Ten pairs of military-surplus boots, each capped with an army helmet and connected to each other by pneumatic actuators, stomped on a home-brewed, 50-foot-long steel bridge. The bridge sagged under the weight of the marching boots but didn’t resonate with enough force to collapse the bridge. In other words: myth busted.
The experiment in question was performed for the entertaining new Discovery Channel weekly series “Mythbusters.” The concept is simple: a pair of curious and resourceful science guys wander the country road-testing the urban legends we’ve all heard and wondered about. Can a penny thrown off the top of a tall building kill someone at street level? (Answer: no.) If a flammable substance is flushed down a toilet, will a carelessly discarded cigarette blow up the bathroom? (Again, no.) Can you safely relieve yourself on the electrified third rail of the subway train? (We haven’t seen this one yet, but the suspense is overwhelming.)
Several weeks into its 16-episode maiden season, “Mythbusters” is distinguishing itself from the pack of rival reality-TV fare. Around 1 million people watch the show each Friday, making it Discovery’s highest-rated program ever for that night of the week. “Mythbusters” also serves as a lightning rod for discussion and debate on the Net as folklorists seek to dissect age-old myths. “It’s a good show; these guys approach each legend with an open mind and do their own dirty work,” says urban-legend researcher Richard Joltes.
Others urge the Mythbusters to crack specific quandaries that have long plagued them. “Was Mr. Ed actually a zebra?” one poster asks on the show’s Web site.
The key ingredient is the show’s quirky hosts, two decidedly nontelegenic San Francisco special-effects designers. Quick-witted, destruction-loving Adam Savage, 36, zings one-liners off his straight-man partner, Jamie Hyneman, 47. Hyneman sports a handlebar mustache, wears a beret and speaks in laconic murmurs, as if he’s trying hard not to get too worried about the fireball likely to erupt from their latest contraption. His unconventional style seems to be attracting an online cult following. “I love his voice for one thing. And he’s so smart,” writes one of the fans.
The show was conceived by Peter Rees of Beyond International, an Australian production company. Rees, whose team of five crewmembers rented Sausalito houseboats for the seven-month shoot, says the show “asks the really tough questions that keep people up at night.” Such as, did Frank Lee Morris and two accomplices really escape from Alcatraz in 1962 on a raft made from raincoats and inflated with an accordion? The Mythbusters recreated such a life raft based on documented information about the escape then dressed in period costumes and made it across the choppy waters of the San Francisco Bay to the Marin Headlands. Take that, FBI–which concluded that Morris’s plan failed. Rees says he gets show ideas by surfing urban-legend sites on the Internet.
The show examines not just urban myths but the weird flotsam that floats in all our heads. Is Jimmy Hoffa’s body lying perfectly preserved in the concrete foundation of the Meadowlands sports stadium? Savage and Hyneman encased pig carcasses in wet cement then retrieved them after a few months. All that was left “were the bones and a bit of offal,” Rees says. Can you water-ski behind a rowboat? Hyneman tried it behind a crew boat with eight rowers and was able to get up on two skis. Can you fail a drug test after eating poppy seeds? The co-hosts scarfed down poppy-seed bagels and cake and failed urine tests within the hour.
The co-hosts often make the ultimate sacrifice, putting their own bodies at risk. Hyneman was locked into a coffin with atmosphere monitors to see how quickly someone could survive being buried alive (you wouldn’t last three hours before carbon dioxide built up to poisonous levels, they found). Savage manned a lawn chair attached to 55 helium-filled weather balloons in a recreation of Lawnchair Larry’s famous 1973 flight. Fortunately, says Hyneman, “We have a crash-test dummy that does the really dangerous stuff.” Like getting shot with ice bullets, blasted off toilets, fired out a three-foot-wide cannon barrel, spun in a washing machine, blasted into the air by a rocket-propelled trombone… all to assess the far-fetched stories we hear at the water cooler. Incidentally, the crash-test dummy looks like hell.
The show is headquartered in Hyneman’s San Francisco visual-effects firm, M5 Industries. M5 builds props for commercials for companies like Coca-Cola, Yahoo and Nike. But walking around the shop these days is like a taking a tour through the quandaries that have bedeviled armchair scientists for ages. Could your toothbrush lying near your sink pick up airborne bacteria from the toilet? In one actively used bathroom, the Mythbusters have lined dozens of toothbrushes along the walls, and they test them periodically for airborne coliform bacteria. Do fish have memories? The crew has set up an obstacle course for their goldfish in an effort to see how long they remember the proper route to the food dispenser.
“Everyone has theories about this stuff, but no one ever tests it,” says Rees. As the show gets older–they are currently negotiating for a second season–he has plans to answer the even more ephemeral questions. Are any two snowflakes alike? Does the quack of a duck echo? Let’s hope we eventually find out.
