On this blockbusting episode of "Mythbusters"
Want to see something cool?
It's "The Green Hornet" special.
Narrator: Yep, sit back... strap in... whoa!
And go green for an all-access superhero special.
Ta-da!
It's science!
First up, an explosive escape.
In the movie, the explosion was initiated by these eight rockets.
Adam and Jamie want to know if you were buried in a car grave... whoa!
Whoo!
Could you survive an underground big boom... let's blow it up.
Narrator:... And would it make a bulldozer fly?
Ohh!
Grant, and Tory take us on a wild ride to tackle a two-part tall tale.
You wanted the great mother of all elevators?
Narrator: Could an elevator really cut a car?
Whoa!
And if it did... eat my dust.
Would it even be able to go?
Go!
Narrator: Who are the Mythbusters?
Adam Savage... aah!
Am I missing an eyebrow?
And Jamie Hyneman.
Stand clear.
I'm going hot.
Between them,
more than 30 years of special-effects experience.
Joining them... Kari Byron... are you ready?
Tory Belleci... this is real science.
And Grant Imahara.
I didn't train him to do that.
They don't just tell the myths.
They put them to the test.
You know what I'd like to do?
What?
Something big.
Like from a Hollywood blockbuster movie,
like "The Green Hornet."
You're dreaming.
We're never gonna get access to a movie like that.
You're wrong.
Am I?
Yes... in fact... I have Seth Rogen right here to prove to you how wrong you are.
How did this happen?
We're friends.
We hang out.
All the time.
And by the way, you are wrong.
Well, then, awesome!
We get to bust myths from "Green Hornet."
Nice!
What have you got for us?
Rather than tell you,
I think it's much more awesome if I show you.
Roll the tape.
In the movie,
after his father is killed,
Britt Reid decides to become masked crime fighter The Green Hornet.
With the help of Kato,
his tech-savvy sidekick,
and the black beauty... whoa!
Our newly minted superhero takes on the bad guys.
We could be heroes.
And that brings us to the myth.
In a key scene,
the daring duo are forced into a car grave,
covered with dirt... we are totally buried!
And, to top it off, a bulldozer.
However, Kato has a plan.
Hiding behind the armored seating,
they're going to detonate all eight of the car's missiles,
which has two dramatic consequences.
First, the bulldozer gets blown skyward...
[beeping] And the dynamic duo escape unscathed.
The question is,
are either of those outcomes even possible?
What do you think, guys? Where do we start?
I'm glad you asked.
Excuse me, Jamie.
I think we just go for it.
We match the movie parameter for parameter.
We dig a hole,
we take the black beauty,
strap some rockets on the front,
put it in that hole with a couple of dummies in the back seat...
that's you and Kato...
cover it with dirt... park the bulldozer on the dirt.
Blow the whole thing sky-high.
That's right.
And then we find out if the explosives on the car
are actually enough to move this bulldozer.
And whether or not me and Kato can survive the blast.
The gauntlet has been thrown,
the challenge laid,
and on location,
the goal is to simulate the scene from the movie as accurately as they can.
Well, this looks like a safe place to do some dangerous things.
Let's go make some big booms.
So it's full steam ahead for the mother of all tnt parties,
as the guys re-create Adam's coffee-bean model in full scale.
And here's how.
Let's walk through the elements of this test.
This is our hole.
This is the dirt we're gonna use to fill it with.
Hey, guys, I thought we were gonna dig a big hole.
I'm kidding. This is clearly a very big hole.
Congratulations.
And this little baby right here is the black beauty.
Look at that.
This is not the car we'll be dropping in our hole,
because this is one of the five hero cars from the film,
and we can't afford to destroy it.
♪♪♪
in the movie, the explosion was initiated
by these eight rockets here in the front.
Now, each one of them is about 4 inches thick and about 21 inches long.
I figure that leaves us enough room for,
say, a couple pounds of something like tnt in the head of each one.
And this is our bulldozer.
These are our heroes,
Kato and The Green Hornet.
They're gonna be in the black beauty behind the back seat.
Now, if the scene in "Green Hornet"
actually does comply with the laws of physics,
two things have to happen when we try it.
One,
that bulldozer has to fly up in the air
and off of the spot that it was formerly occupying.
And, two,
our heroes have to survive that blast.
So, those are the raw ingredients.
Now to put them together and get cooking.
A key detail we haven't shown you from the movie
is that Kato had armored the car.
He'd beefed up the seats that the heroes hide behind during the blast.
And if it's in the movie,
it's in the test.
Do you think this is the kind of armor Kato would have put in the car?
I think duct tape is the key to any good experiment.
I totally agree.
Next, with the green hornet and Kato in place,
Adam adds pressure sensors to their chests
that will tell us if the explosion is survivable.
My only question is how can this machine tell you anything if it's exploded?
Because the electrical signal travels faster than the explosion.
There you go!
Who knew?
Ta-da! It's science!
Yep, the sensors are wired up to a remote station so that after the blast,
the team will have hard data
on the kind of forces our dummies were exposed to.
Let's get friendly, Kato.
I've always dreamed of taping us together.
I think Seth is doing very well, don't you?
Nice!
all right. Let's do it.
That's the cue for the bomb crew.
Okay, let's give this thing a tune-up.
Okay.
The black beauty had 16 pounds of high explosives loaded into the front of it.
Seth, want to play "blow up crap" jump rope?
I'm good.
Now, to put that into context,
that's the equivalent of the amount of explosives in 10 grenades.
So when that goes off,
it's big trouble.
What is stopping us from putting this car in this hole?
Absolutely nothing at all.
Let's do it.
Jamie, let's do it!
That's the next step... maneuvering the stand-in black beauty up and into the hole,
which, like everything else in the test,
exactly matches the dimensions of the one in the movie.
It's impressive that Jamie dug this with his hands.
But even though the setup is the same,
Adam doesn't think the result will be.
A prediction?
Yeah, I've got a prediction on this one.
Actually, don't get me wrong... I love being surprised by the fact
that sometimes movie physics actually comply with the laws of real physics.
Let's fill the hole, Jamie!
But I don't think that is so in this case.
I think that bulldozer's gonna stay exactly where it was.
I don't think the blast is gonna move it,
and I also think that our heroes are going to die in that blast.
Sorry, guys.
Whoa! Whoo!
let's bring in the dozer.
I think, that when they set off this bomb,
exactly what happens in the movie is gonna happen... exactly.
Okay, go around and push.
I hope I'm right.
If I don't, I'm gonna feel really stupid.
Well, it's over the hole.
Let's go push the button.
Let's get safe.
So, I hear you have a "Green Hornet" myth for us.
I sure do.
Here's the myth.
The black beauty, our car,
has been riddled with bullets in a car chase.
We drive into an elevator to escape.
The elevator lifts up our car,
and the back half of it actually gets sheared off as the elevator goes up.
But the front half of the car is able to drive out of the elevator,
keep on going.
Now, wait a minute.
Isn't the black beauty a Chrysler Imperial?
Sure is.
Well, those are rear-wheel-drive cars.
If we cut the back end off,
won't the front end just sit there?
It would,
had my amazing partner, Kato,
not made our car front-wheel-drive.
He's tricky like that.
Kato magic.
Okay, it sounds like a good story for us.
Can a bullet-ridden car be cut in half by an elevator?
And can it still drive afterwards?
[beep] Drop me by the elevators!
I'll take it from here!
After the black beauty has been shot up,
it takes an unintentional ride in an elevator... does it drive?
Front-wheel drive.
Which leads to a two-part question...
would the car really bifurcate like this?
And, given that it's been converted to front-wheel-drive,
could it actually make good its two-wheeled escape?
So, can you guys actually do this, or what?
Oh, yeah,
we're gonna build our own freight elevator and just go for it.
Yeah. You know what? This is gonna be pretty straightforward to test.
We'll just drive the car halfway in,
push the "up" button, and see what happens.
But you know what?
First we need to get our own Chrysler imperial,
then give it a black beauty makeover,
and then fill it full of holes.
Have fun.
I'll be waiting right in this room.
I don't care how long it takes.
He seems nicer in the movies.
While Seth waits for results,
Grant gets busy with the delivery.
Now, that's a pretty car.
And to transform her into the black beauty,
she needs a film-prop makeover from an expert.
Step up, Kari Byron.
I got a little bit of intel on the black beauty from the movie.
Now, they used as many as 29 of this identical classic car to shoot the movie.
They needed them for all sorts of uses.
They needed one in pristine, original condition.
They needed one to shoot up.
They needed one with guns on it,
one to squish.
Our black beauty is going to meet its death in our elevator rig.
Not before I trick it out a little bit black beauty style.
When I see all the work
that Kari's put into making this look like an exact replica of the black beauty,
it... it kind of breaks my heart.
I don't want to see it destroyed.
Kari reluctantly hands it over,
because after the boys take it on one last joyride,
this dead car driving will be facing the firing squad.
Oh [bleep] [laughs] Whoo-hoo!
I think we forgot to install the parking brake on the black beauty.
Ah, well, I ain't Kato.
Now it's time to get to the science of this experiment,
and that is,
we have to shoot this car
with the hopes that we weaken the structural integrity
that will give us the best fighting chance of cutting this car
in half with an elevator.
It pains me to think that we're gonna shoot something this beautiful.
And the only thing that gives me any consolation is
the fact that we're gonna be using submachine guns to do it.
I think I'll get over it.
Oh, I can't believe we're gonna do this.
All right, you ready?
No.
Here we go!
In three, two, one! Fire!
Their goal is to match the movie scene shot for shot.
If the black beauty on-screen had over 200 bullet holes,
well, there's will, too.
Clear!
We started off with 25 rounds.
We moved up to 50.
Finally we got all the way up to 270 rounds.
But, I mean, I'm looking at it,
and I still see a lot of steel holding this car together.
I don't think we've done enough structural damage with those rounds
to actually cut this car with an elevator.
If there's a circle of hell for people who destroy beautiful cars ...
That's where we're going.
This is the black beauty.
Let's go find some crime.
Let's go find an elevator.
Yeah.
Next on "Mythbusters"
Three, two, one!
Can a bulldozer fly?
[laughter] And can an elevator cut a car?
Second floor,
ladies' lingerie.
Adam and Jamie are about to find out if this scene from "The Green Hornet"
is fact or superhero hype.
Specifically,
they've got two questions.
Would the black beauty's eight rockets have been enough
to move the bulldozer up, up, and away?
Second, hidden behind the armored seating,
would our heroes have survived the blast?
With Seth Rogen,
the film star and writer,
on hand to help,
the team has matched the movie criteria exactly,
and we're about to find out.
All right, this is "Green Hornet,"
the actual test,
going for broke... in three,
two... one... fire!
Look at that!
That is... that is huge!
Where's the bulldozer?
It's not where it was.
For a brief moment,
with the dust cloud obscuring the scene,
the team thought it had blown away the bulldozer,
but with a clear view comes a sinking feeling.
Is that it?
Oh, no.
It blew up a pocket,
and then it sunk in the hole.
Yeah, it fell in.
That was a lot bigger than I thought it would be.
Yep, this wasn't a gasoline-fueled movie special effect.
So, you've been around movie-set explosions.
How does our real-world one stack up?
It was scary.
There was a lot less fire in it,
which makes me think it's actually probably a lot more destructive.
You could kind of feel it a bit.
You had to get way farther away from it,
which also made me think it was more dangerous.
But it was completely horrifying.
Good.
I think we're gonna need some bigger shovels.
♪♪♪
well, as you can see,
the loader is still here and still on top of the car.
It's down in the hole, though,
and it kind of makes sense,
because energy's gonna follow the path of least resistance,
and in this case,
that's the dirt.
It pushed all the dirt out of the way.
The loader fell in the hole.
Well, there's your problem.
♪♪♪
one was that the loader had to fly up in the air and away from the hole,
and the other is that our heroes inside the car lived through the blast.
I think it's pretty clear that the first part is totally busted.
It's now time to get this first part out of the way
so that we can check on the second.
Cue the heavy machinery to remove the heavy machinery.
And with the dozer out the way,
the guys get down and dirty to look for our heroes.
But the initial evidence... twisted scraps of anonymous car... does not bode well.
That does not look good.
Plus the black beauty seems to be buried deeper than before,
and they call for reinforcements.
Can we get something bigger than me?
Awesome!
Yeah, for delicate archeological precision,
don't call the Mythbusters.
But as each piece of mangled wreckage emerges,
it becomes increasingly clear any hope for part two of the myth...
hero survivability... is dying.
Things are not boding well for britt and Kato.
Oh, man!
It's like soup in there.
Superhero soup with black beauty croutons.
Dude, I think that's pretty definitive.
You guys are dead.
Yeah, it pains me to admit it,
but we're toast.
Toast.
When the dummies are finally found,
the visual evidence is so conclusive,
the team doesn't even need the hard data from the pressure sensors,
which is lucky,
because they didn't make it, either.
This explosion was pretty full-on.
In fact,
it was so full-on that it destroyed our sensors.
So we don't have any exact measurements of what happened here,
but just looking at it,
it's kind of like the car was scrambled like scrambled eggs.
And, looking at our dummy....
He's pretty well scrambled, too.
And that means it's conclusion time.
Well, in the movie,
the bulldozer gets blasted way up in the air,
and me and Kato climb out of the car without a scratch on us.
In real life, the bulldozer didn't move at all,
and me and Kato would have been blown to smithereens.
All this tells me is if you want to make a good movie,
the first thing you got to do is throw reality out the window.
That's what I've learned.
So, Seth, what does this mean for "The Green Hornet"?
Are you planning any rewrites to accommodate the laws of physics?
Absolutely not.
The real question is,
what does this mean for your show?
Well, it means that your movie physics didn't line up
with real physics on two accounts...
and that you would have been toast if you were in that car...
and it didn't remove the bulldozer from the scene.
Yes, and that means part two of the myth,
like our heroes,
is dead and buried.
There is simply no way they would have survived.
But re-creating the bulldozer's flight is still in their sights.
Now the only question for us is,
what would it take to get that bulldozer to fly?
Awesome.
I think so.
Let's go.
Kari, Grant, and Tory,
arriving in their bullet-riddled black beauty,
are about to test the "Green Hornet"
car-cleaving conundrum.
We're in the welding bay at hunter's point
so that we can test the myth from "The Green Hornet"
that a car can be cut in half by an elevator.
[beep] Now, in the movie, this wasn't just any old elevator.
This was a big glass elevator
that the black beauty crashed through the side of
and then got cut in half not by the elevator's door frame,
but actually by the ceiling.
Now, we couldn't find any elevator like this at all anywhere,
so in "Mythbusters" fashion,
we're going to create our own.
And to do it,
they've brought in over 3.5 tons of steel for the elevator's structure
and a forklift to provide the lift's lift.
What I have here is a small-scale model of what we're gonna be building.
Now, these pieces here will all be steel "I"
beams... and across the top and the back.
Now, the ceiling in the movie will be represented by a steel trench plate,
which we'll weld to the top.
So all this is gonna be welded to the steel floor below us,
which is embedded in the concrete.
Now, it's important that this thing is structurally sound,
because when that forklift starts lifting the car,
there's going to be a lot of force exerted on this structure,
and it cannot move.
With the three steel beams lifted, shifted,
and welded securely... and the elevator-floor trench plate in position,
the elevator replica is just about good to go.
You wanted the great mother of all elevators?
Well, you got it!
Behind me is 3.5 tons of steel,
over 50 linear feet of welds.
Now, a regular service elevator has a lift capacity of about 10,000 pounds.
The forklift that we're using has 3.5 times that.
If this can't cut the car in half,
no elevator on earth will.
Second floor, ladies' lingerie.
Meanwhile, down on the ground floor,
black beauty is maneuvered into position.
We're about to put our car into place,
but we've drained all the fluids,
so we need some heavy machinery to get it over there.
And somebody shot up the tires.
All right.
We're in the elevator.
Which means it's go time.
Okay, this is "The Green Hornet"
black beauty bifurcation by elevator in three, two, one, go!
Do it! Do it!
Stop!
Yeah!
You know what?
There's no way this is happening.
No way.
I mean, that is way more powerful than a regular elevator,
and we still were not able to cut that car in half.
But power isn't really the point.
As Grant explains,
it's about the way that power is applied.
So, we set everything up just like they had it in the movie.
And, you know what,
to get that sort of effect...
that back end of the car being chopped off and falling down...
you need a cutting force.
What we have here is a crushing force.
This is amazing!
Look at this!
All right, that is a smashed car.
That is not a car cut in half.
And that was an unrealistic amount of force that we put on it.
Okay, I feel pretty good about
going back to Seth and saying that this is busted.
Good luck. I don't think we're gonna be able to convince him.
Coming up next on "Mythbusters,"
our car insurance gets revoked again.
You realize when you cut the cable,
the emergency brakes don't work anymore.
So, Seth, I hate to break it to you,
but it looks like your movie myth is kind of busted.
Hmm?
Even after reducing the structural integrity with the machine guns,
it's still not cutting in half.
Well, not so fast.
'Cause I forgot to tell you something very important,
and that is not only did Kato make the car front-wheel-drive,
he also installed the special zipper system that cuts the car in half,
should that ever come up.
Really?
Oh, really.
Yes, we are very clever, us superheroes.
Ah, well, all right,
so, how are we gonna continue?
Well, I think it's pretty obvious.
We need to cut a car in half using conventional tools,
not an elevator.
Cheese graters.
Or possibly demo saws,
blowtorches... and then just see how far we can drive our half car.
And this time,
no more superhero excuses.
I'm not gonna need them, 'cause it's gonna work.
So, now that's the challenge. Does it drive?
Front-wheel drive.
Is it really possible that the front half could make good its escape,
or is this scene Hollywood hyperbole?
You can let me out!
So, obviously,
the black beauty did not get cut in half quite like it happened in the movie,
so if we're gonna replicate this myth
and cut a car in half and try to drive it around,
we're gonna have to do it the old-fashioned way... big,
destructive tools.
This is gonna be fun.
But here's the catch...
the black beauty and most cars of that era had rear-wheel drive.
So, we had to skip ahead a few decades
to get this gorgeous land yacht here,
which I have fondly named the black hoopty.
So, rather than do a Kato and reconfigure a rear-wheel-drive imperial,
the Mythbusters' chop shop is going to hack in half the black hoopty.
Now, the way we're gonna do that... we're gonna roll it on its side,
take the doors off,
cut through the bottom first,
then the top and the sides.
It's important to note that although they've removed the gas tank for safety's sake,
when it comes to the test,
the residual fuel in the lines and engine should be enough to get the motor running.
Whoo!
The question is,
will the team be able to drive it?
Yeah!
Now we're gonna flip the car on its side
so that we can get easier access to the hardest part to cut,
which is the chassis.
Gorgeous.
Beautiful.
Whoo!
Let's chop this car up!
With the finishing line in sight,
the team releases its inner destructive demons in a demo-saw massacre.
Whoo!
Now, that's a car cut in half!
Yeah!
Look at that.
Ha ha!
That was awesome.
Let's see if the front end will drive.
But Tory's not confident.
After all,
they removed the engine's energy source.
Now, we know the engine and the drive wheels are in the front,
however, the gas tank with the fuel pump is in the back,
and they're no longer connected.
You like my new car?
Got a lot of leg room.
I mean, we might be able to start this car up,
but I doubt we're gonna be able to drive it for long.
Meanwhile, our resident "glass half full"
proponent is more confident.
I feel like there's a strong possibility
that we're gonna be able to drive this car.
Not very far... okay, you ready?
But I feel like if there's still a little fuel in there
and we cut everything properly,
we might get a little bit of a ride.
But at first,
they can't even get it started.
Try to turn it over.
However, they're not giving up yet.
Thinking that there should be some residual gas in the fuel lines,
it may just be a starter problem,
so Tory squirts starter fluid directly into the carburetor.
Close, but not so far.
We moved like two inches!
Come on! Go again!
To match the movie,
they really need to drive the car a reasonable distance.
If they don't,
you could say the myth has hit the wall.
Go for it!
Yeah ha ha!
Whoo-hoo!
Whoa!
Yeah!
No brakes!
Whoo!
We drove through the wall!
Yeah!
Nice!
So, in summary,
the car started and even got car started and even got going...
until it hit the wall.
But let's face facts... with the fuel lines cut,
it wasn't ever going to get very far.
And that must mean the myth is busted,
unless, back at the shop,
Seth has any more excuses up his superhero sleeve.
Coming up, Adam and Jamie play with toy tractors.
Whoa!
And high explosives.
That was quite an awesome thud.
So, where do we go from here?
Well, clearly me and Kato are dead and the bulldozer didn't fly,
so you guys got a lot of work to do.
Yes, we do.
Well, to get that bulldozer airborne,
we need more explosives.
Awesome.
And I think we need to break it down to small scale.
Let's figure out the best set of parameters
that gives us the most amount of movement out of that dozer.
While you guys do that,
I'm required back on my private island.
I will check in later to get the results.
Have fun.
Private island?
I go there all the time.
Really?
It's nice.
Clearly, having the heroes survive an underground blast
like the one in the movie is impossible.
But getting a bulldozer to fly may not be.
So, from here on in,
Adam and Jamie will be focusing on that alone,
and, starting in small scale,
they want to know which type of explosive
has the best heavy-lifting qualities.
♪♪♪
we have two 110-pound steel bulldozers,
and we've got two types of explosives... 4 pounds of high-speed explosive,
4 pounds of low-speed explosive,
and we are looking for which one of these will throw our bulldozers high
in the air without shredding them to little, tiny bits.
First up is this right here,
which is tnt or trinitrotoluene.
Now, this has an underground detonation velocity
of about 25,000 feet per second,
and it's what you might call your average,
middle-of-the-road high explosive.
For comparative purposes,
the charge for both of the small-scale tests
will be buried at the same depth.
And as per the movie,
the bulldozer is positioned on top.
Now, let's find out exactly what tnt can do.
Fire in the hole!
4 pounds of tnt in three, two, one!
Hey, that was a big piece of shrapnel over there.
Yeah.
Ho!
It's still coming down.
Ho!
Ah, the familiar sharp crack of tnt.
But it didn't exactly pick the truck up and move it in one piece.
It flew for sure, but it flew apart first.
Ha!
Look at the size of it!
That's a big hole.
Do you see any piece of the bulldozer anywhere?
I don't see any.
It doesn't take tracker Savage long to find the trail.
Ha!
Found it!
Dude!
I think this is the only chunk we're likely to find.
Well, I'm sitting in all the evidence we have of our tnt blast...
one monster of a hole... and one beat-up bulldozer bucket.
We see pieces in the high-speed shot flying every which way,
and this is the only piece we this is the only piece we recovered.
And the force of this blast was enough
to turn this quarter-inch plate into a bubble.
Now it's time to find out what a slightly slower-speed explosive
will do to one of these bulldozers.
This stuff kind of looks like laundry soap,
but it's not. It's anfo,
or ammonium nitrate and fuel oil.
In the explosives world,
it's what's known as a blasting agent.
And it has a detonation velocity of about 13,000 feet per second,
or about half that of tnt.
Fill her in.
Why is that important to us?
Well, instead of ripping and tearing
like a really high explosive does,
this stuff is known for more pushing and moving of things.
This bulldozer... it's heavier than my wife.
That's why they use it in quarries and construction sites.
So, we're hoping that if we put that under our dozer,
it'll just move it away in one piece instead of blowing it to bits.
Charged.
Firing 4 pounds of anfo in three, two, one!
Whew!
Ohh!
Yeah, I saw it go all the way up the hill there.
Ho!
We have a landing.
That was quite an awesome thud.
Yep, the distinctive-bass,
earth-moving thud of anfo.
But did it move the earth-moving machinery in one piece?
Wow!
Look at that!
It just sheared the welds.
That's amazing!
The main section became separated from the bucket,
but compared to the tnt,
the damage was minimal.
We came here today to figure out what is our ideal explosive
for getting us the result that we see in the movie.
What will move our tractor high into the air
without turning it into a lot of little, broken, baby tractor bits?
And here is all of our evidence.
On my left,
the tnt blast.
This bucket is all that we found.
It tore that thing to shreds.
On my right,
the slower-moving anfo left us most of our evidence
and threw it nice and high in the air.
And honestly, for my money, I think it's the anfo.
I think this is most likely to get us the distance
we're looking for without the broken tractor bits that we don't want.
It's anfo.
Next... purrs like a kitten.
Will the half car go the full distance?
So, even if we weren't talking superheroes,
this would still be busted.
Because when the car is cut in half,
it doesn't run for very long.
Yeah, some might say that's 'cause someone drove it directly into a wall.
Details!
All right. Well, I guess that's one way of saying our test
came to an abrupt ending,
but I mean, let's face it... face it... we put fuel in the lines,
and I had to use starter fluid in the carburetor to even get the car going.
True, but the superhero in me would like to remind you
that Kato knew this car was gonna be cut in half all along,
so he put a reserve fuel tank in the front of the car,
so when our car was cut in half,
no fuel lines were actually cut in the first place.
In which case,
we need to modify our half car and see if we can make it run for longer.
Boom!
Narrator: Okay, so, Seth is stretching it, but it's a legitimate test.
If the half car had the fuel,
could it drive for long enough to make a superhero-style getaway?
To find out,
the team hits the petaluma speedway.
And with a couple of laps under their belts,
they're ready to prep their ride.
Just as Seth suggested his superhero sidekick, Kato, did,
they're adding a reserve fuel tank in the front.
Without fuel,
you don't go anywhere.
But even with fuel,
will they go anywhere?
Will their half car be able to overcome
the friction caused by the drag of the undercarriage?
And will the compromised structure remain intact for any kind of distance?
I think it'll make it three laps.
Man, I would be happy if it made it one.
Dude, I think five.
Yeah? Let's go.
All right. Let's try.
Eat my dust.
Purrs like a kitten.
This is half-car drag race in three, two, one. Go!
Get it? "Drag race."
Narrator: That's a promising start,
and somewhat unexpected,
because despite a safe,
steady speed on the first lap... he's maintaining about 20 right now.
Tory is clearly having no problems at all...
not what the team thought before they started.
Picking up speed.
He's up to 30.
That's lap one!
When Tory first started out, he started out slow, 'cause, let's face it,
this is the first time we've ever driven a car that's cut in half,
and so his laps were maybe 10,
15 Miles an hour.
But once he started getting the hang of driving it,
he punched it, and on the straightaways,
he peeked out at over 40 Miles an hour.
I cannot believe how fast and how well this car drives.
I mean, the handling is a little tricky.
It's kind of like driving on a wet road or maybe an icy road.
Dude, that is crazy!
That was lap 19.
You're coming in for 20.
I'm gonna be stopping you there.
I cannot believe it!
It worked!
Cutting a car in half,
driving it worked!
Narrator: Against all the odds and exceeding all three team members'
expectations by a factor of at least 4,
Tory completed 20 laps without a problem.
Yeah!
That was crazy!
That's 20 laps at 40 Miles an hour,
and the car was sparking like it was catching on fire.
Oh, that was great.
No problems at all.
Half-car altered... plausible.
Totally plausible.
If the black beauty had a reserve fuel tank
and if it had separate brake lines, yeah.
Hey.
Don't doubt Kato.
Good job.
That was awesome.
Oh, my God.
I could keep going.
Narrator: So it's plausible.
You can drive half a car.
But what about the myth as a whole?
For that wrap, it's back to the shop.
Yeah, I think we've done enough damage here.
All right, so, how are we gonna wrap this one up?
I think we're gonna have to call this one busted.
Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
I think I saw a different show than you guys.
We were not able to cut a car in half with an elevator.
The car has a zipper thing in it.
It cuts itself in half!
All right, what about the fuel line?
He put it all in the front. He knew!
Okay, okay... in the perfect superhero world,
if the black beauty happened to be a front-wheel-drive,
unlike anything of the era,
and the gas tank were in the front and the brakes were in the front
sure, it's totally plausible.
Plausible?
♪♪♪
nope.
So it's confirmed.
Don't press your luck. No.
Okay. I'll take plausible.
Narrator: Up next... someone order some anfo?
Adam and Jamie attempt to move the earth-moving machinery with some precise,
explosive engineering.
Having determined that the explosive escape myth is busted...
it was completely horrifying.
Adam and Jamie want to know what it would take to re-create the scene.
The bulldozer has to get airborne,
remain intact for the flight,
and land at some distance away from its starting point.
Let's do it.
Having determined that anfo is our lifting explosive of choice,
we've come back to try it full-scale.
That's right - we're gonna put 250 pounds of the stuff
underneath our full-sized dozer,
and we're gonna see if we can get it to fly just like we saw in the movie.
I'd say that's perfect!
That's the hole.
Now for a whole lot of big boom.
Someone order some anfo?
With the anfo laid into the trench in a carefully thought-out volume
and configuration,
the crew rig the detonation cord that will initiate the explosion,
and that means everything's ready to blow,
so Adam and Jamie bring in the big shovel to first fill in the hole...
that's what I'm talking about.
And then maneuver the dozer into place.
We've taken our 250 pounds of anfo
and lined it up right down the length of our machine just off center.
Why off center?
Well, we hope that by putting it a little bit on this side,
just a few inches,
that when it goes off,
it'll push the machine up and over that way and do our job for us.
Okay, stop!
Ha, that's perfect.
Yep.
Let's blow it up.
Okay.
Now, we've chosen to put 250 pounds of anfo under this tractor,
and we've chosen that number very carefully.
We know how to blow up trucks.
We've done it here...... and here.
But in this case,
we want to actually lift this truck without destroying it,
and we have settled on 250 pounds as the most likely candidate
for moving without destroying.
Narrator: But it's a gamble,
as they've only got one bulldozer and one shot at it.
Are we ready?
We are ready.
Let's do it!
Are you ready?
I sure am.
250 pounds of anfo in... three, two, one!
Whoa!
I see pieces of tires.
I think it was lifted.
I think it was lifted in a lot of little pieces.
Like a nuclear cloud.
Yeah.
Well... that was a little more than we wanted, wasn't it?
well, they got liftoff...
several times...
in several different directions.
And, yes,
perhaps they did use a fraction too much anfo,
but Adam doesn't seem too upset.
Behind me,
a dust cloud that used to be the site on which our bulldozer sat.
We can't see exactly what happened,
but given the pieces of bulldozer
and tires I saw flying from the main location...
I think we destroyed a bulldozer.
I'm not that broken up about it, either.
Narrator: Adam may not be broken up,
but anything at the center of this probably will be.
Look at the shock wave!
Wow.
Ah, I love that.
Perfect sphere of destruction!
Wow!
There's no dozer,
but there's no place where the dozer sat, either.
This hole is deeper than the hole we dug for the car.
You think we went a little too far?
Just a little.
Well, pigs may not fly,
but bulldozers apparently can... at least in little pieces.
Oh, look. There's the wheel.
Narrator: And those pieces clocked some frequent-flyer Miles.
This is about 500 feet from the blast center.
Wow.
That's awesome.
The most damning aspect of this
is I'm sitting on the biggest part of the bulldozer
that we can find,
and it's sitting about as far from the hole
as we saw the bulldozer fly in the movie,
except the hole is a hole the size of the car that would be there.
The entirety of the thing would have been vaporized along
with the two heroes in the car.
It's really quite spectacular.
And I hope this goes to show you kids at home
that bulldozers and explosives just don't mix.
Well, let me see if I can reconstruct the scene here.
You got your throttle,
and you got your seat.
Even with the slower detonation velocity
and the higher pushing power of the anfo,
we weren't quite able to get that sweet spot we were looking for
where everything is perfectly balanced
and the machine comes up off the hole and sets down nicely someplace else.
The thing is,
for that to happen,
all sorts of things have to be balanced just so...
the exact configuration and quantity of the explosives...
the exact amount of earth on top of the explosives...
the weight and the configuration of the machine overhead.
All of that stuff has to come into
just one moment of interacting perfectly for this to happen.
We didn't quite get it.
So, where do we stand on this one?
Well, given an infinite quantity of bulldozers and explosives,
we might be able to figure out how to move one without destroying it.
Yeah, but there's no permutation of any amount of explosives
that could move even the dozer a little bit
that wouldn't leave the guys in the car vaporized jelly.
This thing's totally busted.
Yeah, it's busted.
You think Seth is gonna be mad?
He'll get over it.
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