MythBusters Episode 134: Unarmed and Unharmed
Air Date: December 9, 2009
It is possible to shoot a pistol out of a person’s hand without injuring him.
busted
Adam and Jamie made several plywood cutouts and equipped their hands to hold a revolver with the same amount of force that a typical person would use. They placed the guns in three different positions – drawing from the hip, pointed ahead for a shootout, aimed sideways at a hostage – and fired at each. Only the “hostage” position allowed them to shoot the gun away while not injuring its holder due to bullet shrapnel. They then devised separate methods for determining whether a person would be startled enough to drop his gun if it were hit. Adam built a paddle with a gun butt and allowed Jamie to hit it with a baseball bat, delivering roughly the same kinetic energy as a bullet; he dropped it on impact, but Jamie was not satisfied with the result. He attached a short side barrel to a revolver, intending to fire a bullet out of it so that the recoil would match the kick of a bullet in flight hitting the gun. This rig did not work properly, so he removed the side barrel and attached a second grip upside down on top of the revolver frame, mounted on a swivel. Each man held the gun in all three positions (“draw,” “shootout,” “hostage”) while the other triggered it remotely at a random time. Jamie dropped it in “draw” and “hostage,” but not in “shootout,” while Adam held onto it in every situation. Owing to the difficulty of hitting the small target of the revolver, the high risk of shrapnel injuries, and the unpredictable reactions of the person holding the weapon, Adam and Jamie classified the myth as busted.
A bus can jump over a 50-foot gap in a roadway, land safely on the other side, and continue driving.
busted
The Build Team acquired a bus with the same dimensions as that used in the film, then built a small-scale model of it as well as the stretch of road in question. Running at a calculated speed of 20 miles per hour, the bus plunged off the end of the road and crashed into the support posts at ground level on the other side. When the gap was halved, the bus still dropped far enough to hit the far end of the roadbed head-on. The team theorized that hidden ramps placed on either end of the gap may have helped the bus to make its jump safely. After outfitting their full-size bus for remote-control steering on an airfield, they did a speed test and found that it could go up to 58 miles per hour, rather than the 70 miles per hour depicted in the film. With the 50-foot target distance scaled down to allow for the lower top speed, they jumped the bus off a ramp; it fell far short of the target, but remained relatively intact until it hit a concrete safety barricade. Since the bus could not make the jump, the team declared the myth busted.
(This myth is based on a scene in the movie Speed.)
Newer: Episode 135: Hidden Nasties
I found the episode a little lite on content, and I thought the earlier tests with actually shooting the gun were more accurate then later tests and just show the ricochets and shrapnel make it rather impossible to pull off.
December 12, 2009 at 3:13 PMJust a slight comment on the bus-jumping…I have not seen this episode yet, but why did the Mythbusters do the first test at 20 mph? That is not accurate to the movie, since the bus could not go under 50 (or was it 55) miles per hour. Nevertheless, it does make sense that a vehicle as heavy as a bus would not be able to make a jump like that, unless it was possibly traveling at 100+ mph.
December 12, 2009 at 9:17 PM@Dragonfyre – the 20mph was calculated to compensate for the lower scale (and weight) of the test.
December 13, 2009 at 11:25 PMhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDSwdZNbaGY&feature=related
This shows a sniper shooting the gun out of som criminals hand that was threatening to kill himself. Looks pretty legit to me.
December 16, 2009 at 8:57 PMThe tests that use a second barrel or a second handle have a severe flaw. The energy that is used to accellerate the bullet is in both cases the same (bullet hits the pistol and pistol is fired). But the two cases have very unsimilar accelerations. The bullet hitting a pistol is setting all is energy free in a real shot amount of time compared to the rather slow accelleration of a bullet propelled in a barrel.
December 22, 2009 at 3:13 PMThis would be the same as accellerating a car to 60mph and crashing it into a concrete wall. The later would be mor unpleasant for the occupants and indeed is in both cases the amount of energy the same.
Therefore these experiments are flawed.
Erich, I have read a many of your comments on different episodes, and I must say you are the biggest idiot I have seen. Yes a person can shoot a gun out of the hand of another person, but the myth was not about modern snipers. The myth was about an old west stand off. If you give me a .50 riffle I can shoot anything out of your hand, with a navy colt revolver probably not. Now could you either get a bit smarter or stop posting?
December 30, 2009 at 4:15 AMFirst: Relax Fred, Erich is just expressing a very sensible opinion. Second: that´s a cool video, I wouldn’t ever think that was possible, even for a sniper, without hurting the guy. Now I have my doubts for the revolver too
December 31, 2009 at 7:24 PMin the movie fools gold a guy is shooting a guy from under water and when he shot it cut a chain!! could that really happen some day you should try doing an experement where buster is under water and see if you can get through chains to get to buster!!
January 1, 2010 at 1:25 PMRE the failure to safely shoot a gun out of someones hand…. I saw this actually happen to a perp armed with a pistol… a SWAT sniper shot it out of his hand, and the perp suffered only a minor laceration along his thumb…
January 5, 2010 at 2:58 PMI have to agree with squeezer and I’m surprised no one else has pointed it out. firing sideways is not the same as the gun getting hit by a bullet, for the obvious reasons of acceleration which he stated. Although I love the show, it has way too many of these thoughtless mistakes.
January 5, 2010 at 3:16 PM‘This shows a sniper shooting the gun out of som criminals hand that was threatening to kill himself. Looks pretty legit to me.’
They key word being SNIPER…
February 1, 2010 at 5:55 AMI confirm what Eric says, I too saw the clip on TV, several times, where the police marksman saves the herbert’s life by disarming him with a shot that takes the gun right out of his hand, without, and instead of, killing him.
Possibly if the rozzers use DUM-DUM bullets for anti terrorist purposes (as ours are said to use), that imparts more momentum to the gun, not sure about the fragmentation properties though.
Objections that this was a sniper is not relevant as a lucky shot by a normal person nearer to the target will get just the same result.
April 2, 2010 at 11:34 AMI agree with the Squeezer comment as well, I thought that at the time that this does not correspond to the same event exactly. The car crash analogy is perfect in showing why.
I also thought the baseball bat hit on a paddle on the pistol suffers from incorrect scaling factor with slower deceleration but more momentum than a fragile bullet might impart, so was also irrelevant.
April 2, 2010 at 11:39 AMTheir two guns at 90 degrees test rig for the first item was flawed. A bullet hitting a gun slows down in a shorter distance and exerts greater force than a bullet accelerating along a barrel over a greater distance.
June 23, 2010 at 8:52 AM