The Myth More Dangerous Than It Seemed

greetings earthlings adam savage here  in my cave and i am answering some   mythbuster questions from tested patrons and  today's question uh comes from carl buehler   carl says i like this question carl says as a dive  master i've felt a feeling of what it's like to be   near the point of drowning and it's absolutely  terrifying you've talked about how scary the   upside down underwater car was and we know about  jamie's fear of heights but was there anything   else that you did that may not necessarily seem  dangerous or scary but was almost everything um there's a lot there's a lot in  this question there's a lot in this   subject um an approaching  things from a safety minded standpoint really changed so much about the ways in  which jamie and i thought through then   carry torrey and grant uh thought through  the execution of these methodologies um   but your question was was there stuff that was  scary that didn't seem scary or dangerous but was throughout the course of  mythbusters we had a few close calls   we've talked about many of them some of them we  don't some of them we don't talk about nobody's   ever nobody ever came close to dying uh but  we had some close calls uh we had we we've   had parts of explosions go over our heads  that was way back in the beginning days but those close calls all served to do a couple  of things one every single time we had one we   rejiggered every safety procedure until we felt  confident in our safety margin this is the thing   you're never you're never gonna  be able to make something safe   you can increase the margin of safety and as  long as you're holding to that and you don't   suffer the illusion that you have made  something safe then you stay in that   mental state that allows you to deal with the  contingencies because they're going to happen   um the one thing that i left mythbusters  with more respect for than i started the one thing that i found at the end of the  run scarier than any other thing flammable   gases yeah flammable gases are they are so scary they can shift the  margin of safety instantaneously they just i was watching a movie the other day in which a  character wanted to set something on fire so they   took a thing of gasoline and they poured it on  it while they were given a speech and then they   talked about it and then they talked about it  and they talked about it and then they took a   lighter and they went and  they let this thing on fire that seemed like a reasonable scene to the  screenwriter and so they hired a pyrotechnician   to do it and i hope the pirate technician told  them what the reality was because the reality   with gasoline is if you have a big pile of wood  and kindling and you pour gasoline all over it   and then you wait before setting  it on fire what's gonna happen is   that gasoline shifts from a liquid to a gas  it starts it starts uh sublimating quickly   and that gasoline gas is the most flammable  gas in the it's literally flammable gas it is um one of the worst injuries i got  on mythbusters was lighting a fire   and it wasn't a bad injury this third degree burn  on the back of my hand that was just about half   an inch second degree burn on the back of my hand  it was about an inch but what the way it happened   was i poured gasoline inside a car i put on  a a proximity suit an illuminized fire suit   and i went to light it but i wasn't wearing  a glove with the hand that i was lighting it   with and the fireball came out enveloped  me and the only part of me that wasn't   covered was this hand because i had  taken off the glove to light the lighter i felt so stupid watching i felt i was so mad  at myself watching the footage of that explosion   but here's the other thing about flammable gases   many of them like propane so so let me just state  you don't ever want to use gasoline to accelerate   your bonfire it it won't it's not that it's gonna  i didn't finish this when you light it and wait   and talk and bubble and then go to light it what's  gonna happen is the second you light that lighter   all of those gasoline fumes that have been like  occurring all that gas that is sublimated out of   its liquid state into a gas estate goes boom  and you can find endless youtube videos of   this happening it's terrifying how fast it can  move and the other aspect of flammable gases is   many of them that we use like propane are heavier  than air which means that when you have a leak   it settles on the ground and if it's in your house  then the ground just becomes this literal like   pool of gas yeah yeah no you are you getting  as terrified as i am just describing that   this is horrifying this is why gas explosions  tended level buildings um so it's not like   it's not like there was something some hidden  danger out there that we uncovered on the   show uh which i think is sort of what your  question was implying carl but it's more like we learned that things could go sour at any moment  for okay i'm going to walk you through our safety   procedure one of our safety procedures so we would  have a story meeting we would talk about a myth   like okay we're going to take homer and we're  going to build a homer simpson we're going to   fill him with water until he weighs as much as a  real-life homer simpson would weigh we're going to   suspend him from a crane and we're going to make  a five thousand pound wrecking ball in a house and   we're gonna smack them into each other okay that's  the narrative we're gonna find out if homer could   have protected his home from the wrecking ball  this is a story we did uh once we outline it on   the whiteboard it's how i think in terms of plot  i have to write it in front of me in longhand once   we have the outline with the set of experiments  wrecking ball build jamie does that homer build i   do that uh how it looks where these things go what  location we're going to do it at the build etc   but then our insurance company wants to know how  we're going to keep everybody safe so they have   questions like uh when you do the experiment what  is the exclusion zone how far is everyone going to   be from it how far how close do people need to be  and what are the precautions that we have for them   um and we walk through all of those parameters  for every single story for every single location   shoot um and on the insurance form there was this  wonderful guy that was like well how dangerous is   this shoot so there's always this like um you know  this chart that was like what you're gonna do and   how dangerous it is and what's the likelihood that  someone could die and we were always in the black   zone of like someone could die if something  went wrong we were always in that black zone so you've actually asked was there anything  else you did that may not seem dangerous   but was and i mean my answer is everything we  did had giant amounts of hidden dangers in it   which is i can't speak to the partnership  between kerry torrey and grant and how those guys   operated because i wasn't privy to their  on the ground uh safety discussions but   i'll assume that they went very similarly to  the way they went with jamie and i which was   we were constantly cross-checking each other  and that was the most powerful tool we had   at our disposal was someone's always checking  your work someone's always going to challenge   you on your work and that's a pain in the  ass and it's the best thing in the world   when i went into productions for savage builds  the most recent show i did with discovery channel   um we got the production offices set up we started  outlining stories and i i went into my office and   i outlined my first story and i think it was iron  man uh the iron man suit build and i outlined it   and it felt really good i hadn't done that in  a long time i hadn't outlined i hadn't i hadn't   broken a story for for for a year or so since  mythbusters junior and then i looked at it and   i was like what's wrong something's wrong i'm like  looking at my i'm looking at my at my outline i'm   like what is wrong and i realized what was wrong  was i i wanted jamie to show up and challenge me   on the construction on the methodology that that  was one of the most powerful creative tools i had   building the narratives for the show was having to  justify and argue with jamie over all the points   that was a so i sat there for a day looking  at my outline coming up with jamie id   with jamie responses and then having a kind  of an argument with him uh in in my head that   was a useful way in which i ran through  the safety checks on on savage builds um i mean this room is full of things that could  harm me i am cognizant of that at every moment at the same time i still get injured all the  time i'm using blades i'm using spinning things   i'm using machines i'm frequently using  them for purposes they weren't intended   uh although less so now that i'm  no longer doing mythbusters but the the for me the the the hidden answer i  have to your question was there anything that   didn't seem dangerous but was my  answer is i learned on the show   that when something doesn't seem dangerous it's  when you should be paying more attention yeah   yeah because it can go sour in a heartbeat and you  better be ready for how it could go sour yeah i   i hope that was something of an answer to your  question i don't i know you were looking for   a specific kind of nugget um but i used it  as a handle to talk about safety in general   because it was such a a vital and important  and key piece of the production that we did   um thank you carl for a terrific question  like i said i hope i answered it if you end   up with a more specific one submit it and i  will endeavor to answer it again thank you   tested patrons for these awesome questions thanks  everybody else i'll see you next time stay safe

Channel: Adam Savage’s Tested

Views: 1,199,729

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Id: Z4dG9DYGSdA

Length: 11min 56sec (716 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 15 2021