Original subtitles

Please do not try what you are about to see at home.

We're what you call experts.

Can't you tell?

Narrator: On this episode of "mythbusters"...

We lock and load... [ Gun cocks ]

get lost...

Behold the hyneman in his natural habitat.

Narrator: And let loose.

Whoa!

First up, Adam and Jamie

look into the age-old anomaly

that while blindfolded...

I feel like I'm doing pretty good.

Narrator: It's supposedly impossible

to travel in a straight line.

I drove us into the middle of a field!

Then... Somebody order a car?

Kari, Grant, and Tory find out if a Fender bender...

Whoo! Whoa!

Narrator: Could detonate a trunkful

of special-effects explosives.

This is our target car.

Narrator: Stand by for a rocket-propelled car crash.

Oh, my god. What just happened?

I don't know! I don't know!

Narrator: Who are the mythbusters?

Adam savage...

[ Tires screech ]

I am the master of the sun!

And Jamie hyneman. Bye-bye!

Between them, more than 30 years of special-effects experience.

Together with Grant imahara...

Whoo!

Kari Byron...

Hi, Grant!

And Tory belleci... Hit it!

Narrator: They don't just tell the myths.

They put them to the test.

Watch out because Adam and Jamie

are about to walk, swim, and drive blindfolded.

What's with the blindfold?

Ah, well, you ever work on something,

and it's not going the way you want it to,

and you feel like you're just going around in circles?

I know exactly what you mean.

Excellent, because that is what this story is all about.

The myth is that a human when blindfolded

cannot travel

in a straight line. Really?

It turns out that not only can't we walk in a straight line

but that left to our own devices,

we will actually walk in circles

and that this might be one of the reasons

we might get lost in the woods.

I thought with all your survival training,

you'd love this story.

Hello? Jamie?

Oh, he's gone.

Narrator: It's a deceptively simple concept

that has puzzled serious scientists for 100 years.

Supposedly, when blindfolded,

it's impossible for humans to travel,

whether on foot, in water, or by road,

in a straight line.

It's a challenge Adam and Jamie just can't resist.

Come on. Come on back in here.

Did you even hear a word that i said?

Yeah. Humans can't move in a straight line while blindfolded.

That's the story. How do you want to test it?

Well, when i think about moving in a straight line,

i think about walking.

I think you might be right.

Is that where you want to begin?

Yeah, all we need is a couple blindfolds

and a big wide-open field.

Let's do it.

A big field you say?

How about this one?

Adam: Our testing here is pretty straightforward.

We've got a field in which we can walk 3,000 feet

in any direction that we choose.

We've got a blindfold...

This one here is from my personal collection...

And headphones to remove any other stimulus.

And we're just gonna try and walk in a straight line

and see what happens.

Narrator: Sure, we'll see what happens,

but Jamie likes to be more science-y.

We've got three ways of telling how good we are

at walking in a straight line while blindfolded.

First is by using the global positioning system, or GPS.

This little thing will be plotting a map for us

that we can look at afterwards.

Secondly, we've got these lovely little orange flags

that we can place.

Are you ready to go? What?!

Ooh!

Then lastly, we'll know if we hit the target

because we will have had to have walked

in more or less a straight line to get there.

How do i think I'm gonna do?

I don't think I'm gonna be able

to maintain an incredibly straight line,

but i don't think I'm gonna be that far off.

I think i may veer to the left or to the right,

but i think I'll end up pretty close to my goal

of that cluster of trees over there.

Or is it there?

Okay, in 3, 2, 1, go!

Narrator: All he has to do

is walk in a straight line with his eyes closed.

How hard can it be?

Adam: It is a very weird thing

to be walking without any visual or auditory stimulus.

Narrator: What's really weird

is, apparently, how surprisingly difficult it is.

Adam: You're holding a picture of it in your head,

and in your mind's eye,

you're walking a nice straight trajectory

across that landscape.

Tickling at the back of your mind,

you're thinking something might be wrong,

but try as you might, you feel like you're walking straight.

Whoa!

Whoa!

[ Both laugh ]

Jamie: You started out pretty nice,

but after about 300 feet or so,

you started to turn to the left,

and you just kept doing that

until you ended up right back at the fence.

I swear i thought i was walking a perfectly straight line.

Nothing told me that i was possibly walking

in a 200-foot-diameter circle.

I am totally amazed by that result.

Narrator: A result nailed by the GPS trail.

The astonishing disparity

between Adam's perception and his actual route

is there for all to see.

[ Laughs ]

That is hilarious.

It's a result that begs several questions.

The first of which is, will Jamie do any better?

Jamie is blind man walking

in 3, 2, 1, go!

With all the confidence and certainty

you'd expect from the hyneman,

he strides off towards the target tree...

Before veering off course like he's got a short right leg.

And any doubt that subtle topographical features

were the reason Adam went left

are dispelled as Jamie leans so far to the right,

he turns back on himself in a corkscrew pattern.

I ended up right back at the road just like you did.

Narrator: Time to delve deeper.

Adam: Now, the question we have is,

is that leaning that we each had

to one direction or the other consistent?

Walking blind... Test number two.

Is it something that could be corrected for?

Well, that's what we're just about to find out.

He's doing a little better this time.

Narrator: Adam's start is certainly straighter,

but it's not long before the test

literally takes a turn for the worse.

Adam: Test two, i didn't walk straight,

and i didn't even walk straight

in the same way i didn't walk straight the first time.

I went in a circle in the other direction.

Narrator: Yeah, two things are clear from Adam's second test.

His route is far from straight,

and there's no discernable pattern to his meandering....

Bye. Bye.

Narrator: A theory compounded on Jamie's second test

because once again,

he immediately heads off in the wrong direction.

Jamie: [ Laughs ] I'm lost.

Jamie: Trying to walk in a straight line

while being blindfolded is an exercise in futility

because without any cues like vision or sounds and so on,

you're relying on purely mechanical means

of determining your direction.

I feel like he's don quixote,

and I'm following him around.

But you're fluid. You're not like a machine.

You can kind of meander and wander,

and, in fact,

that's kind of what these GPS paths are showing...

Is this looks like a meandering stream.

Narrator: And that meandering corkscrewing

leads Jamie and Adam straight to a firm conclusion.

Stop.

We came here to look at the myth

that a person who is blindfolded cannot walk in a straight line,

and we have definitely proven that

with the data we've gathered.

Narrator: But the myth specifically says travel

and not just walk.

So to complete the data set and nail the science,

Adam and Jamie will be hitting the highways and waterways,

attempting alternative forms of blindfold locomotion.

What's next?

Swimming blindfolded.

Well, we can't do that here. No.

Let's go someplace else. All right.

You're gonna love this one.

This myth is about a binary explosive

that is used in Hollywood effects films.

A guy is transporting it in the trunk of his car.

He gets rear-ended, and the car explodes.

Now, here's the thing... Under normal conditions,

until you mix the two parts together,

the explosive is completely stable.

But once they're mixed, you can set it off

by shooting it with a bullet.

Okay, so, the myth here

is that the impact from a car crash

has enough energy

to actually set off this supposedly stable explosive.

Exactly.

Guns, car crashes, explosions...

I mean, it doesn't get any better than this.

Narrator: It's the rear-end Fender bender from Hollywood

that was never meant to end up on screen.

Considering it usually requires the impact of a gunshot

to set it off,

can a trunkful of special-effects binary explosive

really go ka-blooey in a car crash?

This is the first time

we've actually used this particular explosive,

so i think we might have to do a little research.

Yeah, let's go to the bomb range,

and we'll ask ourselves four questions.

One, what is it? Two, how does it work?

Three, will a car collision set it off?

And then, four, will a bigger amount

give us a bigger explosion?

Explosions at the bomb range?

That's my favorite kind of research.

[ Tires screech ]

Narrator: With those four questions

and no small amount of mayhem in mind...

[ Sighs ]

Guns and explosives... What could be better?

The mythbusters rock up to the bomb range,

where it's time for a little shoot-and-tell.

This is the Hollywood binary explosive of the myth.

You've got an oxidizer and a catalyst.

The beauty of this... on their own, they're virtually inert.

But if you mix them together

and shoot them with a high-powered rifle,

you get a superfast chain reaction

that gives you a really nice explosion.

Grant: This is the first time we've used it on our show,

but it shares many similarities with other high explosives

that we have used on our show.

Namely, it requires a shock wave in order to set it off.

A hammer won't do it.

Small handgun fire won't do it.

Even automatic small-caliber fire won't do it.

You need a high-powered rifle.

And that's what we're gonna use.

And this is the gun.

It's a .308 sniper rifle.

This thing has a muzzle velocity of 2,500 feet per second.

That's plenty of power to set off our binary explosive.

Okay. Here we go. Firing.

Now, the plan is, we're gonna fire into our catalyst.

Grant: Okay. Catalyst alone.

No explosion.

And then we're gonna fire into our oxidizer.

No explosion. Time to mix them.

Tory: Then we're gonna mix the two components together,

fire into that, and see if it explodes.

Now, if it explodes,

that tells us a very important thing about this myth...

That the chemicals were mixed in the back of this guy's trunk,

which means that guy was crazy.

All right. This is the mixed binary explosive.

You guys ready? Ready.

Did you mix it good? Kari: Oh, i did.

Wow! That was a good pop.

Kari: So, we've come out to the bomb range

to find out exactly what we're dealing with.

Turns out we're dealing with something pretty awesome.

You mix it together,

you add a little energy from a high-powered rifle,

and you get a chemical reaction

that results in a cloud of rapidly expanding gases,

or as we like to call it, an explosion.

Now, the question is, what's next?

Does more equal more?

If we ramp up to a trunkful of this stuff,

how much bigger will the explosion be?

That's right. It's bigger-boom time.

Narrator: Next on "mythbusters"...

The walrus is back in his not-so-natural habitat.

And later...

[ Cheers ] Kari, Grant, and Tory

ramp it up with rockets.

Our myth-busting pedestrians have already established

that blindfolds and straight lines don't mix.

Whoa! [ Laughs ]

But how about other types of travel?

I can't believe we didn't get pulled over.

[ Laughs ]

We've already established that when blindfolded,

we were unable to walk in a straight line.

Now it's time to find out

if we're able to swim in a straight line while blindfolded.

Each of us will take a turn putting on a pair

of blacked-out swimming goggles.

Then we'll see if we can swim a straight line

from here to the reflector across the lake.

The GPS will tell us how we did.

You know what i like about tests where i get to wear a wet suit?

Tight material tends to hold me in a little bit,

make me look a little less tubby.

[ Sighs ] It's not working, is it?

Oh, crap.

Narrator: Speaking of body shape...

GPS me.

Is the wonky walking of the previous test

all about that particular method of movement?

Whoo! Whoo!

Aw, it's cold.

Narrator: Will the biomechanics of swimming

keep our out-of-shape swim team on the straight and narrow?

Well, a mere 30 feet into the test,

it's clear that the blindfold,

by blocking out any visual landmarks,

makes the answer a drifting, dizzying no.

He's swimming around and around in a corkscrew.

Narrator: Once again, the really compelling detail

is not how far off course Adam is straying...

I must be close!

But that he thinks he's going straight.

I feel like I'm doing pretty good.

In my mental landscape, the target's still right there.

No. No, Adam, it isn't.

Let's see if the walrus can do any better.

I'm ready.

Jamie: Well, Adam didn't do so well.

Will i be able to do any better?

Without any kind of reference, i don't see why i would.

Narrator: Aiming blindfolded

for a target straight across the lake,

two things are clear.

For a marine mammal, he's... [ Walrus barking ]

clearly not at home in the water.

And his pre-test prediction was right...

As well as the occasional left, followed by a right...

[ Laughs ]

some more right,

and, well, you get the picture.

Adam: Well, Jamie didn't fare any better than i did

in attempting to swim in a straight line.

In fact, he fared far worse.

He did have the intuition in the middle

that things were going horribly awry...

I get the feeling I'm swimming in a circle.

Adam: Whereas i thought i was heading straight for the target.

Verdict time.

Is it possible to swim in a straight line while blindfolded?

No. So, what's next?

Driving.

[ Laughs ] I love it.

Narrator: Can the impact energy of a Fender bender

set off a trunkload of binary explosive...

[ Tires screech ]

and blow a car to smithereens?

Kari, Grant, and Tory are at the bomb range,

aiming to find out.

Wow! That was a good pop.

Kari: So, we know from working with explosives like anfo

when you use more of it, you get a bigger boom.

It seems pretty obvious.

But that might not actually be the case here.

In special effects, they use really small quantities.

One load is only half a pound.

And, in fact, when it's mixed, it's really, really stable.

So what we need to know is if a single bullet

will actually detonate the entire batch

when you're using a very large quantity.

All right.

This is Hollywood binary explosive double load.

Send it.

Kari: Whoa!

[ Laughs ] Whoa!

Wow!

Tory: Now, as you can see from the destroyed box,

the double material gives at least double the explosion,

if not more.

But now what we want to see

is if you had multiple cans mixed up,

would hitting one of them set off a chain reaction,

or would the one that got hit by a bullet just explode?

So we're gonna mix up five jars of this stuff, line them up,

take a shot at one, and see if it sets off the rest.

All right. Here we go.

Grant: Wow!

Tory: There you go.

That was awesome!

You got a chain reaction.

They all went off. Totally.

Kari: I like combining guns and explosives.

Yeah. It's all right.

Grant: When we first started this story,

we had four questions...

What is this explosive, how does it work,

does more equal a bigger boom, and can a car crash set it off?

Well, we have answers to the first three.

We know what it is, we know how it works,

and we know that one small cannister

will detonate a chain reaction in a much larger batch.

So the big question is, will a high-energy impact

other than a high-velocity round

be enough to set off our binary explosive?

That's right.

We are about to see if we can create an explosion

from a car crash.

Coming up next on "mythbusters," where did i leave my car?

Narrator: In the myth of the exploding Fender bender...

kari, Grant, and Tory

are having fun playing with guns and blammo.

All right, so, we know that our Hollywood binary explosive

needs to be mixed to go off.

We also know that it takes

a high-velocity round to make it explode

and that it can go off in a chain reaction

even if it's in several different little containers.

[ Tires screech ]

So now we want to see if an impact

will set off those binary explosives,

just like in a car crash.

To dig a big hole, you need a big shovel.

Narrator: So, to replicate the exact conditions

of the mythical scenario,

the team is setting up for an actual car crash...

Somebody order a car?

In a controlled environment.

Kari: Now, you'll notice we're not on a road or on a runway.

Turns out it's really hard to find a place

that'll let you crash a car with explosives.

So this is our answer.

We're going to bury a car halfway deep

so that just the trunk's sticking out,

re-create the crash by dropping another car at 150 feet

so that it hits at freeway speed

with 50 pounds of binary explosive in the trunk.

Tory: All right, so, now that we have our hole dug,

it's time to put our car nose down into the hole.

[ Laughs ]

This way, the car won't move at all

when we drop the other car from 150 feet

from the crane into the trunk.

Looks like we caught a big one. [ Kari laughs ]

Narrator: With 50 pounds

of premixed binary explosive in the trunk...

20 times more than this...

It could well be the end of the road

for our flame-covered friend.

All right. Car's loaded. Let's drop a car on it.

Kari: We're almost doubling the speed,

and the collision will create 880,000 joules

of kinetic energy.

Yeah.

I still don't think it's gonna explode.

Narrator: Well, there's only one way to find out...

Dropping a car from 150 feet at 60 miles an hour

and crashing it into another car that's standing on end

half-buried in the ground with a trunkful of explosives.

Just another day at the office.

Kari: All right. This is freeway speed.

Grant: 100 loads of binary explosive in the trunk.

Rear-end collision in 3, 2, 1.

Direct hit!

That was a great hit.

No explosion. No explosion.

No explosion.

Narrator: No explosion.

And with the circumstances of the myth re-created exactly,

albeit at 90 degrees,

the damning conclusion is quick to follow.

Kari: We wanted to create a crash at freeway speed.

I think we did one better.

Why? Because that car's buried into the ground.

It had nowhere to go.

That means it absorbed all the energy of the collision.

Still no explosion.

This myth is busted.

Narrator: Under normal circumstances,

the myth is busted.

But can the impact from a Fender bender

ever initiate an explosion under any circumstances?

To find out, this story is getting supersized.

I think we need more speed...

Some extreme speed.

Well, we could make a rocket-powered car.

I mean, that would give us a lot of speed.

All right. Road trip.

I hope this works.

Narrator: Having walked wonky...

Whoa!

And swum squiggly,

the myth that it's impossible to stay on the straight and narrow

while blindfolded is looking good.

But our dynamic duo are covering all of their bases

and taking human locomotion out of the equation.

Even with the aid of a machine,

can you travel a straight line while sight-deprived?

Some blindfolded driving. Should we get to it?

I think so. [ Laughs ]

Jamie: This test is really simple.

Once again, we're gonna use

blinders and hearing suppression,

and all we're gonna do is try and drive a straight line

right towards the city of San Francisco.

So that we can tell where we've been,

we're gonna attach this sports chalker

to the back of our golf cart,

and that line's gonna tell the whole story.

Narrator: They'll also be using their trusty GPS unit

to plot their course electronically.

And in this most straightforward of tests,

Adam thinks he's about to bust the myth by doing just that...

Going straight.

Adam: I do have a prediction for this test.

I don't think it's going to be very hard

to drive in a straight line.

Go.

I think all i need to do is align the wheels

and not move my hands.

I'm holding my hands steady,

but i can't shake the feeling

that I'm drifting to the right.

Interesting.

Narrator: Once again, Adam rejects straight-line reality...

[ Laughs ]

in favor of his own internal vision.

Okay. You're gonna have to stop.

Well, you can open your eyes.

I was drifting to the left?

Yeah. Want to try again?

Absolutely.

But two further tests

only confirm the fact that driving in a straight line

is not as simple as holding the steering wheel steady.

Oh. Oh, i feel a terrain change.

I think I'm in trouble.

Any number of small adjustments and corrections

have to be made to stay the course...

You know, i think the wind

is, like, giving me a false feeling of turning.

Could be.

Adjustments that are impossible to make,

for Adam at least, without a visual reference.

[ Laughs ] Whoa!

I drove us into the middle of a field!

And the GPS data illustrates that perfectly.

The question is,

can Jamie do any better on his three test drives?

Go.

Jamie: Basically, I'm trying to focus

on my internal sense of orientation.

And i have to say, it doesn't feel like it's very accurate.

Well, that doesn't feel right.

That leaves me with only a very rough sense of what I'm doing

based on the wind and the roughness of the road,

which isn't a whole heck of a lot.

Funny. I could be going around in circles

for all i know.

So this doesn't really work too well, i don't think.

Narrator: Despite making it

further down the runway than Adam,

Jamie has only given this myth another kick

in the "confirm" direction.

Adam: So far, we've walked, we've swum,

and now we've driven.

I'll admit i thought we weren't gonna get anything

out of the driving test in terms of results.

I mean, supposedly you're in this machine

where all you need to do is hold tight to the steering wheel

and it'll carry you on a straight line.

I'm holding my hands perfectly steady.

What's wrong with me?

But even in that machine,

the kinesthetic feedback we're getting from the world

forced both Jamie and i to make corrections.

These corrections were based on a map of our landscape

we had in our head which wasn't correct,

and thus our corrections were incorrect

and sent us careening all over the runway.

Even driving, we could not make a straight line.

Narrator: It's an interesting anomaly,

and there seems to be no rhyme or reason

as to why we can't do it.

There's no correlation between left- and right-handedness

or body asymmetry.

It simply appears that, deprived of our eyesight,

we are physically incapable

of maintaining the unnatural construct of a straight line.

So the myth is confirmed.

But Adam and Jamie want to take it further

and explore the real-world implications.

Do not try what you're about to see at home.

We're what you call experts.

[ Clank! ] Ow!

Okay. So, a 60-mile-an-hour crash

is not gonna set it off.

But we can't stop there.

All right. How about this?

How about instead of a regular Fender bender,

it was like a super car crashing into the back of another car

at, say, a couple hundred miles an hour?

I love it, and i know exactly where we're gonna go

to test this. Road trip?

Yeah, but just in case,

let's not put the explosive in the trunk.

Good idea.

Narrator: When ramping it up is on the menu,

there's one location that's guaranteed

to find the dial marked "awesome,"

turn it up to 11, rip it off, and run away laughing.

Perfect day for science.

Tory: So, we are back at new Mexico tech,

one of the most incredible test facilities in the world.

Why are we here? Because of their rocket sled.

Last time we were here, we split a car in half.

With this track, our rocket sled

should be able to accelerate with 63,000 pounds of thrust

over a quarter-second, upwards of 300 miles an hour

to create what we hope

is gonna be the world's fastest car crash.

And this is our target car.

It's completely isolated, as if it were stopped on the freeway

with 200 loads of mixed binary explosive in the trunk.

When that rocket-sled car comes crashing into the back end,

we will find out once and for all if a collision

has enough energy to create a detonation

and give us a massive explosion.

Narrator: But before the team

launches a rocket-propelled Fender bender,

a control is required.

Tory: Now, you know it's gonna be a good experiment

when the control test is a massive explosion.

Narrator: Knowing just what kind of havoc

the rocket sled can wreak...

Adam: Wow!

Detecting whether the binary explosive

has actually detonated amongst the carnage...

What an impossibly large amount of force.

May be difficult.

Mythbusters version of cocktail.

Shaken, not stirred.

So, to be sure, the team

will set off the same amount of binary explosive... 200 loads...

In the trunk of this car

and establish a devastation benchmark.

This is the biggest bomb range at new Mexico tech.

New Mexico tech, where you can get a phd in blowing [Bleep] up.

In fact, it's also the most robust bunker.

It is built to withstand 20,000 pounds of tnt.

Our explosion's not quite that big,

but it's within the spirit of the myth...

A trunkful of binary explosive.

Okay, so, because this is potentially so dangerous,

we will be very far away and underground.

Home, sweet home.

So we're gonna do it the old-fashioned way...

Use a detonator.

All right. This is binary car control

filled with 200 loads of binary explosive.

In 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.

[ Laughs ]

Wow! That was a massive explosion.

Tory: That was an incredible explosion.

I mean, i had no idea that this binary explosive

had this much destructive power.

But we know that it took a blasting cap

in order to set this off.

The real question now is, will a car crash have enough energy

to set this off and do the same amount of damage?

Well, at least now we have a benchmark.

Narrator: In the ramped-up rocket-sled crash,

they'll be looking for a shock wave, followed by a fireball,

and the car roof being blown 200 feet in the air.

And those are just the control benchmarks.

With that, it's time to hit the track

and set up for the Fender bender to end all Fender benders.

Tory: I know this engine doesn't look like much,

but it's gonna be putting out a million horsepower today.

Kari: This is the first time new Mexico tech

has actually put a car on the rocket sled.

There's a lot of jeopardy here aerodynamically.

If that car starts to lift off the track,

it's going to pull that rocket sled off of the track,

trash the experiment and the track.

Narrator: Hence the concerted team effort

preparing the impact vehicle...

A truck with rockets as standard.

Tory: This is the first time

they are flying a vehicle down the track.

Anything can happen.

Narrator: But there's one thing

Tory thinks won't happen.

Tory: Now, we know a high-powered rifle

will set off the binary explosive,

and that is traveling at 2,000 feet per second,

which is 1,400 miles an hour.

Wouldn't be a truck without one of those.

[ Drill whirrs ]

Tory: Now, our car is only gonna be traveling

at 300 miles an hour,

so i have a hard time believing that that crash

is gonna be enough to detonate the explosive.

But we have done everything we can scientifically

to cover our bases.

Let's see what happens.

Narrator: With a trunkful of premixed binary explosives

in the target car...

200 loads.

All that's left to do is winch the truck

back to the start of the track and add the rockets.

These are 5-inch hvar rockets.

There's gonna be 10 of them on our sled.

Now, they were made in the 1950s,

but, believe me, they still pack a punch.

They're gonna give us 65,000 pounds of thrust

in a quarter of a second

and cause the sled to experience 17 g's of acceleration.

That should be more than enough to get our truck going.

Narrator: Next, it's mythbuster versus wild.

Will you really walk in circles in the woods?

Aw, crap.

So, the blindfold cleanly removed our ability

to walk, swim, or even drive

in anything remotely approaching a straight line.

Well, that pretty much means the myth

is confirmed, doesn't it?

Yeah. But there's something that's still bugging me

about this story. What's that?

Well, under no circumstances do humans ever actually try

and perambulate while blindfolded.

Where's the real-world application?

What do you have in mind?

I'm thinking that if humans

are supposed to get lost in the woods

and that they supposedly walk in circles,

let's you and me head out to the woods

and see if we can get lost and end up walking in circles.

It's a plan. Excellent.

Narrator: It's widely reported that unprepared walkers

lost in the woods unwittingly wander in circles.

With no clear view of their destination

or established landmarks,

it's as if they were blindfolded.

It's a potential lifesaving story

Adam and Jamie can't resist tackling.

[ Laughs ]

Behold the hyneman in his natural habitat.

Narrator: On a clear day in unknown territory,

unable to see their direction through the trees,

can they stick to a preselected bearing?

Adam: Jamie and i are each going to choose a specific trajectory

and try and walk a straight line on that trajectory

while being tracked by a GPS.

In 3, 2, 1.

Here we go.

After 30 minutes, we're gonna come back home

and see exactly how we did.

Jamie: Now, I'm not talking

walking a straight line like a ruler.

I'm talking i have someplace i need to get to,

and i want to go there directly.

I'm gonna be doing several things

to keep me walking in a straight line.

I'm gonna try and take sightings off of trees or other landmarks,

and I'm gonna note my position relative to the sun.

Right now the sun is directly overhead and off to my left,

and so if i want to use that to orient myself

as I'm walking through the forest,

all i have to do is keep it in approximately that position.

Of course, as time passes, it's gonna move through the sky,

but i can still keep it kind of on that one side fairly easily

to compensate for it,

and that'll make sure i don't walk in circles.

[ Bell dings ]

Oh!

That's the time. Time to go home.

Narrator: Using their trusty GPS units,

they head back to position one, where the results are in.

Despite terrain obstacles and obscured long-range visibility,

Jamie, using a range of techniques,

maintained a very accurate trajectory,

and even Adam generally headed in the right direction.

Using the sun to get his bearings,

he clearly avoided the corkscrewing the myth implies.

While i might not have the survival training

that Jamie has,

my techniques actually worked pretty good.

With the help of a gorgeous day and the sun,

i was able to maintain a reasonably straight trajectory.

Narrator: But for the next test,

they're gonna make things tougher and turn off the sun.

Jamie: We have to replicate a situation

that is less than optimal as far as navigating.

Maybe it's a snowstorm, or maybe it's at night,

and all you've got is a flashlight.

One way or another, you can only see

in the immediate vicinity right next to you.

Now, i tried a number of different things

back at the shop

to see if i could re-create that kind of situation.

[ Coughing ]

Definitely not.

Narrator: And it turns out the perfect artificial snowstorm,

used by experts to train for whiteout conditions,

where your vision is restricted to a radius of just a few feet,

is the bucket head.

[ Laughs ]

Okay. Here we go.

As before, Adam and Jamie have a preselected bearing.

They can see their feet

and a limited distance in front of them.

Aw, crap.

Narrator: But crucially,

they can't see the sun

or use long-range sight markers. Adam: Ow.

But our expert outdoorsmen has his technique down pat.

By methodically pacing at right angles

around direct obstacles...

Forward.

Narrator: He maintains his straight-line trajectory.

And go forward again.

Narrator: While Jamie

robotically paces towards his goal,

the extreme conditions get the better of untrained Adam...

Something tells me that things have gone horribly wrong.

Narrator: Until he's simply wandering in the woods

with a bucket on his head.

With the test complete,

the GPS results show that urbanite Adam

beautifully illustrated just how important survival training is

in extreme conditions.

Look at that!

I almost drew an ampersand in the woods.

Narrator: In contrast, Jamie's route was indicative

of his practical approach and technique.

I think we've learned an important lesson here.

You don't have to obliterate someone's vision.

You can just merely restrict it,

and all of a sudden, they might start walking in circles.

[ As Jamie ] Right. But with proper training,

you can still walk in a straight line and to safety.

[ Normal voice ] Thanks, Jamie.

Narrator: Yep, while lost in the woods,

as long as you can see the sun,

anyone can walk in a straight line.

However, with limited visibility,

you'll need training and a disciplined approach.

But is there another option for a successful escape?

What about teamwork?

Let's get out of here. I'll navigate.

All right.

Narrator: Coming up, there's a blastoff...

and a dance-off.

Watch. I can make Jamie dance.

One way or another, it seems that humans

are not inclined to walk in a straight line

if they can't see very well.

Makes me wonder, though,

if there's not some kind of mechanical solution.

[ Laughs ]

This I've got to see.

Jamie: All episode long, Adam and i

have been trying to travel in a straight line...

I'm holding my hands perfectly steady.

What's wrong with me?

Without very much success, i must say.

He's swimming around and around in a corkscrew.

But now we've had an idea

that may just be the solution to our problem.

And we're not exactly sure, but the problem seems to be

that lacking any stimulus,

the human mind creates a landscape for itself...

Can't shake the feeling that I'm drifting to the right.

That's not exactly correct

and then makes corrections based on that landscape

that lead it very far astray very, very quickly.

So we thought what if a device could be created

that would allow two people working in tandem

to directly, physically feel

when they were being led off of a straight line?

That's when we came up with this.

Narrator: By securing themselves into each end

of a rigid, straight-line tether,

the theory is physical feedback from the hip harnesses

will alert them if they wander off the straight and narrow.

Watch. I can make Jamie dance.

The fatal flaw for our blindfoldees

could be the high degree of teamwork required.

That's enough of that.

With their simple "a" -to-arrow course set up,

it's time to turn out the lights.

I got my goggles. Here we go.

In 3, 2, 1.

Let's go.

They're off, and the early signs are encouraging.

I feel like we're walking in a nice, straight line.

Okay.

Unlike Jamie's solo efforts,

when he veered off course very early,

our pair of perambulators

look like they've got this conundrum cracked.

Now i know what it really is like

to have a monkey on your back.

[ Laughs ]

But it's not long before their internal reality

conflicts with the real one,

and they steer off course.

In my mental landscape,

we're traveling slightly to the right of the arrow.

Feels like we're doing okay.

I feel like you're leaning a little to the right.

Adam: Our device's whole point

was to try and add a kinesthetic sense to the human body

that it was moving off of a straight line.

And i honestly felt

like we were maybe slightly veering off course,

but we walked a complete horseshoe,

and not once did i have the sense

that we were making a tight turn.

Just didn't work.

[ Laughs ]

We're facing where we started.

That's amazing.

The arrow's way over there!

[ Boing! ]

[ Both laugh ]

This didn't work at all.

Well, what are you gonna do? That's science.

You come up with a theory. You test it.

Either it works, or it doesn't.

And in this case, it didn't.

Are we ready?

Yes. We're ready.

Right.

Well, it would seem that all of our tests

have definitively shown that human beings

tend to lack the ability to walk in a straight line.

Now, what we haven't attempted to figure out

is the "why" of that phenomenon.

But i think it's safe to say that it's confirmed.

Are you there?

I'm right here.

It's totally confirmed. I agree.

Narrator: That's what the detonation of a trunkful

of Hollywood binary explosive looks like.

Love a good explosion in the morning.

Narrator: Question is, can the impact from a Fender bender

initiate that explosion?

All right. Ready for launch.

Narrator: If a rocket-propelled truck can't do it,

no conceivable car crash ever could,

because at 300 miles an hour,

we're exceeding the speed of the fastest super car on the road.

This is binary explosive versus the rocket sled.

It's this myth's final chance...

Here we go.

And final countdown.

Tory: In 5... 4...

3... 2... 1.

[ Laughs ]

Oh, my god. What just happened?

I don't know! I don't know!

Narrator: What just happened

was an old, beat-up pickup truck...

powered by 10 hvar rockets,

pumping out 65,000 pounds of thrust,

pulled 17 g's

and got up to almost 300 miles an hour.

[ Laughs ]

Oh, my god. That was awesome.

[ Laughs ] Wow!

Narrator: As Fender benders go,

that was at the end of the scale marked "insane."

But to find out whether the binary explosive

in the trunk of the target car was detonated,

the team needs to get a closer look

and compare it to the control blast.

Kari: We watched 200 loads of binary explosive detonate

so that we could compare it to what we just witnessed.

We saw a rocket sled

come down the track at almost 300 miles an hour

and crash into the back end of a car

with the same amount of explosive.

Now, though a spectacular sight,

it was not a detonation.

What we saw with our explosion was a flash of fire.

What we saw here was a disintegration.

Anybody get the license plate on that car?

Now, we know that our binary explosive

can be set off by a high-powered rifle round.

But this myth is about a collision,

specifically a vehicle collision.

We continued to ramp up our speeds

all the way up to nearly 300 miles per hour,

and still no detonation.

Narrator: As incredible as it seems,

the energy that could cause this type of damage

was still not enough to initiate the explosion.

And that's the beauty of binary explosives.

Safety-conscious Hollywood special-effects teams

can rely on a very specific detonation fingerprint

and know that any incidental impact

will not have disastrous consequences...

which leaves just one conclusion.

Wow. That was incredible.

I don't think this myth can be any more busted.

Now, that was a high-speed crash.

Yeah. And you know what?

You're not gonna see a crash like that on the road.

And even if you did, there'd be no explosion!

Definitely not a detonation.

All right, so a collision from a car

is never gonna set off a trunkful of binary explosives.

This one is busted.

Busted. Busted.

That was awesome. [ Laughs ]

Want to know why we did what we did

and didn't do what we didn't do?

Go to discovery. Com/ mythbustersaftershow

and see why.