Hardest-to-Obtain Item in MythBusters History

monkey circus uh i just watched one of the behind the scenes episode where you talked about shopping for the show what are some of the hardest to obtain things you ever had the research team get uh the two most difficult things to obtain in my memory of making mythbusters one was the pump uh somebody earlier mentioned repurposing the chicken cannon to make the fire fighting pump that was an episode for a famous urban legend about a scuba diver found burnt to a crisp in the top of a tree and as the urban legend goes he was picked up or scooped up or sucked up by a firefighting helicopter that gets its water from nearby lakes and then dumps them on forest fires and he was the unhappy addition to this water load that a firefighting plane or helicopter had dropped on fire now the most likely candidate for this is less a scoop than a pump and there is a sikorsky sky crane i think that's what it's called that has this pump and a huge like one foot diameter pipe and it can pump 2 000 gallons a minute yeah this is early early seasons of mythbusters and nobody would let us anywhere near one of those pumps we couldn't even get to see one uh no one no one not the makers of the pump not any firefighting team no one was like that is a precious piece of equipment no one wanted us to mess with it put a diver on the other end of it and uh-uh so we ended up having to build that one from scratch which is why we had to take chicken cannon apart the other one that was weirdly difficult uh the the the most difficult thing to find that we eventually found was lead foil that was a thousand of an inch thick um lead foil is a made object it is a thing that is used for uh lining all sorts of different pieces of equipment for radio interference and other reasons but in general no they're not stop talking it's an illusion lead foil right but lead foil is usually manufactured to about two to four thousandths of an inch thick at its thinnest and we kept contacting lead foil companies and they would say this happened twice yes we can make your lead foil thinner we just have to set our rollers a little thinner and twice we were ready to shoot on a friday afternoon we're ready on monday morning and monday morning comes and the factory called us and said they broke their rolling equipment trying to get the lead that thin um this was a process that went on for over 18 months before jamie got a b in his bonnet and he was like i'm gonna find it and he called some company called epstein foils out of germany and they turned it around and sent us the lead not only did they not charge us which was incredible because it's expensive to make lead that thin they made it even thinner than we asked for we had asked for one thousandth of an inch thick and they delivered it at 0.7 thousandths of an inch thick so this says uh yeah seven tenths of one thousandth of an inch thick ever so slightly thicker than actual tin foil which was shocking that was the hardest thing to find that we eventually found the hardest thing in the whole history of mythbusters a grenade never ever ever got to throw or even look at a grenade which was surprising considering how much c4 and other explosive materials i mean over 14 years and 1800 explosions detonating over eight tons of explosive material we've detonated decor black powder cordite slow burning bullet powder uh c4 amfo i mean you name it expanding gases you name it we blew it up and for the most part it wasn't usually that difficult to get the explosive material and i tell the story a lot but the main reason was because it was usually given to us for free by the bomb squad we were working with and they called it a training exercise now you might have laughed when you heard that because that sounds like a funny end run around the permitting but the answer is actually one there is no permit for detonating c4 you you can't go get one because there isn't one you are just not allowed to go near it or detonate it unless you are a bomb squad secondly calling it a training exercise is both an end run about around the fact that there is no permit but it is also true because bomb squads are all constantly training to deal with the unknown both the unknown that they know and the unknown unknown and as such they are contingency planners of the highest order and so every weird thing we brought to a bomb squad they were like yeah we got to see how this works because we don't even know um bomb squads universally are some of the most curious um uh uh uh what do you want what am i flexibly minded this is this is something really true of scientists and bomb squads and other types that i appreciate flexibly minded willing to have their minds changed willing to try something they've never tried before um jamie and i found a simpatico set of brothers and sisters with every bomb squad we worked with seriously um and grenades right yes i will take grenades right i was getting to the point of grenade so we did the story about shooting a grenade out of the air we did one about diving on the grenade that was intense uh because it totally works and people have done it and it's a horror show it's just it's difficult to cover that material in a way that is respectful and visual and also you know yeah it's the needle to thread but then when we did the one about shooting a grenade that someone's lobbed towards you and by the way if you're at all good at skeet shooting shooting something that's been lobbed towards you is by far one of the easiest things to do we didn't want to do it with a real grenade we we're not stupid but we did because it was an episode about grenades we did want to show a positive about how grenades work no no no no just in the same way there's no way to get a permit for c4 boy is there no permit for a grenade and the insurance company wasn't going to let us any just it was a combination of everything but we never ever got a grenade we were allowed to fill a grenade with c4 and put a detonator in it to witness the power of one but that's what we had to do because we weren't allowed to actually remotely detonate one yeah grenade was without a doubt the hardest the hardest thing okay so we've got some questions coming in ho ho evan cobbs has gifted tested membership to 10 people during this stream thank you um wow that is incredibly sweet again tested premium membership is a real boon to our operation and it means a lot it might not seem like a lot but boy does it mean a lot evan thank you so much um jman3302 asks how much fun was it to film at the indianapolis indianapolis motor speedway and get to ride in the two-seater being from indy i loved this episode okay this was a great episode it was super super super super fun um first of all i got to drive an indy car not quite at full speed but pretty fast uh i got to drive an indy car and i did not pop the clutch i did not pop the clutch i was just telling my my uh my partner hasn't seen ghostbusters afterlife so we were watching it last night and uh after we watched it we were talking about the set and i said yeah i got to drive the actile one on set and she said how did that go and i said well the the the stunt driver said i said can i drive it and he said yes and i said really and he goes yeah i know your work uh super super super fun to uh to get the respect from drivers and the indie drivers there were like don't pull up the clutch don't pop that clutch you know no one will fault you for popping the clutch but i really didn't want to pop it and i didn't um getting the ride in that two-seater was incredible i am unfortunately forgetting the name of the wonderful uh young race uh uh uh uh what do you call a racer i'm driver driver the young driver who took me around in the two-seater indy car that was a real experience you have no idea unless you have an idea but you likely have no idea how tiring and physically taxing it is to drive one of those cars just being a passenger in it felt like i was in a dice cup and i'm not exaggerating and i am drawing a blank on the name of the young driver that drove me around but like i got to experience you know significant speeds in that thing at high rates of turning and it was i i've rarely been so exhausted after you know six or eight minutes than getting out of that car that car was built i believe for mario andretti and the driver was telling me that andretti not only could still drive this thing this is when we were making the episode he was in his 70s but he would do it all day long for all the like the blue hairs and the investors and the the monkey monks that the raceway wanted to show a good time he would just keep on putting people in the back seat and take him around at full clip this young driver was in such actually every driver that i met was in awe of mario andretti they were like just nobody else understands cars at this level he does and he can drive anything and he can still do it at a almost compatible competitive level their their singing his praises was kind of thrilling that was a great episode yeah so filming at the indiana motor speedway indiana motor speedway an absolute bucket list item and was every bit as much fun as it looked thank you so much for watching if you'd like to support us even further you can by becoming a tested member details are of course below but it includes all sorts of perks and we're building them all the time you get advanced word and behind the scenes photos of some of our projects questions you get to ask direct questions during my live streams and we have some members only videos including the adam real time series of unbroken unedited shots of me working here in the shop they are weirdly meditative thank you guys so much i'll see you on the next one

Channel: Adam Savage’s Tested

Views: 1,581,036

Keywords: tested, adam savage, behind the scenes mythbusters, adam savage mythbusters questions, ask adam savage, mythbusters tv show, adam savage tested mythbusters, adam savage mythbusters, lead balloon mythbusters, indianapolis speedway, mythbusters indycar special, adam savage tested, adam savage jamie hyneman, mythbusters grenade, mythbusters shooting a grenade, mythbusters grenades and guts, ask adam savage tested, ask adam savage mythbusters

Id: iC--TKUtROg

Length: 11min 9sec (669 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 02 2022