Premier Date: March 5, 2016
This episode was the finale for the entire MythBusters series. No myths were tested, but Adam and Jamie devised several impressive demonstrations to celebrate the show’s long history and to say goodbye.
Adam and Jamie loaded 855 pounds (388 kg) of ANFO into an old recreational vehicle. They set off the charge and filmed the blast at 50,000 frames per second, five times the fastest rate previously used. The RV was torn to shreds and Adam and Jamie marveled at the footage, which revealed the RV brightly lit from within just before exploding and showed a lensing effect at the boundary of the shock wave.
On the runway of Naval Air Station Alameda, Adam set up a 1-mile (1.6 km) course incorporating 60 cars and over 200 props used in the testing of various myths, arranged in chronological order from 2003 to 2016. Meanwhile at the shop, Jamie designed and built a cowcatcher-style wedge, similar to the one used in 2014 to plow through two lanes of traffic. The wedge was mounted on a truck’s front end along with additional mass on the rear end to serve as counterbalance and to increase the overall momentum.
With Jamie watching, Adam drove a test run parallel to the course to verify that the truck and wedge could operate safely at high speeds. He then ran the course, reaching a speed of 45 miles per hour (72 km/h) before plowing through all of the props. He reached the end successfully, despite having his view obscured by debris stuck on the windshield.
Buster (the show’s perennial crash-test dummy) was dressed in a superhero costume and welded onto a rocket sled at New Mexico Tech. Ten rocket engines were attached to generate a maximum thrust of 56,200 pounds-force (250,000 N) and a cinder block wall was set up at the end of the 1,000-foot (300-m) track. Buster achieved a top speed of 780 miles per hour (1,260 km/h) and disintegrated on impact with the wall before the sled smashed through it.
Adam and Jamie recreated the finale of a 2005 myth involving cleaning a cement truck with dynamite, a fan favorite. They loaded a cement truck with 5,001 pounds (2,268 kg) of ANFO and set it off; the blast left a crater in the bomb range and threw shrapnel in all directions. This explosion used one more pound of ANFO than was used in 2009 to make diamonds out of graphite.
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