I cannot remember for the life of me. When is it that either team braced for an explosion with railway ties with an explosives expert with the incorrect credentials and one or more ties landed way too close to the safety class?

Posted by Awesomeuser90@reddit | mythbusters | View on Reddit | 19 comments

Adam talked about this on Tested, but I cannot think of what episode this was, nor which Tested episode Adam talked about it. They were on a runway I think. They put railway ties on something. The explosives person they got had experience in the wrong kind of explosives or made some mistake, and the ties got launched way too close to the safety glass or other shelter the crew was in.

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shanejayell@reddit

Tree canon. They had a movie pyro but not someone actually qualified with that much explosives,.

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GeneConscious5484@reddit

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJgYtt99V5s

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shanejayell@reddit

That's fucking terrifying

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bloughmiegh@reddit

Yeah holy cow. Anyone there could have very easily died… reminds me of the time they shot a cannonball into someone’s living room.

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shanejayell@reddit

In their defense, it bounced off the hill they were shooting into.

But yeah, it was after this they pretty much stopped using the bomb range for that sort of test.

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warrenao@reddit

"So, Lefty, how'd you pick up your skills with pyro?"

"Oh, I learned it on the job."

"I see. And why are you called 'Lefty'?"

[holds up prosthetic llimb] "On-the-job learning."

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toochaos@reddit

Isn't this the tree trunk cannon ?

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Freakachu70@reddit

Could be - they had to call in a second pyrotechnician after Jamie ruined the gunpowder with a can of soft drink, and the tree cannon was perched on a holder/platform made of railroad sleepers (railroad ties? The big chunks of wood on railroads - we call them "sleepers" in Oz).

And the explosion footage does show the sleepers going a LOOOOONG way...

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Boris-_-Badenov@reddit

"We're experts!!"

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Freakachu70@reddit

Boris-_-Badenov Honestly, I'm shocked that nobody was seriously hurt in the earlier episodes - their safety was pretty meh then, and somewhat so until their little cannonball accident!

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warrenao@reddit

I think one of the reasons Scottie left was the episode with the microwaved jawbreakers; she didn't get massively injured, but there was molten sugar involved and an unexpected degree of pain.

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Freakachu70@reddit

That was Christine, the first MythTern, who got scalded in the Exploding Jawbreakers episode. IIRC, Scottie left after the infamous Baghdad Battery test that also led (I think - longer-standing members can correct me) to the removal of The Puppet Master

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Formuleboy22@reddit

That's not true at all. Adam touched on this on one of his various q&a livestreams (is in one of his YT videos). Scottie left because she couldn't handle the hectic filming schedule and wanted to do her own thing too with welding. She came back for the conclusion of the plant myth: talking vs music, what grows better, and even came back in n either the second to last or the last JATO Rocket car attempt (they outside contracted her to help them make the launch ramp (made out of a diagonal cut shipping container.)

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