MythBusters Episode 50: "Bullets Fired Up"
Air Date: April 19, 2006
Bullets fired into the air maintain their lethal capability when they eventually fall back down.
busted / plausible / confirmed
In the case of a bullet fired at a precisely vertical angle (something extremely difficult for a human being to duplicate), the bullet would tumble, lose its spin, and fall at a much slower speed due to terminal velocity and is therefore rendered less than lethal on impact. However, if a bullet is fired upward at a non-vertical angle (a far more probable possibility), it will maintain its spin and will reach a high enough speed to be lethal on impact. Because of this potentiality, firing a gun into the air is illegal in most states, and even in the states that it is legal, it is not recommended by the police. Also the MythBusters were able to identify two people who had been injured by falling bullets, one of them fatally injured. To date, this is the only myth to receive all three ratings at the same time.
Vodka can remove poison oak.
busted
For some reason, although most of the MythBusters were allergic to poison oak when they were young (especially Kari, who was exempted from the test because she had once had a dangerous reaction), it didn’t affect anyone but John the Researcher. The vodka still gave no results.
Vodka can painlessly remove plastic bandages.
confirmed
Both a control and vodka-soaked bandage were quickly removed from hair-covered legs and, while not painless, the vodka-soaked bandage came off less painfully and removed less hair than the control.
Vodka can be turned into high-quality vodka through charcoal filtration.
busted
Through a double-blind taste test, the cheap vodka seemed to taste better with every subsequent filtration, although the top-shelf vodka beat them all. However, a chemical analysis showed no actual difference between the filtered and unfiltered cheap vodka.
dear mythbusters, im an ialian fan and i watch our episode on discovery channel. i love our program, and i have a suggestion for revisit the myth: bullets fired up. you create a long tube (50 or 75 meters) and plant it in the desert with a 44 magnum or a revolver .38 over the tube….
August 28, 2007 at 2:08 AMyou shoot and when the bullet fall down calculate if the fall is dangerous for the umans. please say hello at adam, jamie, tori, kari, and grant….
W mythbusters…
P.S
revisit my myth please
thanks
michele
Hey guys, Your bullet in the sky repro failed to figure in the spin ! the .30 M1 Garand you used had a 24″ barrel and a 1/10 twist. So figure 2400 fps 2400×12/10*60
September 26, 2007 at 8:34 PMis about 172,800 RPM ! You do know that the bullet is still spinning when its on the way back, dont you ?
caliber: 9mm
October 2, 2007 at 1:11 PMheight:>1000m
speed:>300km/h
result: deadly
video (german, but you can see the results)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZDS_2ooqpU
I also heard that there was a substantial difference in lethality between high-velocity and low-velocity rounds….can the mb’s confirm? I was told that high-velocity rounds would remain lethal after being fired high in an arc, but low-velocity (44 mag., et al) would not.
a revisit would be very nice…
October 27, 2007 at 5:19 PMYou’ve done dropped pennies, dropped bullets… the mass problem means these aren’t lethal. At what mass does something dropped from a tower/high building become dangerous? Bricks, for instance, I would think would be a real issue. Certainly watermelons and champagne magnums (as seen on Letterman) would be dramatic.
November 30, 2007 at 10:51 PMDecember 24th 2007 Basra Iraq. lots of bullets, just that this one just fell out of the sky!!
December 24, 2007 at 12:09 PMHere’s a story that should change “Bullets fired into air…” rating to confirmed:
January 2, 2008 at 2:43 AMhttp://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22465197/
That msnbc link can’t confirm anything. There’s nothing to say that those bullets were fired straight up in the air.
February 23, 2008 at 11:51 AMI heard the story that the Poms used to do a check fire when they had a new batch of
February 27, 2008 at 4:55 AMartillary shells.
They would take one of their guns down to the beach, point the barrel up vertically
and pull the trigger.
They reasoned the only place the shell
wouldn’t land was back down the barrel,
so they wore their tin hats and camped as close the the gun as possible.
Filtered Vodka
In wartime France, the fuel if you could get it ,contained a large quantity of alcohol.
Bloke I new used to extract the alcohol and
February 27, 2008 at 5:38 AMDrink it by passing the fuel through a carbon filter.
Errata Filtered Vodka
To be more accurate you must first add water to the fuel.
This causes the Alcohol to separate out from the mixture.
You can then decant and carbon filter the alcohol.
In Australia you can buy fuel that is ten
percent alcohol.
That translates to 0.8 of a pint of 100%
alcohol to a gallon of fuel.
As normal spirits are only about 40% by volume alcohol that translate to two pints
of drinking alcohol per gallon of fuel.
Starts to make a trip to the gas station
February 28, 2008 at 6:43 AMan economic opportunity!!
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just a heads up about vodka & posion oak.in order toget an allergic reaction from posion oak you must expose the lab rats to posion oak.the plant you used in your test was not posion oak.better revisit the episode & look at the shape of the leaf you thought was posion oak & try again.i’ll send you all the posion oak you want.
November 17, 2008 at 12:21 PM