Original subtitles

On this episode of Mythbusters.

It's like a lovely ballet, isn't it? Jamie and Adam whip it good. Ow, ow, ow,

ow, ow, ow. To test the myth that if a cable at high tension suddenly snaps.

Straight through his body. Through it. It can slice a person clean in two.

I love hearing big sounds in the next room.

And meanwhile, Grant, Carrie, and Tori make beautiful music.

To find out if sound can be recorded onto pottery.

Tori! Tori! Tori!

I know what it would be like to be married to you.

And played back just like a record.

That's crazy sounding.

Who are the Mythbusters?

Adam Savage.

And Jamie Heinemann. Aren't Tracer rounds illegal?

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

That's what I'm talking about!

Joining them, Tori Bellacci.

What could go wrong?

Carrie Byron. We're going for total annihilation. And Grant Imahara.

I'm pooping as fast as I can!

They don't just tell the myth.

They put them to the test.

All right, I'm going to perform the next myth in pantomime.

What do you think?

Okay. We're talking about killer cable slice, I believe. And this is when a

cable under tension snaps and it cuts you in half.

Allegedly. Allegedly.

Allegedly, the theory is that if a cable is stretched taut, the tension can

become so great that if it were to snap, it could cut a person in two.

Not a pretty picture.

Not pretty at all, as this footage filmed on the USS George Washington

A cable that was supposed to stop a jet broke and whipped across the deck.

Luckily, one crew member had lightning -fast reflexes, but five others had no

time to run.

Dramatic proof of this real -life peril.

You know, I'm a little worried about this one.

I'm not sure how easy it will be to get the cable to behave in a predictable

fashion, like where it's going to go when you snap it.

Well, that sounds like a perfect opportunity for a bench test. We should

scale model and see how we can make the cable snap predictably.

Well, also, actually, with that, we can figure out where the most dangerous

place to be in there, like the kill zone.

Sure.

To set up the bench test, Jamie screws on clamps at either end of a table. Then

he secures parachute cord from one end to the other and tightens it until it's

straight taut.

Adam measures and marks out a scale model floor plan.

It's about 50 by 30.

It's gridded out in one -foot marks so that I should be able to see where the

cable's going for each of these tests.

Grazer at the ready.

Yeah, that's sharp enough.

High -speed ready?

Ready. Okay, here we go. Test number one, no obstructions.

The cord soars straight down the center line.

It makes all the sense in the world. You're tensioning it, and you release

tension on one side. All the force in that cable wants to head towards the

anchor point.

He sounds like an expert now, but in a previous myth, they almost got a moving

violation trying to bring a police car to a screeching halt by tying an

cable to its rear axle.

Driving the car in a straight line broke the cable with ease, but this myth

needs a little more direction.

So we need to deflect it. We absolutely need to deflect it. Otherwise, there is

no whip at all. There's no reason. All the energy has gone that way. Why would

it? Precisely.

What I'm looking for is a consistent arc of maybe 6 to 10 feet that I can count

on the cable going through.

Then I can set up the big cable. I can put my test subject there. I can slice

and know that that cable under that tension is going to go.

Tension move closer to the cut point.

Here we go. 3, 2, 1.

So fast.

That's just beautiful.

Block you in the face kind of thing.

I mean, that cable's just moving right towards this area, just like you'd

imagine your worst -case scenario would be.

Yeah. So if they can get the cable to move like the cord is doing, what would

happen to a person who was unlucky enough to get in the way?

They place a bolt on the grid that will play the unfortunate human.

Okay, here we go.

The cord completely lassoes the bolt.

Dude. It went all the way around.

That's beautiful.

That's like Indiana Jones with a whip.

Forget wimpy little string.

The boys are ready to lash out with the might of a deal.

When this myth first came to our attention on the Internet,

scientists were playing back sounds.

inadvertently recorded onto ancient pottery.

So somehow in the mists of time, there was the perfect scenario in which a pot

was turning on a wheel and something like straw or anything brushing up

that pot acted as a stylus. And their voice, their laughter, the vibrations

sound actually recorded inadvertently into the clay. Sounds pretty crazy,

doesn't it?

Sure does.

The theory is in ancient times, a potter was working away when there was a noise

close by.

The force of the sound waves made an imprint like record grooves in the fresh

clay. Fast forward to today, and we can play back these sounds from the past

using modern technology.

First stop is the lair of mega sound system creator Alexander Ewell Thornton

but you can call him Thorny for short. It was given to me in my teens, and I

kind of liked it, so I kept it. Every conceivable kind of recording device,

spare part, and cool little toy imaginable is hidden somewhere on

shelves. Barbie steam engine.

No, it's a G .I. Joe steam engine.

So what's this expert audiophile's opinion about pottery recording?

I think there's no question that you could do it. So recording an audio

in a piece of pottery. Sure. And playing it back. Yes. We just have to prove

that it's remotely possible. I don't think it's going to be that difficult.

Thorny just happens to have a device on hand that will prove his point. A

phonographic dictation machine from the 1930s that was invented by Thomas

Edison. Warning, warning, dive, dive, dive.

The way the dictation machine worked could be very similar to how it might be

possible to record and play back sound from a clay pot.

Coming up next on MythBusters, can you get audio off of an old pot?

The vibrations from Grant's voice travel down the horn and cause a cutting

stylus to make a series of grooves in the wax.

You can see the little sort of ruffles in the surface.

That is the information as cut. So back in the day, this would be like high

-tech. Oh, yeah. To play it back, they simply run a non -cutting stylus back

over the grooves.

Voice writer. That is great.

With all of Thorny's knowledge at their disposal, the most burning question

Grant has is... Does my voice really sound like that? Yeah. Yeah.

Well... You guys suck. He doesn't record all of the low pitches.

Maybe we should try that recording again.

The team thanks Thorny for his sound insight.

I don't know, with a shop like this, I have a feeling we might be contacting

again for something else buried in here.

Feel free.

Well, if wax can hold sound, maybe clay can too.

Carrie and Tori go to a pottery store to get some supplies.

The finer the grade of clay, the better.

We're hoping that if we have a fine clay, it won't distort the stylus

on our pottery.

All right, let's go make some pots.

I've got to cut my nails first.

I've got a stylus on every finger.

I've got to do it too.

Let's go get a manicure and then we'll throw some pot.

There's high tension all around them. Cables are mighty useful, so there's no

escaping them. But if they snap, can they cut you in two?

Sounds like just the job for the Mythbusters.

Well, we've got some safety concerns, first off, before we start actually, you

know, snapping cables. And I figure that means that we should get some kind of

interior space inside a building so we can control it. Maybe we can be outside.

Very separated. Yeah, this is going to be dangerous as hell.

The plan is to rig a series of chains and pulleys around a support column,

attach a cable to it, and stretch it all the way over to another support column

and position an obstruction between them. Then, using a hydraulic pump, pull

cable so tight it snaps and see if it slices their human stand -in in half.

Jamie goes shopping to get some heaving hardware.

Hey, Andy. Hi, Jamie.

Welcome. Welcome to C .H. Bull.

Well, thank you. So, I've got a project that I need your help on. Okay. Have you

ever heard of a situation where a cable is under tension and it snaps and it,

like, cuts somebody in half?

I've heard it more with nylon rope, but I've heard it with cable as well.

There's a lot more elasticity in a nylon rope. There could be a lot more

stretch, which would be a lot more recoil.

Well, that's what I figured, too. We'll have to test a variety of thicknesses of

cable as well as some different types of rope, even. To pull the cable or rope

taut... Andy shows Jamie a hydraulic cylinder that can pull cables. It's the

kind of gadget that gets Jamie all animated.

Oh, yeah.

Well, just looking at it, I'd say that's going to do fine.

30 tons.

30 tons, and I think we're a little over 5 inches of stroke.

As for a device that will actually slice through the cable, Andy has a safety

-minded suggestion.

What's nice about this is it's easy to have a remote setting, set this right in

the middle of the cable, and so as you start to cut from a safe distance away,

as that cable breaks, this would be the ideal way to go. Well, that's perfect.

Jamie leaves with his slice -and -dice goodies.

Meanwhile, Adam goes to market to get their target.

The killer table stab is not at all a story we can test with Buster. He is

for... The falling, the banging,

the kind of rough damage assessment.

This is a case where we want to find out if a cable can slice a human being in

half. We need a much better human analog.

Keith, how are you doing? It's a meet and greet with Manager Keith.

You got some pigs for us? Oh, yeah. It's a big one.

Really? Yeah. How much do they weigh?

150 pounds average.

Actually, perfect. So, let's go see it. You go first.

Oh, great. Good fashion statement.

Excellent.

There we go.

Oh, my God. Even though they're not alive, seeing the dead pigs hanging from

horror movie -sized hooks makes this bacon lover almost lose his breakfast.

is going to be hard even for me.

I'm not going to have a ham sandwich for lunch today.

I probably won't either, actually.

But Adam manages not to hurt and takes the pigs back to M5.

Got a pickup truck full of 750 pounds of ham.

Do some experiments.

Did you stop some traffic with this lot? No, I got a couple of looks, but I got

looks like this. People driving by, they saw the pigs, and then they looked in

the cabin, and they're like, oh, it's the Mythbuster guy.

Along with shop assistant Terry, Adam makes the pigs a little more like human

targets. On the advice of one of the experts we talked to, we're going to

back up the cavity where the viscera was with a ballistics gel, and I'm also

going to put in some lungs.

Take it as far up there as it'll go.

I'd like to spread the pain here on Mythbusters. Get everyone involved.

While they wait to be whooped, the pigs kill out.

The theory of archaeoacoustics, that ancient pottery has sounds trapped

from the exact moment it was being made, could be out there.

Christ's words, the actual incantation to raise the dead, were recorded in the

clay grooves of the pottery, just like the way music is recorded into vinyl.

I'll have Chuck Burks meet you over at my office, see if this clay has Christ's

greatest hits on it. To recreate a likely ancient scenario, they'll make a

then rest a stylus on top of it that's touching a wet clay pot spinning on a

wheel. Next, they'll make some noise and see if the straw stylus etches the

sound into the clay.

Following in the footsteps of ancient man, Tori and Carrie are going to get

primal and make some pots from scratch.

Is it that messy that we need to lay down plastic?

Yeah. The raw smell of the wet earth combined with the romance of the

process seems to be having a strange effect on Tori.

That's how that movie goes.

I did.

Remember that scene?

Patrick, Swayze, Damien Moore. Yep.

Good thing.

The one where he was dead?

No, I think they were still both alive.

Luckily, Carrie has met her share of artistic types with unoriginal designs.

Need some help?

Back off, Felici.

It's off -center, it makes it lopsided.

Carrie soon learned that shaping a simple pot isn't easy.

Center later, it's supposed to center, I'm pretty sure.

I'm more off -center now than I was before.

It's going to be the worst pot ever.

It looks great.

Yeah. But eventually she centers herself and the clay, molding and shaping it.

She makes a love to the clay with the heart.

And the result is a shining example of symmetry.

Nice job, Carrie.

Yeah. Nice. It's pretty fun.

Yeah, it looks fun.

Now it's Tari's turn to take a seat behind the pottery wheel. He slams it

high gear straight away.

Talk about a lead foot.

Isn't there a faster speed on this thing?

You might be going a little fast, Tari. Nah, it's not going fast enough. I think

I need to hook this up to an engine. I'm pretty sure the key is to go slow.

Really?

It's more fun to go fast.

Tori, it might be a good idea to ease off on the gas a little.

But you're the boss. The clay's not the boss.

Well, apparently the clay's making all the decisions right now. The result of

Tori's passionate artistic expression is less than impressive.

Oh, it looks good. It's so cute.

Look at the little tiny thing.

Not something a guy ever wants to hear, but Tori seems proud nevertheless.

It looks great.

My first one ever. Putting their artwork to one side, Carrie is going to make a

drum by cutting the tops off some earthenware pot and stretching animal

over the top.

Well, hopefully this will work like a drum and vibrate with sound, and the

stylist will make sort of a zigzaggy line into my recording clay.

Sound the drums.

Tori and Carrie are ready to record.

This is a damn fine drum. I'm pretty excited about that.

Can cables at high tension be trusted?

Jets on aircraft carriers rely on cables big time to put the brakes on.

But watch your back. This footage, shot on the USS George Washington, is proof

they can go AWOL at any time. But can a cable slice you in two?

To test this myth, Jamie and Adam need to move somewhere nice and quiet where

they can really stretch out.

Go hurry up.

This should do nicely. The perfect little hideaway in the middle of

A former workshop on an abandoned military base.

So the metal grid there is what you're thinking, right?

Yeah. They can't wait to move in and are full of decorating ideas.

That's a fine hook to hang a pig on right there.

We've got big steel beams to anchor our cables and cable pullers to. We've got a

welding grid to put down our bollards and hang our pigs over and lots of beams

in the ceiling. It is ideal.

To start with, they're going to build their cable rig.

So you're the ghosting Christmas hat, is that it?

Our two anchor points are going to be these big pillars, and we'll put big

chains around these things, shackles, all this hardware and stuff to make a

nice, solid attachment point. Everything that we do will be based on those two

pull points.

From their bench tests, they learned that placing an object in the path of

cord as it snapped back caused it to curve around in a nice slicing arc.

So they weld a large metal tank to the floor.

We need something to anchor to the ground to make the cable snap to one

do what we want.

Well, that's a cigar cutter.

Now to check the bite power of their cutter.

They power it up.

And it cuts the steel like it's a piece of string.

Damn, brother.

Their first test is going to be with rope.

Jamie ties the rope to the rigging, then they crank it until it's nice and tight

and position it over the bollard.

I hope we didn't waken it right there.

Time to truck in their victim.

This is our first test subject.

This is horrible.

They raise Piggy up on a hook.

They don't smell as pristine as they did the other day.

And Adam gives him a reassuring pep talk.

When the rope breaks, I want it to come whipping around here.

And truthfully... I want it to slice right through your hide.

Due to the danger factor, our MythBusters insurance company insisted

test has to be executed and filmed using remote equipment.

When we snap these cables, they are going to be, you know, 50 -foot cables

to swing possibly in a 50 -foot arc and slice not only our pigs, but

potentially... Jamie or I are a crew member in half, so in order to do this

experiment, we need to be completely separated from it. The rope is too

for the hydraulic tensioner to pull tight enough, so they're going to heave

with a little something else.

Adam's so excited to be driving one of his favorite forms of transportation, he

does 360s of joy in the parking lot.

It's like a lovely ballet, isn't it?

Man, I love driving this big equipment.

I've got to get one of these for myself.

The forklift is attached to the rope with a long pulley system of lines that

stretch all the way outside.

The last touch is to place the cutter on the rope, and they're ready to slice

some ham.

Pull. Let's roll.

The team has been stepping back in time to dig up and dust off the myth of

archaeoacoustics, that ancient pottery contains sounds from the past that can

tapped into.

To recreate a very possible archaeoacoustic scenario straight out of

potter's studio, they put their freshly made, unfired pot on the wheel and stand

the drum next to it. On top of the drum, they place the stylus, a piece of

straw. Tori does a sound check.

Look at that. Look how much it vibrates when I do that.

Their stylist works, and M5 becomes an ancient times recording studio.

Pottery record!

Tori will be the talent.

Let's get ready to record!

And carry pottery record producer.

All right, ready? In three, two, one.

Pottery record!

I see little frequencies.

They look for a sign in the line that Tori's magnificent tenor -like tone has

left an imprint.

Definitely, look at this.

Yeah, I can see it. It's actually all through here. It looks almost like a

braid. Has Tori's voice been stamped into the surface?

Then Carrie steps up to the mic.

Pottery!

The girl's got some pipes.

Oh, I can see a little zigzag. I can see it. It's really, really fine, but it's

there. The zigzag patterns on the clay could be sound imprints, but they won't

be able to test their pots until they're completely dry.

If we tried to extract anything off of them right now, we'd probably end up

destroying the groove because it's just too soft.

So the Pompeii scenario pottery recording seems to be going pretty well.

next? Well, there was another version of this myth that appeared on one of those

forensic TV shows recently.

And, you know, same idea with the pottery on the pottery wheel. But

the drum, they just had kind of a brush going along.

But they were able to extract audio off of it and get some clue that helped them

solve the case.

Wait, wait, wait. They're taking the drum out of the equation, which means

have to rely entirely on the brush to pick up the vibrations from your voice?

To test the freaky forensic show scenario, the team will spin an unfired

pot on a wheel, and as it turns, they'll hold a brush against it and make a

noise.

This time, the drum won't be there to help. So to get the sound to stamp onto

the clay, it's all down to the stylus.

Potters often use straw as a finishing tool. So Grant cuts up long pieces from

broom. The longer the straw is, the better chance it'll have of vibrating

then maybe making an impression on the pot.

Carrie very helpfully tests the stylus.

Yeah,

yeah, something like that.

Maybe it's too low pitch.

is fun. You don't get to do it anymore.

Grant secures his straw brush to a metal stand next to the pottery wheel.

You're going to win first place in the fair.

Maybe second place.

And Carrie says what all forensic investigators wish they could.

You crazy killer!

I didn't realize you were going to do it that loud.

I'm trying to get a good chance to make my left ear go deaf.

Okay. I think you got it.

Carrie, you're killing me not so softly.

They grab a fresh pot.

This time she's just going to say a single word. It could have more impact.

So like Carrie or Tori. Okay. Carrie releases her inner pain.

Tori!

You got some groove.

Is it deep enough?

Any one of those grooves could be...

could capture that information.

There are definitely some mystery cuts and nicks on the clay, but were they

caused from sound vibrations, or was it just the force of Carrie's breath that

moved the straw?

Tori has an idea to reduce the chance of any falsetto markings.

You know how when they record music, they have the little windscreen?

It's like a piece of pantyhose that just goes over, and that keeps it from the

wind hitting the element.

You want to make one?

Yeah. Do you have your pantyhose here? I'm wearing them. I can take them off.

Get the spare pair in your toolbox.

A windscreen should help block Carrie's breath.

Got your pop screen all ready? Yep.

To try and focus the sound on the stylus even more, they cut back the bristles

on the brush, so just one piece of straw is concentrated on the clay.

A quick vocal warm -up, and the voice of an angel rings out.

Or maybe make that the devil. That was a good one, Carrie.

I know what it would be like to be married to you.

But they got their best clear marking on the clay yet.

It's perfect.

Yeah. The forensic pottery sessions were a hit.

I'm going to go double porcelain.

Newsflash. A snapping cable can cut you in two.

Or that's the myth.

And Jamie and Adam are about to find out. For their first test, they're going

start with rope.

All ropes and cables have different safety ratings. Once they start

the guys will monitor the pounds of force they're at. And when it maxes out,

the trigger switch of the cutter.

I'm just waiting on the Heinemann to give me that thumbs up.

All systems are go.

Adam moves the forklift forward, and little by little, the rope inside

1 ,000.

The pressure rises.

2 ,000.

Okay, it's at 3 ,000.

And Jamie activates the cutter.

How did that work? Did it seem good? I just left this thing, all the valves

open, and turned on the pump. Okay. And it just immediately went.

Excellent. So it was right at 3 ,500.

So we're going to take a look?

I think so.

Well, it kind of looks like it made contact with the pig.

From examining the pig's hide, it looks like the first cut isn't always the

deepest. Sometimes all you get is rope burn.

It doesn't look like it did any real damage.

Damage sustained by pig? Nothing.

Don't get me wrong.

If you were standing here, you might be in a lot of pain at this point, but you

would not be in two halves.

They check the high -speed camera footage to see how the rope flew when it

snapped. Yeah, it just wrapped around it.

Again, looking at that shot, I'm thinking the pig wants to be close to

whipping point. The guys move the pig closer to where the point of impact

be.

What we want to get is the pig right at the end point of the whip, the three

-quarter point where the centrifugal force is the greatest and where

the speed would be the highest.

They get a new section of rope, stretch it out, and try again.

Jamie does the count. 2 ,000.

And Adam pulls the rope.

3, 2, 1.

That sounded more like it.

That sounded like a gunshot.

3 ,000 pounds on the nose.

And you pulled the trigger.

Yep, I got it right. It sounded like a whip crack.

So how's the hog looking?

Always like Christmas, finding out if actual fires occurred.

Hey, dude.

There's some visible damage here. Does the mark go all the way around or just

right there?

No, there's a little bit of a mark over here.

Even though the rope was traveling at 227 miles per hour and they got their

first real solid whipping action, again, it didn't even cut through the pig's

skin. We got a real strike from the rope test, and it seems to have left one

heck. of a nasty rope burn on our test subject here. It would not be pleasant.

However, I don't think that it would have killed a person.

Time to move on to something with teeth.

It's not got enough beef to it.

Or, should I say, pork.

Time to fire your writer.

Sit back, relax, and hum along to the theory of archaeoacoustics that you can

record and listen to sounds on pottery just like your favorite piece of vinyl.

Using Edison's dictation machine that recorded voices onto cylindrical

of wax as their inspiration, Tori! the team may have got some sounds to stick

onto their pottery.

Now, how do they play them back?

I peed out something very fabulous from your pottery there.

In the lab over at X -Files, they used an extraordinary sound extraction laser

device to pull out an ancient insult.

What is it? It's Aramaic.

It's the language of Christ. It literally says, I am the bearded cow

beast.

In the real world, a laser would pick up every speck of dust and dirt on a clay

pot. So Grant is designing a playback system using old turntables. That's more

retro, but also more reliable.

This is a technique that was pioneered in the late 60s. Basically what it

consists of is the tone arm from a record player, and you connect that to

amplifier. It's better to use some type of physical stylus that contacts the

medium to get the best audio quality.

First, he removes the arm off one of the turntables.

Then he needs to make a new stylus, because the one that came with the

player is too sharp to put onto clay.

that I've taken off of the record player has a little needle on it.

But if we drag that needle across any pottery, it's probably going to destroy

them. There's a way around that, and that is to make a glass stylus.

Must be the reinforced glass.

Yeah, whatever, muscles.

Finally, Grant manages to break the reinforced glass and melts a broken

with a blowtorch. Hey, we're making a little swan.

You're like a little glass sculptor. Do you want me to add to your collection a

poodle this time?

All you really have to do is heat the glass until it's pliable, and you pull

out in a very thin string.

Once that cools, you can break it off, and you have a perfect thread of glass.

Heat it up and make a little ball in the end, and you glue it right onto your

record player stylus.

By attaching the glass stylus to the arm and hooking up an amplifier...

That's the sound of my fingerprint.

DJ BC is in the house and ready to rock some pots.

All right.

Now we need her some pots with some sounds on them.

Well, the myth we're testing, in case you haven't been paying attention, is

whether or not a cable under an extreme amount of tension can break.

And when it snaps after it breaks, that whipping cable can slice you in

half. In their first test, Jamie and Adam snapped ropes at a deceased

Even though they got some direct hits, the court didn't give the pig anything

more than a case of nasty rope burn. But steel cable is a whole lot stronger.

I suspect this is totally possible to achieve.

And I want to see.

some severed flesh from some cable. Cable comes in different sizes and

strengths. So for their first test, they're starting on the thin side.

The less the surface area, maybe the greater the cutting action.

This time we're using 3 -8's cable. Having something like this would be

something like a guy wire or a radio tower or possibly even some kind of

hoisting operation.

Because cable doesn't stretch and recoil as much as rope, To try and increase

the width factor, they're going to use 140 foot lengths and use a two -handed

approach to get it tight.

We're using the extended reach forklift to pull all of the slack out and even

put a fair amount of tension on the cable with it.

and then finally when we get it up to a pretty high level, we'll use the piston

to pull the rest of it out, and we cut it.

Everyone except Adam exits the building.

Slowly and very carefully, he pulls out the slack in the line, then hightails it

outside. I pulled the limit of what the fork can pull.

It's got nine inches, so let's go for broke. All right. They put the hydraulic

pump into gear.

There we go. All right.

How to create a table in 3, 2, 1.

I love hearing big sounds in the next room.

Wow. I mean, it looks like it couldn't have been more successful.

He took quite a hit.

This time, Piggy went for a trot. This little Piggy went to market.

If you think about how much force it takes to give him...

A pop that will move him about 10 feet.

It might not slice your legs off, but it might render them needing to be

amputated or something.

Looking at the Robo replay, they almost got barbecued pork.

Did you see the sparks off the barrel?

That ought to tell you something.

Untiling can false us for not giving it the right amount of force, tension, and

macking. That is brutal.

Make your heart stop.

But the 3 -8 cable still didn't cut it. This was perfect for cutting in half if

it was going to, and it didn't. 3 -8 cable is done as far as I'm concerned.

It's probably time to bump up to a bigger gauge.

Okay. Bigger is sometimes better. So the guys reel out 5 -8 cable that has a

mighty breaking strength of 40 ,000 pounds. That is super thick monster

And we're going to see if that has enough energy to do the damage that

looking for.

Jamie secures the heavyweight cable to the puller. I wouldn't want to be

anywhere near this stuff when it snapped.

No, this is going to be a bit of a different beast.

The hydraulic puller puts 30 ,000 pounds of pressure on the cable, and it's time

to unleash this monster.

Okay, ready?

Cutting 5 -inch cable.

In 3, 2, 1.

That kind of wound you up, didn't it? Wow.

They go inside to inspect the whack factor.

The pig's still in one piece, but it went a little further, didn't it? It

lot further. The pig took a massive hit, but he's still not cut in half.

Dude, that is so brutal. That was a good hit. I

don't reckon that there's any other hit we could have gone for that would do any

better than that.

We were pulling 30 ,000 pounds or more on it when we cut it.

And 30 ,000 pounds, I mean, that's like 10 cars or so of energy

that's getting let go bang, like a shot of a gun.

Looks like the killer cable myth isn't such a snap after all. I can't imagine

anybody looking at that footage and not.

thinking that somebody standing there would have gotten killed. I mean, the

was just brutally hit. He was pulverized in his midsection.

No, I agree. That is not a survivable hit, but that's not the myth. The myth

that that snapping cable can slice you in half, and we don't have a sliced -up

pig.

No, we don't. I don't know what we're going to do to achieve it. We've got to

figure it out.

Back at Base BC, the team have dug up a theory that's been buried in the sands

of time, that ancient pottery can contain sounds from the past. You crazy

killer!

Attempting to record onto clay, they think they might have got some sound to

embed onto pottery.

Now, to try and play it back.

There's one primary piece of scientific evidence that does support this myth.

Yeah. In 1969, there was a letter published in the Proceedings of the

of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, of which I am a member, where they

claim to be able to record and play back the sounds of a potter's wheel in a

piece of pottery.

To listen, they place the now -fired Pompeii pod onto the pottery wheel and

it like a record on a turntable.

Then they put Grant's glass stylus in a groove and are all ears.

Whoa, better get the RPMs right, guys.

Luckily, it didn't break, and they try again.

Okay, ready?

As the pot rotates, they can clearly hear the stylus scraping as it moves

the surface of the clay, but nothing else.

Go to this one, because this is a good groove here.

Grant finds another groove to trace further down the pot.

What is that voice?

As Grant puts the glass stylus onto this pottery, you can hear almost a ghostly

voice.

I'm hearing something.

That was like some crazy voice from beyond.

They slow down the speed of the wheel. They might hear the whoop whoop more

clearly.

Are they the words pottery record or is the team just hearing the voices in

their head more plainly than usual But there's definitely something there

there's definitely something that's not just static

Putting their pom -paint pot aside for now, they're ready to test their

TV show pot, where they used a brush stylus and no drum.

Again, the team places the stylus on a groove in the pot and listens closely.

But it's hard to make out if it's anything more than just static.

There's one area where I hear sort of a, but it's really faint and I don't know

if I'm making it up in my head.

Huh. probably won't ever be a hit carry, but it's given our trio hope.

There was some noticeable recording there that repeated, and it wasn't

So my feeling is it's not your best way to record sound, but it's possible.

I don't want to crush our little super group's dreams of pottery record

so we're sending them to a sound lab very soon to get a pro's take on their

potential. I think it said Armageddon is in three days.

Dude, at least wait for the weekend.

Go to this one.

Listening to their pottery records, the team heard some mysterious sounds.

But it was hard to tell if it was a human voice.

What? So they're off to a professional sound studio to get this myth cleared

I feel like we're doing a drop -off.

Yeah.

So now that we've gotten all of our ghost sounds off of our pot and recorded

them onto tapes, we've come down to a little place called DeNoise. They're

hopefully going to do that forensic show thing where they clear up all the

background and you get some sort of discernible words off of this audio

Hello. Meet super sound guy Albert.

Do you have any sort of laser system that, you know, we could bounce a

laser off our pottery and...

Capture audio off of that. I don't have a laser system, but I have a very good

restoration tool.

So what we have on this tape, I will be able to hear.

Albert takes the team into his high -tech sound studio and Grant beams up.

Number one, set course for Starbase 217.

Engage.

What?

This is the way of your people, isn't it? Yes, it's part of my history. It's

what we do.

Albert queues up a track from their Pompeii pod, where the team thought they

their best possible sound imprint.

I will try to use different tools to increase the sound, to reduce the noise.

He filters out the snap, crackle, and pop.

I mean, already you can hear it different. Yeah.

It's gotten rid of all that crazy static.

And now we try to reduce it.

What? We have something better here.

What do you think?

Yeah, it sounds like it's just scraping along the pottery.

The sound is so clear, it's positively sparkling.

Oh, my God. I'm getting excited.

Our good pot might actually have something. Yeah.

Our trio is full of anticipation.

Will Albert be able to lift off any comprehensible words so we can share

excitement?

I had some.

Fairly high hopes, because we did have something that sounds like an audio

signal on our pie.

Everyone is all ears.

I hear something, but there is so much noise in the middle.

No, no potter air con.

An unexplained squeak? Yes.

But an easily distinguishable human voice?

No.

The best we got today was a squeak.

And at most, it's not like you get pottery record.

All we heard was... Looks like their pottery record won't ever make the

Archeoacoustic Hot 100.

Sorry, kids. Them's the breaks.

So you mean everything we see on TV isn't real?

I'm afraid so, Tori. So what's Albert's take on the myth?

You can imagine that you can record almost anything on a media that's hard

enough to keep the groove, okay? Not on butter, but on anything else like

plastic or wax. But if you do it intentionally, if not, it will be only

Seems as a recording medium, Clay just doesn't cut it.

What's your gut feeling?

No.

No recording.

As a Frenchman and a sound engineer?

No, pas possible.

Pas possible.

Pas possible.

Playing piggy in the middle hasn't been a whole lot of fun for Adam and Jamie.

It took quite a hit, but you know what? It doesn't look like it cut him. So far,

trying to snap a dead pig in two with a whipping cable, Porky has emerged

victorious and still intact every time. I can help.

This is one way to cut a pig in half.

These results...

They're not only counterintuitive to what I thought was possible, but they're

really frustrating. So I had a research team call pretty much every national,

federal, military safety organization that they could get on the phone to ask

for evidence of this myth.

And while there's tons of anecdotal evidence and there's not a fisherman

who doesn't think this myth is true, we could not locate a single definitive

confirmed case of someone being sliced in half by a cable.

Well, the myth says the cable will slice you in half like a hot knife through

butter. Well, there are plenty of recorded fatalities, and we showed that

snapping cable can kill you. Well, you know what happens now.

Yes, I do. We've got to get back down there and find out what it'll take to

actually cut one of those pigs in half with a cable.

Exactly.

For their next attempt, they hogtie Adam's nemesis. Basically, so I'm

his torso perfectly rigid to the cable, whack, going right through his body

here. That's what I want, right through his body, through it.

This time, the idea is to combine the best of both worlds, from thick and thin

cable, mass and cutting action, by attaching a piece of 316th cable to the

of the monster line.

We're hoping that this little whip gets such high speed from its instantaneous

yank from the big cable that it'll cut the pig.

Pressurizing the cable. 5 -inch cable with a 3 -16 -inch whip.

The tension builds.

But will they get their release?

Okay, cutting the cable in 3, 2, 1.

Made a good loud sound.

Damn. It sounded satisfying.

But the pig was faking.

No dice, no slice.

The myth's not looking good at this point. No, we're not getting anywhere

the carnage we thought we'd be able to get.

The stress of no success is making Adam a little loopy. This time, we're

actually going to attach a loop of 316th cable to the 5 -8th around the pig

anchored to the grid.

You see what I'm talking about?

You see what we're doing?

I think we're good to go, man.

I've got the loop.

Everything's tied down.

If he doesn't get a result this time, please don't hold me responsible for his

actions.

Final death loop.

Oh, please, please let there be a big cut in half in there.

That's it?

He's not cut in half at all.

Sorry, Adam. The hog is still whole.

Let's go get a sword.

A meat cleaver.

If anything is about to snap, it's Adam. That's all we can do, right?

Jamie, never say that to a man whose eyes are glazed over.

Well, look, I'm just going to go back to the forklift and pull back the fork

until that cable goes through his midsection.

Okay. Warning. If you're a sensitive soul, now is the time to avert your

Things are about to get a little disturbing.

All right.

All right, I'm good to go. Like a man possessed, Adam floors the forklift and

proves pigs really can fly.

There we go.

Hey!

Woo!

Oh, man.

It smells even worse now.

Pork salad.

Let's get her into the truck. I'll take the top half.

I'll split the duty.

I have to say, we're asked a lot if we're surprised by the results. This one

perhaps the most surprising thing we've ever done to me. I was completely

convinced at the beginning of this testing that we would be able to slice.

Up one of those pigs with one of those cables under tension. 20 ,000, 30 ,000

pounds of pressure. I just thought it was completely going to happen. And

halfway through, when I saw what was happening, I was like, you know what? I

don't think this is possible. And it was absolutely right.

Nope. It'll kill you, but it won't slice you in half.

Amazing. Busted.

Totally busted.