factories and whatnot in the course materials were some truly arresting shots of what was left of an exploded flour mill.
I love how Adam immediately realizes how insane the sentence "We were playing around with nitroglycerine" sounds
An instrumental version of "Weird Science" by Oingo Boingo woulda worked great as a theme song. For those who don't know, Danny Elfman was the singer and guitar player for that band.
Dirty Jobs used a Faith No More song as their theme.. So they could have at least asked Danny Elfman 🤔
As someone who grew up watching mythbusters, I'm glad you guys handled guns the Way you did. Mostly because I have an academic view of firearms that I am pretty sure I got from watching mythBuster's as a child
The coffee creamer explosion was extremely memorable for me. I have seen the after effects of dust explosions and definitely respect what they can do, but that was almost life changing. As far as guns being portrayed. I find it almost odd that there is a concerted effort to make sure people hear all about gun safety. I was raised in a area and maybe a family that taught gun safety from an early age. It was life as I knew it. A gun was a tool to protect our safety and our animals, no more dangerous than a tractor or a combine.
Best coffee creamer explosions we've seen used a large coffee can with about 1/2" of black powder in the bottom and a couple pounds of creamer on top with a fuse through a hole poked in the side to set off the black powder. Makes a wonderful 'WHOMP'!! and large fireball that really puts off the heat. Great fun!
Most of my American friends were never taught about gun safety apart from "don't touch a gun you find" so you must have had a more responsible family. We don't have many guns in my country but we're still taught how to be safe around them.
Speaking of explosions on Mythbusters - The explosion that surprised me the most, and by that, I mean I had no idea it would be quite so radical, is the water heater explosion. This had nothing to do with a natural gas explosion. This was just what happens when a water heater (electric) under pressure and extreme temperature finally gives way and explodes.
Seriously, I thought a seam would burst, and scalding hot water would shoot out the split until the pressure equalized. I had no idea the water heater would zoom past the ISS into Low Earth Orbit (LEO). Okay, maybe not that dramatic, but that heater took off, quite literally, like a solid-fuel rocket. It was there, and then gone. It took out the floor above, and the roof, and kept on going like a hot knife through butter. I was counting the seconds it was aloft and wondered if the thing was ever going to come down. My recollection is that the swivel on the camera mount hit its limit and we never did see the apogee of the heater.
Yes, the cement mixer in the quarry was bigger but I kind of expected it to be so. But, a water heater? Seriously?
For me, this was the most unexpected result/explosion I ever witnessed on Mythbusters.
You mentioned liquid oxygen. I'm reminded of seeing this old safety training film about the hazards of LOX put out by the US Navy or Air Force, I think? It's pretty tongue in cheek through the whole thing. Then at the end they hit you with footage of a full body burn victim who looks to be in the process of dying. Stuff is scary.
Scary is high concentration ozone… (one of the few chemicals I have worked with that has a half life measured in minutes) (Chlorine Trifluoride and Aluminium Tetraethylate are up there too).
I used to work on aircraft in the Marine Corps, and the aircraft had LOX bottles that had to be refilled. The guys handling the LOX had to put a clean drip pan under the aircraft as the LOX might overflow during the process. There was usually some sort of oil or fuel that had spilled on the flight line, and the goal was to ensure that the LOX never touched it. My understanding was that it would ignite if the LOX touched the fuel or oil. Same thing for shoe polish... the folks handling the LOX were supposedly not allowed to use shoe polish (the rest of us were expected to), because the shoe polish would also spontaneously ignite upon contact with the LOX. There's a lot of ways to get hurt working around aircraft!
Still watching, the cement truck one was gnarly, just 3. 2. 1. *it's gone*
Thank you for sharing! I always love your stories! ❤
Showing the volatility of floating particulate is a huge part of the Martians final act and it showed me that standard stuff can be turned into an explosive if done incorrectly.
I'm old enough that when I hear "Blue Angels" I think of the A-4 Skyhawk in the Blue Angels paint job. 😄
Oh yeah, saw them in Atlanta in '76 for an IPMS convention
Blinded me with Science was used on a couple excellent Mythbusters commercials. I really loved the animation style in them!
I am a chemistry watching this and I had the exact reaction Adam described. I routinely work with liquid nitrogen solvent traps and live with the constant anxiety that I've forgotten something and am going to find that terrifying light blue liquid in my trap when I take it down
Great video, Adam...👍
Thanks for the video
really didn't expect a shout out to Thomas Dolby, although in a way it's very fitting for Adam to be a big fan of his. Most self explanatory for a Mythbusters intro would of course be She Blinded Me With Science, but with how many times Mythbusters seems to fade to black when I'm watching it nowadays, maybe Commercial Breakup would fit too.
"particulate explosions are particularly pernicious"
Flour blows up pretty good. Saw mills are usually very active on fire supression dust to the dangers of dust
Off-topic, but I just noticed how much younger his glasses make him look when he took them off.
I never realized they can do so much fashion-wise
nothing good ever came from a sentence that started with "we were playing around with nitroglycerine"
If you are interested in scary explosions and volatile chemicals (to the point where most chemists won't touch them) the book Ignition by John Drury Clark is quite an entertaining read about the development of liquid rocket fuels
The irony of Adam wanting "Blinding Me With Science" is that for a promo for a season they did do a parody of that track, "They're busting myths with science!"
It's funny Adam mentions She Blinded Me With Science as a potential Mythbusters theme song because I remember the original Discovery Channel promos for Mythbusters before it ever even aired used that song in the commercials
Ok you pissed me off a little here Adam. I was a kid when mythbusters was on TV and I never once thought that you guys portrayed firearms in an improper manner, you guys always always always preached the safe handling of firearms. The problem isn't that guns exist, or that people own them. They're just an easy scapegoat for people to blame right now. I'm sure someone's going to throw some sort of statistic about fire rate and capacity at me, yet I doubt any of them have any actual experience in operation of them unlike myself. Psychopaths will do Psychopath things, no amount of legislation is going to stop it, nor will any amount of restriction on the function of these items. Criminals don't follow laws... that's literally why they're criminals.
I still say to this day that Cement Truck Explosion was and still is the greatest "OMG" explosion in all of Mythbusters lol.
I too, thought for sure he was going to reference the cement truck explosion for "scariest"🤔
"Well...there's your problem!" Still one of my favorite lines ever
My mom is a kindergarten teacher. Nothing has ever happened at her school but the other day she sent me a text that said something like, "We're on lockdown for an unknown threat." And I _freaked out._ I must have texted her three dozen times in two minutes which felt like hours. Finally, she replies, "False alarm." Ugh. Those two or three minutes where she wasn't answering me was just gut wrenching. I know it's _nothing_ compared to what people must have gone through where something awful has happened and I'm very thankful and lucky it was a false alarm.
My point is that it is absolutely unconscionable that we accept this status quo where educators and school staff and kids have to be constantly vigilant and worried about this kind of thing. It's just so ridiculous and heartbreaking and awful.
Wooden cannon explosion flung giant pieces BEHIND you. Whoa.
Accidents and unintentional injuries are the leading cause of death in children not bullets... so its not quite true
The pure madness of that 1000 pound coffee creamer fire. (Potentially 2000 pound equivalent of explosives to my knowledge) My first impression then was that if they had used only 200 pound they would have been gone, as the initial explosion was too weak for 1000 pounds. Luckily most of the creamer just cooled down the flames instead of burning.
If I may offer a different perspective, one must look on the bright side of bullets being the main cause of death amongst children: disease is not the main cause of children's death. Starvation is not the main cause of children's death. Exposure to the elements, animal attacks, wandering off into the wilds and never being seen again are all not the main cause of death in children. Smallpox not only doesn't kill children anymore, it doesn't kill anyone, it's gone. People can focus so easily on the bad, it's important to remind ourselves on the good, on the dozens of demons we've slain rather than the few left in front of us.
one liter of liquid oxygen expands to 860 liter of gaseous oxygen and if you introduce some type of petroleum product to Lox it will expand instantaneously with explosive force
Guns aren't the problem, insane people are. We don't blame the car when someone dies in a drunk driving accident, we blame the negligent drunk for misusing the vehicle. The same logic applies to whenever a terrible person does something terrible while using an object, except if that object is a gun.
Guns are tools, tools can be misused. its that simple.
I remember in the early to mid 80's in school chemistry lessons, replicating a custard factory explosion with a paint can a candle a bicycle pump and half a teaspoon of custard powder. Quite an impressive "explosion".
Great video sir
i was told that dust explosions are worse than gas explosions because there's more combustible material and therefore more energy in a given volume. that was during my job training in the chemical industry, so it's a safe bet that they know what they are talking about.
Mythbusters had ZERO to do with increased school shootings
I would have to say They Might Be Giants could do an amazing intro!
Also a Mythbusters question do, you ever think about the old cars that were destroyed in the show?
I know at the time they weren't super old but now...😢
"Particulate explosions are particularly pernicious" - The Mill City Museum has entered the chat.
Live right near this, been to the museum more than once! It's a fascinating visit, and seeing how large and sturdy a structure can be destroyed by such an explosion really imparts the proper respect
Every time Adam gets up from his table to grab something I want to hear an Elfman "do-do-do, do-do-do" cartoon walking music.
Whoa! You got to work on avalanche mitigation!?! I grew up in telluride, did you help with the anual mitigation effort on Ajax Mountain?
Even though you meant to say Thomas Dolby, I love that you called out Howard Jones. Love his music.
"The scariest explosions are the ones you don't know about before they happen."
Checks out.
I've seen (in the news) the side of a factory that made custard powder after the dust was ignited....very scary.
As for the music question, there's literally a ZZ Top song that sounds almost exactly like the Mythbusters opening theme song and I can hear that guitar perfectly in my head but I can't for the life of me name the song.