hey everybody adam savage i'm here with my k i'm in a really good mood today
and i am answering tested patron questions about
mythbusters today's mythbuster question comes from the green room andrew green
he says and i quote often the program moved from urban myths to movie myths as urban legends are
often based on some sort of truth or historical evidence did you prefer these as science-based
experiments or did you prefer to recreate the elaborate fictional scenarios from movies knowing
they were often only created for storytelling purposes rather than actual real science
sorry just making sure i wasn't recording in slow-mo mode a mistake i have made storytelling
purposes rather than actual real science andrew i have a bone to pick with your question here
it's specifically the phrase actual real
science actual real science isn't inherent in any of the stories we tested
because it's not independent of a narrative
it's dependent upon that narrative and the science exists in the testing of the proposition so
i submit one that urban legends are just as fantastical as any movie plot and almost
none of them are true and happened in the way that they were listed two the science is in the
methodological breakdown and so the question is do you have something that is a testable proposition
like in the fast and furious movies if your tank falls out of a c130 and you want to aim where it's
going to land can you do that by firing said tank that's a testable proposition it is maybe
one of the most ludicrous things i've ever heard in my life but it's also a testable proposition
i submit there's no less real science in there than there is in the boston molasses flood of 1898
i think um before cane sugar we used to get most of our sweetening with molasses which used to be
stored in these big above ground tubs no kidding and one of them in boston broke through of its
levee or border it's like a big above ground pool picture an above-ground pool like 30 feet
in diameter filled with molasses spilled out of this and actually a couple of people died there's
an urban legend we never tested because frankly we couldn't figure out how to get that much molasses
or how to afford that much molasses and then how to spill it onto a busy city street
but hang on you uh so another phrase you have in here andrew and i'm not picking on you i'm just
tackling your question in the pieces that i see that need tackling you say
urban legends are often based on some sort of truth or historical evidence
sure stipulated did you prefer these science-based experiments now you're editorializing
you're claiming that our movie myth tests were not science-based
well how would you assert that i'm simply taking a proposition and i'm testing it
i know i know you're not telling me that i didn't perform science you're not
there's no judgment in this question i i don't feel it i know i i'm being
light-hearted about tackling your phrasing andrew but it it it is
you got to watch the gatekeeping because while i'm sad that we ever did a story like pyramid
power which is a full woo-woo myth and we should have never tackled it the fact is
some of the most beautiful depictions of what is possible
in science were done in the service of some of the most ridiculous stories
and when you combine those two things you make somebody's brain go wait a minute and
right at that second where someone watching what you're telling them goes wait a minute
you've created a scientist you made someone ask a question about what they're witnessing
that is that's that's science right there do you have a question about what you see
how are you going to test that question
and so one of the things that i loved about the movie myths they were all completely absurd but
if there was a testable proposition in there we would test it and i i know this line gets
blurry but i will submit i will tell you one story from behind the scenes that we didn't do
so when we were doing the raiders episode one of the things we were uh we were considering
doing was could indy have outrun could india out run the ball yeah could india run the ball so we
were actually going to build a track outdoors with scaffolding and piping make a track for a ball we
bought a zorb one of those um inflatable balls you can get inside of we bought one of those it was
exactly the right size and we had been percolating on the other raiders myths when we were starting
to really get into this one and actually i think that jamie did a whole like rubberized
foam treatment on the outside of the ball to make it look like a stone he did a beautiful job it
looked great and then i remember specifically jamie turned to me and stevo and he was like
there's actually nothing here the stone is of x weight and x composition we can't know either of
those because it's fictional therefore the speed at which it rolls and the conditions under which
it's rolling are impossible to replicate because they never existed there's no assertion made
about large stone balls in general it's just a very specific one and the moment jamie was like
but he really was like but why are we going to do it and we were like because
and then we scrap that story because we had to we didn't
it we it may surprise you that it didn't occur to us earlier
but like these episodes we're doing raiders i think we started with 12 or 13 stories i
still want to be dragged behind a truck using a whip and climb in like the famous scene we didn't
do that one because well the whip across the chasm was going to take up all of our budget and time
but yeah so despite your editorializing andrew we did shy away from myths in which
there was no testable no real testable proposition within it and again i'm sure some
of you are yelling at the screen about stories you thought were surprisingly stupid for us to test
mia culpa i you're plausibly right but we really tried we really tried always to be
testing something that was testable and the the indie running from the ball there's there's
literally nothing to test there and it took us more than a couple of days to figure that out
um so no per your question now i'll get to answering your question andrew did you
prefer one story over another no i never did i didn't even prefer whether stories were busted or
confirmed or plausible uh yeah i was totally agnostic on that front whatever
whatever result we came to was the result we came to i i i didn't have a horse in that race and and
neither did jamie neither did anybody on the team um
yeah we never wished for a specific outcome you just wanted a spectacular outcome
you don't want any outcome but you want the whatever outcome you get to be worth sticking
around through the episode for yeah don't know i didn't prefer one type of story over the other and
frankly given how fertile the movie myths were i mean you could almost build an entire television
show just doing fast and furious myths um given how fertile that that territory was for stories
i'm really grateful for it um thank you so much for that great question uh thank you
tested patrons for all of your awesome questions i'm repeatedly when i'm doing stuff like this
surprised at how new every single question seems to be honestly after 14 years of production on
mythbusters i thought i'd answered every question you guys just keep coming up with
more awesome ones so thank you as always stay safe and i will see you guys next time