What myth do you think should have been retested
Posted by CourtlyHades296@reddit | mythbusters | View on Reddit | 33 comments
The Titanic Sinking myth used too small a boat and was practically a scale test. An ocean liner like the one in the myth might have given them a totally different result.
ModernRonin@reddit
"Do cell phones cause avionics to malfunction" myth.
The FAA prevented them actually testing the real conditions of the myth.
Any "conclusion" other than: "We couldn't actually test it, so we don't actually know" is bullshit.
I realize that a real-world test of this myth would probably be unsafe, and thus could never actually be done. But someone on the production team decided to test the myth (and share the resulting video), so here we are. It's a myth that was untestable from the start, and it never should have been tried, much less allowed to air.
MeepTheChangeling@reddit
If it did, I'd be dead and or have been in trouble. I've used my phones on the plane as far back as 2009 with no issues.
H_Industries@reddit
I think that scene from the pilot of west wing illustrates the point pretty well … Toby lists a bunch of technical specs, “Are you telling me I can flummox this thing with something I bought at RadioShack?”
StyxfanLZ129@reddit
Just to see what the fireballs would look like, other cooking oils than the 3 tested in Greased lightning.
A fourth wire hindenburg, filled with hydrogen but without the water.
Only-Ad5049@reddit
Their most famous early myth, the concrete truck, specifically the one they overfilled and eventually blew up.
There’s the famous line from Armageddon, “Lay a firecracker in your hand, burn your hand. Close your hand and ...”
Every attempt at trying to remove the “floor” they suspended the charge overhead and scorched the concrete. I wanted to see what would happen if they drilled holes in the concrete and dropped a charge into it. Could they find the right balance that cracked the floor without damaging the truck or do they just end up blowing out large chunks?
TheJackalsDay@reddit
They should've found a realistic way to test killing zombies with an axe. And not just the one head they used to calibrate in the retest. They needed to set up 20 heads at varying distances using a real axe. They never got into physically swinging a real axe with real weight. And Adam was allowed to reswing if he messed up. Should've seen how hard it was to get 20 clean kills in 20 attempts, plus how physically exhausting it would be.
monkeybrains12@reddit
You beat me to it. They're going on about how bad the gun is because it can jam and has to be reloaded, while Adam's doing his own little test just love tapping actors in makeup on the head with a foam axe.
Jsmitty78@reddit
It's not a good myth, but the one that had me shaking my head the most was the, grocery store line myth. They made a huge error. They made everyone wait in line away from the conveyor. So they had to stop between each customer. Instead of the way it is actually done where people start taking their items out of the cart and filling the conveyor while the customer in front of them pays.
Get_a_Grip_comic@reddit
Just watched the baseball episode , specifically the corked bat myth.
In the episode Adam mentions about the placebo effect , the idea that if you had a magic bat you’d hit the ball harder.
But they didn’t test that, after testing a real corked bat and seeing that it didn’t work they just called it busted and left it there.
They could have gotten 20 strangers in and tested them with a regular bat and a “special bat” , which is just a regular bat but they tell the strangers that they are working on a better bat myth etc
So maybe not retested but an extension/dlc
dragonfett@reddit
Exploding lighters. From what I remember of the test, all of the lighters they had tested were full of lighter fluid, but all of the stories I have heard from people had said their lighters wereat least half empty.
shanejayell@reddit
........ you seriously think they could have gotten a actual ocean liner to sink? Really?
timotheusd313@reddit
They could have performed experiments with Buster or pigs when an old ship was being scuttled to become a reef.
murphsmodels@reddit
Dunno if their insurance would have covered that.
joshsmog@reddit
yeah insurance hates people being on a boat.
42Cobras@reddit
Nolan would’ve done it.
92xSaabaru@reddit
Discovery Channel had a documentary covering the sinking of the USS Oriskany as an artificial reef. It would have been cool if Mythbusters could have coordinated with the Navy, Coast Guard, and relevant authorities to place dummies and test equipment on that or a similar intentional sinking.
thelastedji@reddit
Also... How come they never went to the moon?
ComesInAnOldBox@reddit
There's a lot of stuff the trio did that I disagreed with, because they kept getting hung up on specifics. For example, the firing a bow on horseback testing showed that, yes, the momentum of the rider definitely affected the how far an arrow would penetrate when it hit the target, but for some reason the trio were stuck on the word "double." Grant would say, "but the myth says it doubles the armor penetration of the arrow, and that isn't double!" They'd then declare the myth busted. They did that shit all the time. "But they myth says exactly <whatever>, so this myth is BUSTED!"
sysnickm@reddit
Yeah, or they would pick some regional variant or a myth or saying.
The polishing dung one always annoyed me. I'd never heard it as "you can't polish a turd." I'd always heard and said, "You can polish a turd but it is still shit."
JoeyJoJo_the_first@reddit
Yup. I've always heard it the way you have. "You can't polish a turd" is along the same lines as "I could care less".
It's a misunderstanding of the idiom.
92xSaabaru@reddit
I definitely feel that also.
One disagreement I had was Barrel of Bricks. They called it Busted after the researchers uncovered the origin as a being a joke book, which is fair in preventing it being Confirmed, but in a fairly reasonable set of circumstances (weakened barrel, "sharp" object to break the barrel) it ended up being surprising Plausible.
ender8343@reddit
Didn't they have to significantly compromise the barrel.
92xSaabaru@reddit
They did, but I've seen some horrendous equipment for DIY and really cheap/sleazy construction companies. It would have to be their trademark "Plausible* but unlikely." I was just surprised how everything else played out perfectly after they managed to break the barrel.
Forvalaka@reddit
The ice bullet. I can throw an ice cube across the room without it disintegrating. There quite likely is a slow enough velocity that you could fire an ice bullet and have it penetrate a body.
85tornado@reddit
For me, it's Confederate Rocket. They did make something that could go a mile, but I would have loved to have seen them attempt to use NO2 with alcohol or kerosene. I know that Robert Goddard didn't launch the first liquid-fueled rocket until 1926, but it would have been cool to see if they could attempt it with Civil War era technology. I would have also liked to have seen them use bronze or brass for the fuselage.
NaviLouise42@reddit
Sailing under fan power. My big gripe is that MOST sailing is not done with the wind directly at your back, effective sailing is done with the wind coming from off to one side and slightly forward. I would have liked them to reexamine the actual mechanics of sailing and retry the test with the fan providing a good crosswind and see if it can't make the vacuum that is what actually makes good sailing work. I even sent in an email to them explaining that effective sailing is much like flight, in that it uses the same mechanic as lift but sideways instead of up and thus a fan from behind would never effective.
awesome_pinay_noses@reddit
The one with Tesla's invention to be used to destroy buildings.
They could have bought a reck of a building, build a safety perimeter and have that tool working day in day out till the building collapses.
Calyptics@reddit
The MacGyver airplane one.
You can literally see the "plane" getting lift, the cliff just wasn't steep enough and the back hit the cliff right when they were generating lift.
92xSaabaru@reddit
The Build Team, and occasionally Adam and Jamie in special episodes, would occasionally do rapid fire quick myths and "totally bust" myths after a single test. The worst in my mind is when they were testing if putting a car in reverse stops quicker than braking. Their particular automatic transmission car didn't let them shift into reverse while going forward, and they said that "totally busted" it for automatics. But some cars will let you. I've done it accidentally in a couple, and more aggravating, Mythbusters did it in Driveshaft Pole Vault. Do I think it would have actually changed the result? No, it would probably just make the car lose control, but for them to call it definitive when they definitely knew better kind of irked me.
I still love Mythbusters and greatly appreciate all their work and won't rip them to shreds over a meaningless test.
SnicktDGoblin@reddit
The "syrup smuggling" at night myth. The whole thing about shine running is you know the route and have done it enough that you know it like the back of your hand. Their methodology was flawed in that the course changed up between tests, although having animals randomly in the road was a fair bit of testing methodology.
soulreaverdan@reddit
It always made me laugh when any border crossing related myth was made about the Canadian border
SnicktDGoblin@reddit
Agreed but personally I find that making all border crime Canadian is just a more fun time.
StillAdhesiveness528@reddit
I was in the Navy and we were taught to get as far away from a sinking ship as possible.