MythBusters was one of the defining shows of early 21st-century television, and its
stars are proud of the show's safety record.
But that's not to say that it was completely accident-free or that no eyebrows were harmed.
Here are the biggest accidents and injuries on MythBusters.
Anyone who has watched MythBusters knows that the set-up for each experiment includes plenty
of safety precautions to protect the cast and crew and innocent bystanders.
"It may not look like it, but we're professionals.
Do us a favor…"
"Don't try this at home!
Whoa!"
But one day, the unthinkable happened.
In 2011, the MythBusters Build Team were testing whether a stone cannonball could be fired
with the same force as a metal one.
To examine this myth, the team headed out to the Alameda County bomb range and brought
along a self-made cannon that they had used in prior episodes.
To start the test, they loaded in a metal cannonball, lit the fuse, and Boom!
A puff of smoke ... but where was the cannonball?
As the MythBusters would later discover, it had apparently bounced off the ground and
was sent flying into a residential neighborhood 700 yards outside the range.
"And when we realized that that had happened, we called off the experiment immediately to
help out any way we could."
From there, the cannonball followed a hectic trajectory: According to the Los Angeles Times,
it smashed a ten-inch hole through one house, bounced off the roof of another, and ultimately
came to a stop after hitting a parked minivan.
The MythBusters have described this incident as their "Worst Day Ever" - and rightly so.
"I think we all have the same worst possible day ever and it's gonna be cannonball."
Thankfully, no one was hurt but regardless, the network promised to pay for any damages,
and Adam and Jamie personally met with the affected families to express their sympathy.
The MythBusters also made sure to be even more safe with their projectiles in future
seasons.
The cannonball incident aside, the biggest accidents on MythBusters almost always happened
to the MythBusters themselves.
In the 2008 season, Grant, Kari, and Tory decided to test whether a cloud of sawdust
that was lit on fire would produce a huge fireball, as a recent viral video had shown.
To examine this, the Build Team built a cannon that shot sawdust into the air, which was
immediately lit with a flare.
To their surprise, the resulting fireball resembled the one in the viral video almost
exactly.
But the curious team decided to take things up a notch and built an even bigger cannon.
This time, they filled it with a highly flammable powdered coffee creamer.
When the cannon fired, the massive cloud of creamer ignited a second later - with the
Build Team standing just a few yards away.
Kari detailed the incident, saying -
"And then the wind changed, and it started coming at us [...] I had so much fear in my
heart, I just started running."
Thankfully, it stopped its explopsion a few feet away from the group, leaving them all
completely unscathed.
In the 2015 season of MythBusters, Adam and Jamie investigated an urban legend which said
that a rock caught in a lawn mower could be propelled with enough force to kill a person.
So, they started by removing the safety features from some commercial lawn mowers and running
them over a makeshift rocky lawn.
They found that the mowers were capable of launching rocks with enough force to lodge
into styrofoam.
Additional lab tests confirmed that the flying rocks had similar or even more energy than
a gun-fired bullet.
This alone was enough to declare the myth "Confirmed."
But Jamie wasn't satisfied.
He had so much fun testing the myth that he decided to construct a massive, high-powered
'Lawn Mower from Hell.'
But the dastardly device turned out to be even more destructive than Jamie had intended.
When the giant mower hit a bump, the axle broke, sending the rapidly spinning 50-pound
blade flying out of the front of the machine.
Even with no injuries, the MythBusters decided that the machine was too dangerous for further
use, and Jamie had to abandon his pet project.
"Well you know, I intended to go over the top with my lawnmower from hell, and…
I guess I did."
In one of MythBusters' very first episodes, Adam and Jamie investigate whether using a
cell phone at a gas station can lead to an explosion.
Testing this myth required the duo to build a gasoline-filled glass chamber, which they
would then attempt to ignite with a phone.
The episode featured many mini-explosions as the MythBusters tried to figure out the
proper concentration of gasoline to test the myth.
But for one of these explosions Adam was standing just a little too close…
"I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine…
Am I missing an eyebrow?"
Adam had a moment of panic when he thought his hair was gone, but he was lucky - the
blast only singed off part of his eyebrow.
The most unfortunate part of the incident was that Adam had a date the following day
- but hopefully his companion was impressed by his dedication to science.
According to Jamie, some of the worst injuries to occur on MythBusters were broken fingers
"Ironically, broken while handling safety equipment.
Those heavy glass panels that we put up are kind of bad to put your fingers in-between
if you're not careful."
One notable injury of this type occurred to Adam while filming an episode for the 2014
season.
The MythBusters were testing whether an exploding water heater could potentially put out a nearby
fire.
While assembling the blast shields to house the explosion, Adam got his hand stuck between
two of the heavy panes and apparently broke the base of his index finger.
According to Adam, he had already forgotten about the injury by the time the episode aired
a few months later - that is, until his mother called to ask him if he was alright.
Luckily for the worried mom, Adam's hand was already fine by then.
Is it possible that the Confederate States of America could have built a two-stage rocket
during the Civil War and launched it from Richmond to Washington, D.C.?
Adam and Jamie dedicated a whole episode of the 2005 season to investigating this unusual
myth.
In less than two days, the MythBusters were able to construct an entire rocket using technologies
that would have been available to Civil War-era engineers.
But there was one major mishap along the way.
Adam and Jamie were pretty confident that they had built a working rocket, so they decided
to perform an indoor ignition test.
They put the rocket in a big metal shipping container and rigged it so that it could be
ignited from outside the lab.
When Adam pulled the switch, they heard a massive boom, and smoke immediately began
pouring from the workshop.
Things were looking much worse on the inside, with huge clouds of smoke and numerous small
fires filling the lab.
One camera and a few pieces of lab equipment were completely melted by the blaze that the
rocket had produced.
After the workshop was restored, the MythBusters took the rocket outside, where it only traveled
a meager 500 yards.
The myth was declared "Busted."
According to Adam, the scariest experience he had on Mythbusters was the 2010 episode
where he escaped from a submerged car.
The concept is already terrifying enough, but it's even worse when things don't go as
planned.
The MythBusters had already attempted a series of sinking-car escapes in the 2007 season
but decided to make the scenario even more realistic in 2010 by flipping the car upside
down as it fell into a lake — with Adam and a safety diver inside.
The experiment started off fine.
But as the unbalanced car filled up with water, it actually flipped rightside up and then
upside down again.
Even worse, once water had completely filled the car, it was a murky brown and burned his
eyes.
Adam found that he was completely unable to escape under these conditions, so he tapped
out, asking the safety diver to pass him the oxygen tank regulator so he could breathe.
But, like the car itself, the regulator was upside down, and Adam learned this terrifying
lesson —
"And an upside down regulator will give you air, but it also gives you a lot of water."
Now disoriented and choking down water, Adam boldly reminded himself to keep a level head.
He was soon able to open the car door and escape.
The first myth that the MythBusters ever tested was whether a car affixed with rocket motors
could go flying off a ramp at a speed around 300 miles per hour.
In the initial 2003 trial, the MythBusters found that a rocket-boosted car did travel
significantly faster than normal, but nowhere near 300 mph - nor was it capable of becoming
airborne.
Unsatisfied, Jamie and Adam returned to this rocket-car experiment in a 2007 episode.
This time, they decided that mounting the rocket tubes inside the trunk of the car would
allow the system to be more stable and spent a good portion of the episode rigging a Chevy
Impala with this new configuration.
They also built a massive ramp that ideally would allow the car to take flight.
When it was time for the test, Jamie and Adam watched from the sidelines -
"It's heading towards the ramp!
Or not…"
While not one of the most dangerous accidents, this was certainly one of the most disappointing.
But in a tenth-anniversary episode, all five MythBusters joined forces to revisit the rocket-car
legend one final time.
Anticlimactically, the myth was "Busted" - the car smashed into the ground after only a few
seconds of flight.
Besides Adam, the Build Team's Tory Belleci seemed to suffer the majority of the show's
injuries.
Tory's worst injury probably came in the 2010 season, during an episode where the Build
Team was investigating whether a person could hold onto a ledge indefinitely.
To test this myth, the MythBusters went to the top of an abandoned building, where they
would wear a harness and take turns dangling from the roof.
Tory went first and was able to hold on with his bare hands for almost a full minute before
letting go.
Unfortunately for Tory, his fall wasn't clean.
As he descended, his shin smashed against an open window frame of the concrete frame
below.
When Tory was released from the harness, there was a big gash on his left leg that was bleeding
substantially.
But Tory the daredevil kept a positive attitude, telling his companions -
"I think you should be glad that I was the guinea pig.
Ohhh…"
In another episode, Kari and Tory went to a goat farm to find out if goats can really
be startled into fainting or falling over.
That day, however, the first to fall over wasn't a goat but Tory himself.
While he was holding a handful of goat feed, one curious goat jumped up and kicked Tory
in the groin.
Whether it was accidental or intentional may never be known for sure as the goat has declined
to comment.
Surprisingly, that wasn't the only low blow that Tory received during his time on the
show.
During a different episode, he and Grant created a model of Ben Franklin's famous kite.
But the small kite began to whip around uncontrollably before the rogue device collided with Tory's
crotch.
No wonder Tory once said -
"If I had a nickel for every time I got hit in the [groin] on this show, I could retire
[...] I hope I could still have kids."
In the 2014 season, the MythBusters tested whether Hollywood car stunts were realistic.
They "Busted" the notion that it's difficult to push your opponent off the road during
a car chase, finding it to be quite easy.
Likewise, they "Busted" the possibility of one speeding car driving up another like a
ramp.
For the final myth, the MythBusters tested whether a novice driver could tip his car
sideways and drive around on two wheels.
Adam and Jamie constructed a half-ramp that they would drive up with the left side of
a car, elevating it onto its two right tires.
But, after hours of attempting to use the ramp, they found themselves completely unable
to control a half-elevated car, or even to keep it on its right wheels for more than
a few seconds.
When they called in a veteran driver for guidance, their attempts improved somewhat ... until
they didn't.
In one particularly bold test, Adam was able to drive the half-elevated car for almost
ten seconds.
"I personally think it'd be great to roll it, but they tell me that's bad."
But then he tilted it too far and quickly lost control.
The car flipped completely onto its side and then onto its back, skidding for several yards
before grinding to a halt.
It was an intense-looking crash: The windows shattered, spraying the upside-down men with
glass.
Thankfully, both Adam and the expert driver were okay - even though neither had a helmet.
This myth, too, was declared "Busted."
In 2009, two years before the cannonball fiasco, the Build Team decided to test a particularly
silly myth: Can a person literally have their socks knocked off by an impact?
They started the test by putting socks onto the show's famous test dummy, Buster, and
hitting him with a massive pendulum.
His socks remained on his feet - so, it was time to go bigger.
The Build Team acquired 500 pounds of ANFO, an ammonium nitrate -based explosive, and
brought it to a quarry outside the town of Esparto, California.
They placed sock-wearing mannequins at various distances from the blast point and prepared
to examine the results.
But the outcome of the test was overshadowed by the sheer size of the blast.
The massive explosion sent shock waves through the town of Esparto, shattering several windows.
According to KCRA-TV, one woman was even knocked off her couch by the powerful blast.
Luckily, no one got seriously hurt - besides the MythBusters' reputation, that is.
Esparto residents criticized the show for not warning them about the explosion in advance,
and MythBusters had to pay for several window replacements.
A later episode revealed that the MythBusters never returned to the Esparto quarry after
that.
It's probably for the best.
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