hey everybody adam savage here in my cave taking questions from tested patrons answering them here
today's question is specifically on the subject of mythbusters is my face too dark in this shot
is that something that's happening here wait maybe i'd do something like that it's almost too bright
well that's way too bright
is that a little better okay let's try that hey i'm taking mythbuster questions from
tested patrons and answering them in this format and today's question comes from nathan raymond
no yes sorry i'm answering a different question that i intended nathan's question is was there
an ordered process for prototyping new concepts on the show it seems like the mythbusters team
was always building a new device or a robot to do a specific task was it a cookie cutter
process one size fits all or some combination was it a cookie cutter process or a one size fits all
or some combination um was there an ordered process for prototyping new concepts no
no um every story is different every story required different things every story elicited
different reactions from us and by us i don't just mean me and janie and carrie and tori and
grant i also mean our production team um god one of my favorite moments on the show
i remember we were doing a story meeting i can't remember what the story was but i was saying
i had come up with a methodology for testing this thing and i said well
of course we would test it with this let's i would say of course we would test it with a t-shirt
on i don't even know what the story was but i would i said that sentence something like that
we tested with a t-shirt on because that's the way everyone would would approach this thing like i
had this idea in my head that this story which may have had to do with the sweat on a t-shirt
that you had to approach it in a specific way because that's how people wore t-shirts and then
stevo my producer at the time he was like mate no i don't think that at all i think people wear
t-shirts like this and not like that and i was like what that is totally the opposite of what's
true you were crazy and he was like mate no you're totally crazy we didn't get to yelling at each
other but we had completely opposing viewpoints on something that we considered obvious to everyone
that was frequently when i knew we had a really excellent story because when you have that much of
a difference between two reasonable people who we believe that our our ideas about the world line up
we believe that our uh our beliefs about the yeah we believe that we're not going to disagree too
much about the things that we consider patently obvious to everyone and yet we frequently did
i will say the one thing that we had a cookie cutter process for was air cannons
there's two skills that i learned on the show that i have taken with me and utilized many times
since i learned them on the show and one is making pressurized vessels for utilizing air pressure
whether that's to shoot something or to create a pneumatic a pneumatic action we had that down and
the other one was making stuff waterproof making stuff waterproof was something we learned the hard
way how to get it right which is don't compromise and make sure you get it right like there's no
one secret to making something waterproof you just got to know that when you're sealing it
you can't screw it up like mission critical you can't screw it up so you got to double check
everything that you're going to do got to make sure that there is caulk in every joint you got to
add it afterwards you got to use the seal you got to consider the pressure yeah and if you do all
that the things you make will be waterproof sure uh but air cannons man that that is one where like
off the top of our head jamie and i could give you a list of things to go get from the
hardware store and make an air cannon like that no i am not going to share that list
right now off the top of my head you can watch old shows and extrapolate it yourself but the fact you
should know it is that in san francisco county it is illegal to make a thing that shoots a thing yes
a projectile firing object of any kind i believe is still illegal in the county of san francisco
but i hear you saying how is it possible you built so many things that shot things when
that was illegal we called the police it turns out this is one of the earliest little needle
threadings we learned on the show turns out it's not legal to make something that shoots something
so if you we looked at the statute and we found this clause i can't remember
which producer it was that found this clause it might have been linda or it might have been eric
but turns out yeah it's illegal to make a pellet gun for instance
and it's illegal to possess that pellet gun even if you're not actively firing it
well so you write a law that says it's illegal to have or possess or use a pellet gun
you need to include a little part of that law that says it's not illegal for a policeman
to take that pellet gun away from you and he's not breaking the law he or she is not breaking the law
while they're holding on to the pellet gun there is this out for the police which makes total sense
and also it says the police are allowed to possess an illegal thing like this for
evidentiary purposes which totally makes sense i'm confiscating it from you i'm putting it in
a bag it's going to be evidence at your trial or research and we saw that and we realized oh all
we got to do if we want to do illegal stuff is call the cops first then they come over
they consult with you and they say and much of the time we had a policeman on the set
participating in our research absolutely absolutely um but wait a second you were asking
a question and i forgot what i was oh right air cannons that is why i'm not going to tell you how
to make your own air cannon or your own pressure vessel out of stuff from the hardware store
because you can get in a lot of trouble that way and i'm not recommending that you go
search for that kind of trouble thank you for that awesome question tested patrons i love
your fabulous questions and i will continue to answer them as long as there are any and
it sounds like there's no end in sight for that so thank you so much and i'll see you guys next time