MythBusters (2003) s16e00 Episode Script
Revealed - The Behind the Scenes Season Opener
Since 2002, the Mythbusters have used science to separate fact from fiction.
This year, however, that wild ride is coming to an end as Adam and Jamie hang up their lab coats and eccentric hats, but not before what's rumored to be the most spectacular final season in television history.
You ready? Uh, yeah.
I'm ready.
- Let's get to work.
- Okay.
Final season, here we come.
Jamie, I think it's fair to say that you and I have a bit of experience in testing idiomatic phrases.
Sure.
We've made concrete airplane and proven that it's best to go out with a bang.
We've even slipped on banana peels in the name of science.
But today, we are testing an idiomatic phrase we have not tested before, but is particularly apt.
"Silence is golden"? No, but nice! "All good things must come to an end" because, after 260 hours of television, after 14 years, this is the last season of "Mythbusters.
" So what do we got? Well, this episode is gonna be something we've never actually done before.
We are gonna be teasing some of the awesome stuff we shot this season, but we are also going to be peeling back the curtain and showing the audience exactly how we filmed this season.
"Mythbusters" behind the scenes.
Sounds like we should start with something like a montage, perhaps? Right you are.
Cue the montage.
From a rocket-propelled first episode Ah! "Mythbusters" became a television phenomenon.
- Whoo! - This is gonna kill you.
With a patented combination of comedy - Quack, damn you.
- Carnage.
Jamie wants a big boom.
And clever science.
It's scientific! Ha ha ha ha.
The guys have brought memorable mayhem to the small screen for 14 years and change.
I reject your reality and substitute my own.
But, for their "go big, then go home" final season Yeah! Adam and Jamie are cranking things up to the max like never before.
And, in this episode, we're revealing some of their secrets.
Agh.
Maybe you could give me a minute.
Normally, when we start a new season, we just pick up where we left off.
We find the most popular myths from viral videos, movies, history books, whatever, and we just go for it.
But for this final season of "Mythbusters," we wanted a series of episodes that resonated with us, as Mythbusters, but also the scientists this show has turned us into.
It's actively moving.
Look at that.
And so, to try and achieve all that, it began with what I can only describe as the mother of all brainstorms.
"Mythbusters" final season, we need 12 iconic episodes that represent the history of "Mythbusters.
" I'm gonna throw out the first one: Duct tape.
Explosions.
Explosions, yes! The core brain trust of "Mythbusters" is Jamie; Me; Our showrunner, Dan; Our director, Steve; And our four amazing producers.
And the group of us sat down and came up with a list of episodes that we felt would properly send us off in style.
Rockets.
Gotta do something on rockets.
Rockets, okay.
Now, it wasn't quite as efficient as that.
Partly because we wanted to get it right, waaaaaaaaaaaaah! But partly because it's barely controlled chaos around here for most of the time.
Adam's constant deliveries don't help.
Is this for me? I'm looking for Adam.
Fabulous! I'll be right back.
Adam must get three or four packages, every single day, at least.
Oh, yeah! We gotta find a way to put this into the show.
Can we just get on with it? I have no idea what he does with all that stuff.
All I know is that he leaves it sitting around and in the way.
Okay.
Where were we? We were talking about the revisit special.
But back to the story.
After 2 long days, we had finally come up with a list of episodes that we not only thought were really strong, but also really did speak deeply to the 14-year history of "Mythbusters" and resonated with us.
And look at this Even Jamie's excited.
Yep, it's no spoiler that this season is pulling no punches, with episodes devoted to detonations Whoa! Holy [Bleep.]
.
Duct tape Ha ha ha! You made it into the loft.
Dramatic drops There it goes.
And away she goes.
Fire! And dastardly diets, made it through! Not to mention an epic grand finale, the guys really have created a farewell season that's second to none.
3, 2, 1! So, after compiling that whole list, the next step for us was to figure out how to do that all safely.
We have an excellent safety record over the history of "Mythbusters.
" Oh! Ow.
Ow.
Ow.
Ow! Ow! Agh! Am I missing an eyebrow? And we don't want to sully it now.
We want to go out with a bang.
We don't want to go out with a bang, if you know what I mean.
We're known for our explosions and, this season, it has a lot of 'em.
We blew up mail trucks, a giant fruit smoothie, some landmines, and the biggest explosion we've ever done.
But my point is you'd think that all these stories would be the most dangerous in our rundown, but the fact is they're not.
No, explosions are actually one of the safer things we do.
We've exposed the creamy center.
I mean, sure, if something goes wrong, it goes really, really wrong.
- Whoa! - Whoa! But, with all the fail-safes and the best practices involved, it's really unlikely to screw them up.
3, 2, 1, go.
No, from a safety standpoint, it is always the one that you think is gonna be easy that is gonna kick you in the butt and, this season, the classic example of that is drifting on dirt.
Yep, testing if drifting on dirt really is the fastest way to drive may sound simple.
Yeah-eah, that's it! Yeah! Come on! But, in this final season, it was anything but.
I think the critical thing that we really need to watch our for here is dust.
It's gonna obscure visibility from Jamie and Adam when they're driving.
In the event that anybody perceives any danger, you get on the radio and say, "abort.
" This story turned into a buttkicker for safety because there was so much dust.
We filmed this in the middle of a drought and, whenever we drove around a corner, a massive pile of dust got kicked up.
We even tried wetting it with water, but, in the summer sun and out there, it was kinda useless.
The big issue with the dust is that our course was kind of a circuit, so you could make one turn kicking up a cloud of dust and then another turn where you drive back into that cloud, where you're going at speed and you literally can't see a thing.
Yep, and, with a cliff on one side and camera crew on the other, that was not a good combination.
Every time he takes off, it's like a film about the dust bowl.
In fact, there was literally danger at every turn.
I can't see anything.
I can't see anything.
Okay, abort.
So the guys opt to not only train like there's no tomorrow Wait for the power.
Easy, easy, easy.
- Oh, whoops! - Easy.
Better.
[Bleep.]
[Bleep.]
Sorry about that.
But they also film much of the story from the air, taking the camera team out of harm's way.
Yeah, so thanks to our safety protocol, we broke out our drone for some truly epic aerial shots and, obviously, by the fact that I'm here, you know that I didn't die.
It's no giveaway to say that drifting does go to plan.
But it's not the only time this season that Adam drives blind.
I can't see! I can't see! As he puts his life on the line trying to sign off in style, something that we're not fully revealing yet.
So the trouble with trying to make the final season so ambitious is that, when it comes to actually making the episodes, it's hard.
I mean, we were opting for a "go big or go home" approach and I think some of our producers may have actually preferred to just go home.
We had to find us, of course, the helicopter in the middle of California fire season.
This is a great day for an experiment.
We had 3 days to source a 16-foot-long sword porch, an object that quite literally does not exist.
Man, I've never seen anything like that before.
But, beyond all that, the biggest challenge for us this season was tanker crush.
That was absolutely massive.
Tanker crush is a final-season spectacular about a train car which, thanks to a steamcleaning screwup, gets catastrophically crushed.
Now, the story starts out just fine because we begin with some pretty tense small-scale tests.
But we knew that, at some point, we had to go full-scale, with a 70-foot train tanker car.
And, well, that was one of the hardest gets we've ever had.
Okay.
Keep very quiet.
We don't often show you this part of the show, but this is where the magic happens.
This is our production office and those are our producers that find the impossible-to-find stuff, like a 747 or RPGs.
But, right now, this might very well be mission: Implosion: Impossible, but, we'll give them a couple more days.
In actual fact, it was another 3 months before the guys hit pay dirt.
But, boy did they come up trumps.
I mean, look at this.
We've walked down 2.
5 miles of train track, a mile of road.
We've got about 35 guys and a dozen trucks to support the implosion of that giant, 70-foot-long tanker car.
This is gonna be cool.
Undoubtedly, tanker crush is one of the biggest experiments in "Mythbusters" history.
Man, that thing's so friggin' big.
And one of the highlights of the final season, where the stress and drama becomes almost unbearable.
Wow.
Man.
It's nerve-racking.
It is and I know that like the moment I blink, it's gonna happen.
Dang! 25.
5.
Holy [Bleep.]
.
But the result will have to wait.
Coming up The Mythbusters shoot for the moon.
It's absolutely unreal.
As they reveal what lies ahead in the mother of all final seasons.
Whoa! Ow-oo-oo-ooh! Ha! After over 3,000 eclectic experiments It's a balloon made out of lead.
The Mythbusters are embarking on their final season.
Holy crap.
And, in this special preview We're gonna find out just how MacGyver we are.
They're revealing not only what's in store, but also, the secrets to their success.
- Excellent.
- Nice.
It's totally fair to say that "Mythbusters" would not have survived these 14 years without our fans.
In fact, at least 30% of our episodes come directly from fan submissions.
Thanks for the car, Chris.
Yep, prior to the final season, more than 200 myths tested on the show had come directly from fans.
Whoa! So, for this final season, we wanted to pay homage to that incredible editorial contribution by devoting a whole episode to the fans being in charge, courtesy of our reddit special.
What are you laughing at? Just the front page of the Internet.
At the Redditors' request, the guys try to punch through paper, throw buster out of a helicopter And set off the mother of all glitter bombs.
3, 2, 1.
Whoa! Now, those are great stories, but reddit wouldn't be reddit without a little bit of a subversive element going on, and so it was sort of inevitable that fans would suggest a story about farts.
Specifically, can you see a fart on a thermal imaging camera? And this one started causing us difficulty right in the story planning process.
Uh, maybe, like.
- Hang on.
- Right there.
Sorry.
I gotta jump in here.
You can't have that, Jamie, seriously.
I mean, that is a dead [Bleep.]
.
You cannot put that on TV.
What if we had a dress around the whole thing, you know? And then we can't see [Bleep.]
So you want to see the [Bleep.]
Or you don't want to see the [Bleep.]
? I want you to design something that does the functions of an [Bleep.]
Without being an [Bleep.]
on TV.
Hmm.
So something like maybe a whoopee cushion or something like that that might work.
Okay.
I'll leave you to it.
- Get into it.
- Thanks.
Once the director came up with the whoopee-cushion idea, Jamie and I got pretty deep into the reeds with the design, until we came back out with something that was effectively a whoopee cushion in a water bath, that not only worked perfectly We're gonna try and do this all with a straight face.
It looked hilarious.
That thing looks like a big [Bleep.]
That's farting.
Adam's machine was actually a pretty neat bit of engineering and it had the added bonus of not smelling.
That's not to say that, this season, we haven't been grossed out with smells.
Two words: Rocket special.
- Waah! - 3, 2, 1! Without doubt, rockets have helped put "Mythbusters" on the map.
So, for their farewell, the guys drive to the desert, to test some final rocket fatals.
Can you really shoot for the moon with some farout fuels? Nice! They start with gummy bears.
Launching in 3, 2, 1, ignition.
Ho.
Hey! Go-o-o-o-o-o-o! Oh.
[Bleep.]
a duck.
Then, they try an eclectic concoction of rock candy and carbon.
Launching in 3, 2, Ah! That's not very high.
Before long, Jamie decides what this story needs is a turn for the worse.
So, back at the shop - Mr.
Haven.
- Hello.
I need some poop.
How much? 50 pounds.
50 pounds.
Uh, how fresh? I don't care.
I love this little behind-the-scenes interaction.
Jamie has just told our producer that he wants to build a rocket powered with poo and the only question Eric has is "how much do you need?" That, my friends, is a seasoned "Mythbuster" producer.
Yep, and, once the rocket fuel in waiting arrives on-set Oh, man, that's nasty.
So begins one of the grossest experiments in "Mythbusters" history.
What the hell is that? Already giving me nightmares.
Look, I know what you're thinking: "Why would anyone ever want to make a rocket out of poo?" That's the way I like 'em.
But also think about the fact that it's just a waste product.
No one's doing anything with it, anyway.
So for a long mission to Mars, if it can be turned into extra rocket fuel.
Oh, that's gonna be nasty.
That's really smart.
That's Jamie, as far as I'm concerned, thinking really nice and big outside the box.
So far, so good.
So there is method to his madness.
And, once back in the desert All right.
You ready? I'm ready.
The guys carefully load Jamie's stink bomb onto the stand.
But will it really change mankind for the better? 3, 2, 1! - Agh! - No.
Well, one story that just might involves landmines.
Oh! For years, I've been wanting to do this story.
It's so great! Can you traverse a minefield in a hovercraft? We never got around to doing it because we were never successfully able to find either mines or a minefield or a hovercraft.
Oh, yeah.
Here it comes.
But, this season, we finally got a chance to do it.
Sure, when we filmed it, it was kind of a pain in the ass because I pretty much did all the work, while Adam just messed around on the hovercraft.
Whoa-oa-oa! But, anyway, thanks to me, we do have an actual experiment.
Yep, with a hovercraft finally located and some homemade landmines, the guys do put this long-awaited myth to the test.
And, while we're keeping the results under wraps, there's one thing we can reveal.
Yeah, landmines are awful.
They're really awful, awful devices.
So, if you can find a way for innocent people not to get blown up by 'em, that'd be really good.
- Ah! - Oh, you big baby.
In addition to making sure that the stories we choose this season are as epic as possible, it was also really important to us to make sure that the visuals were the best we've ever done, and I think it's mission accomplished.
Really, I think the stuff that we've shot this season is as beautiful and as cinematic as anything that's on television right now.
My DP is behind the camera right now, giving me a kind of a "really?!" Look, and I'm totally serious.
This is a beautifully filmed season.
Yep, this final season is a visual treat, not least thanks to the drones.
We have dabbled with drones and UAVs over the years, but, this season, they were used in every single episode, not just for cool shots, but also as key elements of our storytelling process.
Probably the best example of that is our duct-tape special.
I'm ready.
We knew we had to make a duct-tape episode for this final season because making weird [Bleep.]
Out of duct tape is kinda what we do.
That really is quite hairy.
But, because it's the last season, we wanted something bigger than we'd ever done before, so, obviously, we made a duct-tape trebuchet.
Trebuchets are not just large.
They're long-range weapons that are part of a landscape and we wanted to film them in a way that demonstrated that.
Drones were perfect.
Here, you see the trebuchet getting built, rising up from the mishmash of duct tape and timber, eventually becoming a weapon of war.
Here, you see flaming fireballs whizzing by the camera.
And that, by the way, is not a spoiler.
Adam's right.
The duct-tape trebuchet has a secret twist in the tale.
But it wasn't all good news.
The drone cameras worked beautifully for the trebuchet shoot.
Other cameras? Didn't fare so well.
At one point, our trebuchet misfired and sprayed its fireball just 50 feet in front of it, landing right in front of a pair of $3,000 cameras.
Whoops.
Despite that duct-tape snafu, the rest of the final season sees the camera team crank it up to the max, and beyond.
Whoa! Having fired over 500,000 bullets That was an adrenaline rush.
And destroyed over 280 cars and having lost their dignity too many times to mention Is this as disturbing as I think it is? The Mythbusters are shutting up shop.
But not until they've had a spectacular final season.
Whoo! That was a good one.
We made sure that this season is jampacked with a lot of fan favorites.
There's a viral video that's already become a classic that more than 5,000 people suggested to us.
Dude! There is more to duct tape than giant trebuchets.
Here we go! Awesome.
And then, there's rockets, of the airborne kind, but also of the sled kind.
Go! Whoa! But, of course, we've also included plenty of explosions.
Whoa-oa-oa! Blowing [Bleep.]
up.
Holy [Bleep.]
.
Our best explosion this season? I'm gonna have to go with one that involved a famous fictional honorary Mythbuster, Angus MacGyver.
Come on, there's no way we could finish "Mythbusters" without doing one more MacGyver myth.
I like this look.
Maybe I'm gonna try it out.
Indeed.
And this one involves finding out if wet cement can really smother an explosion.
How you doin'? And, after one of the craziest controls in "Mythbusters" history, it's over to Jamie.
So then, we set up for blast 2: An identical Van with an identical amount of dynamite, but, this time, we're filling the Van with cement before setting off the blast.
Perfect! Right there.
Only there's a problem.
Kill it.
The dynamite, which is meant to get smothered by the cement, floats up to the top.
Oh, [Bleep.]
.
So this is absolutely an impasse.
We cannot continue.
And then, Jamie and I look at each other and think, "what would MacGyver do?" So we cut this hole just big enough for me to squeeze through, lay down a board, and I shimmy down it, using muscles I didn't even know I had.
Hoo! All right.
I'm in.
I can't even describe how hot it was in that Van.
And I'm wading with my pants, rolled up to my knees, in wet, funky concrete, moving live dynamite.
Yeah, you aren't goin' anywhere.
It was like perfect.
MacGyver inside the MacGyver episode.
It is a classic moment of "Mythbusters" ingenuity.
But was it worth it? That totally went off and all the dummies are standing.
So the second explosion happens and we are astonished.
I mean, we are high-fiving.
It's exceeded all of our expectations.
It is a totally surprising result.
And then, it turns out it's surprising because it's not a result.
It's actually a total failure.
It's a snafu.
We're gonna have to redo it.
Look, I know I say that failure is always an option, but I gotta tell you, sometimes it's really tiring when it happens.
"Failure is always an option" become one of our major mottos over the last 14 years because, well, you screw things up from time to time.
This final season, we kind of had more screwups than ever, though.
I got shrimp up my nose! Aah! Whoa! That hit a lot of things.
Go.
But the biggest failure of the season is from car lift.
It's a myth that says you can supposedly lift a family car clean into the air using nothing but a humble vacuum cleaner.
This is a great example of a classic Mythbuster story that got Jamie and I superexcited.
We loved the build, we thought it was gonna work, and then, very quickly, we ended up wishing that we had never seen this story.
- Ah! - Ahh! Rats! Rats! Rats! We tried everything.
It's gonna work! It's gonna work! But whatever we did, we couldn't get the car off the ground.
Yes.
Ah-ah-ah! What what what What what?! That's a result.
I mean, myth busted, right? Well, we thought so, but, the very next day, we're rehearsing the blueprint wrap when our producer finds something that stops us completely in our tracks.
Look.
We're running out of time.
So, to me, we might have to bust this.
The math says it should work.
Yeah, I know.
It's just that Hey, guys, before we call this, take a look at this.
What is it? This is a working vacuum car lift? - Yep.
- No.
So we gotta do it.
So our producer found this really obscure video from the 1960s of someone actually succeeding at this, which, unfortunately for us, means failure is not an option.
We have to keep going.
Yep, it was suddenly action stations on plan B, where the guys actually build something way more simple than plan A.
Let's do this! But we won't yet reveal if simple is effective.
Whoa! I realize there are a lot of people who like watching "Mythbusters" and shouting at the TV as Adam and I make mistakes.
Whoops! What can I say? Those people are gonna be doing that in car lift and quite a few other episodes, too.
With so much failure Whoa! Aah! It's no surprise that, at times, this season You're borin' the [Bleep.]
off me.
The tension has been telling.
Ow.
[Bleep.]
hurts.
Okay.
Slow down a little bit on that.
All right.
Don't do that [Bleep.]
.
We love making the show and, when you love doing something, you want to do it, really, to the best of your ability, and that means that it's often quite difficult.
So it shouldn't be any surprise that, at times, the stress level on our set is very high.
All we have to do is take off one of these and run it to our AC line.
You still have to run a separate line to each one of these five for the second leg.
No, all you have to do is unscrew one of these and then run AC into it.
Okay.
I don't think you're right.
The switch only activates one of two legs.
I could be done with this in like 5 minutes.
And you can see.
All right, I'm gonna walk away for a while.
What's absolutely crucial to the relationship is that Jamie and I don't hold grudges.
We always eventually make up.
Although, I will say we should've set those timers up in my way.
- Oh, [Bleep.]
.
Jamie.
- What? Sorry.
I got pissy 'cause it's like I'm done with the other method and we're still fartin' around with this one.
Whether or not Adam and Jamie's - timer issues get sorted - Fire! is being kept under wraps.
It made it through! But we can say that, this season, failure's not always the option.
This season, we take on a story called "what is bombproof?" The myth is that, if two identical explosions go off at exactly the same time and you're standing right in the middle, between them, do you survive because the blast pressures cancel each other out? The key part of this experiment rested on the two explosions going off perfectly simultaneously.
- Wow.
- Not to the millisecond, but to the microsecond.
But, in this instance And I don't know who or what was smiling down on us, but, literally, the first test we did, those two explosions went off perfectly at the same time.
We even checked the high-speed and it was like one frame to the next precisely.
It's kinda crazy.
That was probably something like a one-in-a-million shot and we got it right on the very first go.
In this final-season sneak peak, we've seen there'll be some incredible highs.
Yeah.
And some predictable lows.
Aaaaaaaaaaah! But, for this season, it's also the case that the gloves are off.
Oh! This final season is about as diverse a season as we have ever made.
It's time for zombies! Aggh! But for one episode this season, we decided to break the rules and cut loose a little bit.
Groovy.
Yeah, after almost 1,000 myths, there's one episode in this rundown where the showrunner says, "Jamie, you're always wanting" to do stuff just because you find it interesting.
"Well, here's your chance.
" No myths.
No movie scenes.
No urban legends, just Jamie getting the green light to tackle something he's interested in and what he chooses to tackle is about 11 kinds of awesome.
Yep, cars, physics, and ANFO.
Jamie chooses to find out if you can ever flatten a car with a massive amount of explosive.
And, right from the get-go, he's already in his element.
Look at him.
Sometimes, I think that Jamie is the human equivalent of a hermit crab.
Like a hermit crab can't survive outside its shell, but it doesn't make it's shell.
It has to go find it.
I think, in an alternate universe, if you gave Jamie the choice, he would choose the hard shell of a piece of earth-moving equipment to exist in 100% of the time.
Having primed the bomb range, Jamie does a series of small-scale tests, some of which work well.
Yeah.
And some of which go out of control.
Whoa.
I don't think they've landed yet.
But, eventually, he figures out a plan for full-scale and the guys head to their home away from home.
There's our setup.
It's perfect.
At NMT, the setup was really pretty elaborate, with I beams and large sheets of steel.
You mean come up and over? Not to mention a real hefty amount of explosives.
All that stuff was great, but what's really meaningful to me about this kind of thing is that these experiments are adventures.
You never know where they're gonna lead.
Some people climb mountains.
We blow [Bleep.]
up.
What're you gonna do? It's interesting, but there's a lot of episodes we do that Jamie is just not that interested in.
"Star Wars," particularly, but I really don't get why you're into these things.
Laws of attraction? Just a little bit awkward.
Hello, angels.
Hi, Jamie.
But, this time, we saw a side of Jamie we had never seen before.
He was excited.
He approached it with gusto.
He tried multiple iterations and he was even giggling between.
This is what it turns out Jamie had always wanted: To just be free.
Of course, we're not gonna reveal the result of the car carnage now.
3, 2, 1! Whoa-oa-oa! Oh, that's a piece of the frame.
Wow.
Some stuff is still falling.
But we will say that Jamie's not the only one who's got a favorite this season.
When all is said and done, my favorite myths often happen to be the ones in which we come to a conclusion that could actually positively affect somebody's life.
From our back catalog, I love our underwater car, where we show a technique with which people could actually save their lives.
I survived! The "Mythbusters" technique worked! I also loved plane boarding, where we came to a result that might actually positively impact the flying experience.
In an orderly fashion.
So, for this final season, it was really important to me to find a story in that vein and I found one that I got really excited about and it has to do with how we line up to buy things at the store.
Most stores use the pick-a-lane lineup method.
But, apparently, the snaking, serpentine system is a way more efficient way to wait.
Unfortunately, when we came to start filming, we found that no store would actually let us use their premises, so we had to build our own, which was kind of annoying.
Oh, yeah, cash registers.
It's real.
Yes, what should've been a straightforward story soon becomes anything but, as it's all hands on deck to build their own "Mythbuststore! Where shopping is fully experimental!" Our other tagline was "we're making this up as we go along.
" So we had our store complete with 5,000 products we had to price in the old-fashioned way.
And then, with something like 120 volunteer shoppers, we basically opened up and let them line up, just like you do in a normal store.
I felt a little moment of pride that we just opened our first business and we've got all these customers.
You know, over the years, we've gotten a lot of grief about our sample sizes, but, for this myth, we've got hundreds of bits of data, all of which were analyzed by some experts from UC-Berkeley, so it's one of the most scientifically valid tests we've ever done.
It's definitely scientifically sound.
But will it really arm the audience with important information? Cleanup on aisle 5.
Well, one myth that probably won't is the zombie revisit.
We've logged some pretty impressive numbers over the course of "Mythbusters.
" We've used over 15 tons of explosives.
- Whoa! - 83 miles of duct tape.
This is a long way down.
We've destroyed over 200 cars.
Whoa! But the figure that really blows my mind is that we have used over 3,500 volunteers.
I had no idea the number was that high.
From every state in the U.
S.
, volunteers have come from far and wide to help "Mythbusters" test all sorts of tall tales.
- Give me a hooah! - Hooah! But none are taller than the zombie apocalypse.
This season, we did a huge retest of gun vs ax because so many people said that we screwed it up.
So we put out a request for volunteers, asking them to show up at our location on a specific day, already dressed as zombies.
Now, you'd think that, because that's a bit of a hassle, that we'd only get about 10 or 20 or something, But, in actual effect, we got 200 "Mythbusters" fans in full-on zombie getup arrive.
People are weird.
But there's something bigger at play here, something about the reach of "Mythbusters" or maybe the reach of science? 200 people turn up for a full day in the middle of the week to be shot at in the face while wearing dressup? While it's absurd, it's also kinda humbling and it makes you realize how important this little science show of ours really is.
Across this final season, we'll be revealing Mythbusters by the numbers.
Like 2002, the year the adventure began.
That was absolutely outrageous.
And 2016, when the journey ends.
I killed all the zombies! This season, we're using 5 tons of explosive.
That was a bone-rattler.
And we're destroying 178 props from the past Oh, yeah! 5 busters, and one epic cement truck.
Adam and Jamie are giving us an insight into their final season.
Here we go.
Are you okay? A season that's got spectacle, science - Hello.
- Oh, hey.
And seediness like never before.
"Boobs".
But it's also got the emotion cranked up to the max.
Ah! It's gotta go! So this is the last season of "Mythbusters.
" It's real and 14 years and it's over.
I Ahem.
Sorry.
Am I emotional about the end of the show? Well, yeah, I suppose I am, a little bit.
We've been doing it since 2002 and it has been more than just a job, to be sure.
We've done some amazing things over all those years.
We've made lead balloons fly, we've shown that elephants are afraid of mice, and we put square wheels on trucks, along with a whole bunch of other stuff.
But more than that, we seem to have played a real role in making science cool, and that was genuinely an accident.
That's crazy! But I think it stems from the fact that, no matter how ridiculous and ludicrous the opening question is, we will tackle it methodically, with the scientific method, moving from experiment to experiment, genuinely building our knowledge.
Nothing, to me, could be more awesome than that.
Yeah, I'm really happy that we may have had some small role in getting people interested in science.
But not just interested in science, being physically active with science and trying things.
That's a bit different, you know.
I've always been really fond of building and it's been a really key part of the show, so, if we've encouraged somebody to form a question, a hypothesis, about something, rig something up, build something, or whatever, to test it, then that's a job well done, as far as I'm concerned.
14 years ago, the Mythbusters started a journey.
This is M5, my special effects shop.
A journey that, thanks to cool science and how-to builds Wow! Took them all the way to the top.
Welcome to the White House.
Thank you, Mr.
President.
Everything they've learned along the way, they've thrown into this epic final season.
Especially the grand finale.
We happy? Adam! We happy? Yeah, we happy.
So we're getting to the point.
It's time to start talking about the finale, our last episode, ever.
I'm good to continue.
We wanted to go out with a bang, but, because we've set the bar so high, it's hard to work out what exactly to do.
But after a lot of discussion, I think we finally got something that actually holds up pretty well.
I don't want to give too much away, but I think you'll be very satisfied.
We give buster the sendoff he always deserved.
Buster, I'd like to say that it's been an honor and a pleasure working with you.
I have gained much enjoyment and knowledge in our association and I'm gonna send you down with your favorite bottle of "Mythbuster" champagne.
You ready, buddy? Here it goes for old time's sake.
That is so perfect.
Sorry, this one's real.
Oh, man! That's it.
Thank you, sir.
We do something to leave our high-speed legacy absolutely second to none.
And we set off the biggest explosion in "Mythbusters" history.
I mean, how could we not? Inside this cement truck? One hundred 50-pound bags of ANFO.
- One pound.
- One pound.
5,001 pounds, the largest explosion in "Mythbusters" history.
3, 2, 1! And, well, we put our entire "Mythbusters" history on the line in one of our favorite locations, ever, to retackle one of our favorite stories, ever, and take it to the max.
Yeah, it's something else.
- I'm just sayin'.
- Here we go.
Oh, yeah, the "Mythbusters" grand finale has to be seen to be believed.
But there's more to this sendoff than Adam and Jamie.
Whoo! Yeah! One more thing: We thought it was important to spend some time reminiscing about the history of "Mythbusters" and we spent an entire episode this season doing exactly that.
In fact, we reunite with the awesome talents of Kari Byron, Tory Belleci, and Grant Imahara to talk about these last 14 years and what they've meant to us.
The highs, the lows, and everything in between.
It's an emotional roller coaster.
Seriously? It says so right here in the script, like we always do.
Really know how to kill a moment.
Yep, that's written down, too.
At any rate, the final season is awesome and it is epic and we hope you have every bit of fun watching it as we did making it.
I think it's time to cue the awesome montage.
Are you ready? Yes.
Let's get to it.
Okay, we're gonna count down.
3, 2, 1.
We are getting into hovering position over the target.
Fire! Warning.
Warning.
Yeah.
Whoo! Mua-ha-ha.
Yeah-eah! You ready? Ready to fire.
3, 2, 1!
This year, however, that wild ride is coming to an end as Adam and Jamie hang up their lab coats and eccentric hats, but not before what's rumored to be the most spectacular final season in television history.
You ready? Uh, yeah.
I'm ready.
- Let's get to work.
- Okay.
Final season, here we come.
Jamie, I think it's fair to say that you and I have a bit of experience in testing idiomatic phrases.
Sure.
We've made concrete airplane and proven that it's best to go out with a bang.
We've even slipped on banana peels in the name of science.
But today, we are testing an idiomatic phrase we have not tested before, but is particularly apt.
"Silence is golden"? No, but nice! "All good things must come to an end" because, after 260 hours of television, after 14 years, this is the last season of "Mythbusters.
" So what do we got? Well, this episode is gonna be something we've never actually done before.
We are gonna be teasing some of the awesome stuff we shot this season, but we are also going to be peeling back the curtain and showing the audience exactly how we filmed this season.
"Mythbusters" behind the scenes.
Sounds like we should start with something like a montage, perhaps? Right you are.
Cue the montage.
From a rocket-propelled first episode Ah! "Mythbusters" became a television phenomenon.
- Whoo! - This is gonna kill you.
With a patented combination of comedy - Quack, damn you.
- Carnage.
Jamie wants a big boom.
And clever science.
It's scientific! Ha ha ha ha.
The guys have brought memorable mayhem to the small screen for 14 years and change.
I reject your reality and substitute my own.
But, for their "go big, then go home" final season Yeah! Adam and Jamie are cranking things up to the max like never before.
And, in this episode, we're revealing some of their secrets.
Agh.
Maybe you could give me a minute.
Normally, when we start a new season, we just pick up where we left off.
We find the most popular myths from viral videos, movies, history books, whatever, and we just go for it.
But for this final season of "Mythbusters," we wanted a series of episodes that resonated with us, as Mythbusters, but also the scientists this show has turned us into.
It's actively moving.
Look at that.
And so, to try and achieve all that, it began with what I can only describe as the mother of all brainstorms.
"Mythbusters" final season, we need 12 iconic episodes that represent the history of "Mythbusters.
" I'm gonna throw out the first one: Duct tape.
Explosions.
Explosions, yes! The core brain trust of "Mythbusters" is Jamie; Me; Our showrunner, Dan; Our director, Steve; And our four amazing producers.
And the group of us sat down and came up with a list of episodes that we felt would properly send us off in style.
Rockets.
Gotta do something on rockets.
Rockets, okay.
Now, it wasn't quite as efficient as that.
Partly because we wanted to get it right, waaaaaaaaaaaaah! But partly because it's barely controlled chaos around here for most of the time.
Adam's constant deliveries don't help.
Is this for me? I'm looking for Adam.
Fabulous! I'll be right back.
Adam must get three or four packages, every single day, at least.
Oh, yeah! We gotta find a way to put this into the show.
Can we just get on with it? I have no idea what he does with all that stuff.
All I know is that he leaves it sitting around and in the way.
Okay.
Where were we? We were talking about the revisit special.
But back to the story.
After 2 long days, we had finally come up with a list of episodes that we not only thought were really strong, but also really did speak deeply to the 14-year history of "Mythbusters" and resonated with us.
And look at this Even Jamie's excited.
Yep, it's no spoiler that this season is pulling no punches, with episodes devoted to detonations Whoa! Holy [Bleep.]
.
Duct tape Ha ha ha! You made it into the loft.
Dramatic drops There it goes.
And away she goes.
Fire! And dastardly diets, made it through! Not to mention an epic grand finale, the guys really have created a farewell season that's second to none.
3, 2, 1! So, after compiling that whole list, the next step for us was to figure out how to do that all safely.
We have an excellent safety record over the history of "Mythbusters.
" Oh! Ow.
Ow.
Ow.
Ow! Ow! Agh! Am I missing an eyebrow? And we don't want to sully it now.
We want to go out with a bang.
We don't want to go out with a bang, if you know what I mean.
We're known for our explosions and, this season, it has a lot of 'em.
We blew up mail trucks, a giant fruit smoothie, some landmines, and the biggest explosion we've ever done.
But my point is you'd think that all these stories would be the most dangerous in our rundown, but the fact is they're not.
No, explosions are actually one of the safer things we do.
We've exposed the creamy center.
I mean, sure, if something goes wrong, it goes really, really wrong.
- Whoa! - Whoa! But, with all the fail-safes and the best practices involved, it's really unlikely to screw them up.
3, 2, 1, go.
No, from a safety standpoint, it is always the one that you think is gonna be easy that is gonna kick you in the butt and, this season, the classic example of that is drifting on dirt.
Yep, testing if drifting on dirt really is the fastest way to drive may sound simple.
Yeah-eah, that's it! Yeah! Come on! But, in this final season, it was anything but.
I think the critical thing that we really need to watch our for here is dust.
It's gonna obscure visibility from Jamie and Adam when they're driving.
In the event that anybody perceives any danger, you get on the radio and say, "abort.
" This story turned into a buttkicker for safety because there was so much dust.
We filmed this in the middle of a drought and, whenever we drove around a corner, a massive pile of dust got kicked up.
We even tried wetting it with water, but, in the summer sun and out there, it was kinda useless.
The big issue with the dust is that our course was kind of a circuit, so you could make one turn kicking up a cloud of dust and then another turn where you drive back into that cloud, where you're going at speed and you literally can't see a thing.
Yep, and, with a cliff on one side and camera crew on the other, that was not a good combination.
Every time he takes off, it's like a film about the dust bowl.
In fact, there was literally danger at every turn.
I can't see anything.
I can't see anything.
Okay, abort.
So the guys opt to not only train like there's no tomorrow Wait for the power.
Easy, easy, easy.
- Oh, whoops! - Easy.
Better.
[Bleep.]
[Bleep.]
Sorry about that.
But they also film much of the story from the air, taking the camera team out of harm's way.
Yeah, so thanks to our safety protocol, we broke out our drone for some truly epic aerial shots and, obviously, by the fact that I'm here, you know that I didn't die.
It's no giveaway to say that drifting does go to plan.
But it's not the only time this season that Adam drives blind.
I can't see! I can't see! As he puts his life on the line trying to sign off in style, something that we're not fully revealing yet.
So the trouble with trying to make the final season so ambitious is that, when it comes to actually making the episodes, it's hard.
I mean, we were opting for a "go big or go home" approach and I think some of our producers may have actually preferred to just go home.
We had to find us, of course, the helicopter in the middle of California fire season.
This is a great day for an experiment.
We had 3 days to source a 16-foot-long sword porch, an object that quite literally does not exist.
Man, I've never seen anything like that before.
But, beyond all that, the biggest challenge for us this season was tanker crush.
That was absolutely massive.
Tanker crush is a final-season spectacular about a train car which, thanks to a steamcleaning screwup, gets catastrophically crushed.
Now, the story starts out just fine because we begin with some pretty tense small-scale tests.
But we knew that, at some point, we had to go full-scale, with a 70-foot train tanker car.
And, well, that was one of the hardest gets we've ever had.
Okay.
Keep very quiet.
We don't often show you this part of the show, but this is where the magic happens.
This is our production office and those are our producers that find the impossible-to-find stuff, like a 747 or RPGs.
But, right now, this might very well be mission: Implosion: Impossible, but, we'll give them a couple more days.
In actual fact, it was another 3 months before the guys hit pay dirt.
But, boy did they come up trumps.
I mean, look at this.
We've walked down 2.
5 miles of train track, a mile of road.
We've got about 35 guys and a dozen trucks to support the implosion of that giant, 70-foot-long tanker car.
This is gonna be cool.
Undoubtedly, tanker crush is one of the biggest experiments in "Mythbusters" history.
Man, that thing's so friggin' big.
And one of the highlights of the final season, where the stress and drama becomes almost unbearable.
Wow.
Man.
It's nerve-racking.
It is and I know that like the moment I blink, it's gonna happen.
Dang! 25.
5.
Holy [Bleep.]
.
But the result will have to wait.
Coming up The Mythbusters shoot for the moon.
It's absolutely unreal.
As they reveal what lies ahead in the mother of all final seasons.
Whoa! Ow-oo-oo-ooh! Ha! After over 3,000 eclectic experiments It's a balloon made out of lead.
The Mythbusters are embarking on their final season.
Holy crap.
And, in this special preview We're gonna find out just how MacGyver we are.
They're revealing not only what's in store, but also, the secrets to their success.
- Excellent.
- Nice.
It's totally fair to say that "Mythbusters" would not have survived these 14 years without our fans.
In fact, at least 30% of our episodes come directly from fan submissions.
Thanks for the car, Chris.
Yep, prior to the final season, more than 200 myths tested on the show had come directly from fans.
Whoa! So, for this final season, we wanted to pay homage to that incredible editorial contribution by devoting a whole episode to the fans being in charge, courtesy of our reddit special.
What are you laughing at? Just the front page of the Internet.
At the Redditors' request, the guys try to punch through paper, throw buster out of a helicopter And set off the mother of all glitter bombs.
3, 2, 1.
Whoa! Now, those are great stories, but reddit wouldn't be reddit without a little bit of a subversive element going on, and so it was sort of inevitable that fans would suggest a story about farts.
Specifically, can you see a fart on a thermal imaging camera? And this one started causing us difficulty right in the story planning process.
Uh, maybe, like.
- Hang on.
- Right there.
Sorry.
I gotta jump in here.
You can't have that, Jamie, seriously.
I mean, that is a dead [Bleep.]
.
You cannot put that on TV.
What if we had a dress around the whole thing, you know? And then we can't see [Bleep.]
So you want to see the [Bleep.]
Or you don't want to see the [Bleep.]
? I want you to design something that does the functions of an [Bleep.]
Without being an [Bleep.]
on TV.
Hmm.
So something like maybe a whoopee cushion or something like that that might work.
Okay.
I'll leave you to it.
- Get into it.
- Thanks.
Once the director came up with the whoopee-cushion idea, Jamie and I got pretty deep into the reeds with the design, until we came back out with something that was effectively a whoopee cushion in a water bath, that not only worked perfectly We're gonna try and do this all with a straight face.
It looked hilarious.
That thing looks like a big [Bleep.]
That's farting.
Adam's machine was actually a pretty neat bit of engineering and it had the added bonus of not smelling.
That's not to say that, this season, we haven't been grossed out with smells.
Two words: Rocket special.
- Waah! - 3, 2, 1! Without doubt, rockets have helped put "Mythbusters" on the map.
So, for their farewell, the guys drive to the desert, to test some final rocket fatals.
Can you really shoot for the moon with some farout fuels? Nice! They start with gummy bears.
Launching in 3, 2, 1, ignition.
Ho.
Hey! Go-o-o-o-o-o-o! Oh.
[Bleep.]
a duck.
Then, they try an eclectic concoction of rock candy and carbon.
Launching in 3, 2, Ah! That's not very high.
Before long, Jamie decides what this story needs is a turn for the worse.
So, back at the shop - Mr.
Haven.
- Hello.
I need some poop.
How much? 50 pounds.
50 pounds.
Uh, how fresh? I don't care.
I love this little behind-the-scenes interaction.
Jamie has just told our producer that he wants to build a rocket powered with poo and the only question Eric has is "how much do you need?" That, my friends, is a seasoned "Mythbuster" producer.
Yep, and, once the rocket fuel in waiting arrives on-set Oh, man, that's nasty.
So begins one of the grossest experiments in "Mythbusters" history.
What the hell is that? Already giving me nightmares.
Look, I know what you're thinking: "Why would anyone ever want to make a rocket out of poo?" That's the way I like 'em.
But also think about the fact that it's just a waste product.
No one's doing anything with it, anyway.
So for a long mission to Mars, if it can be turned into extra rocket fuel.
Oh, that's gonna be nasty.
That's really smart.
That's Jamie, as far as I'm concerned, thinking really nice and big outside the box.
So far, so good.
So there is method to his madness.
And, once back in the desert All right.
You ready? I'm ready.
The guys carefully load Jamie's stink bomb onto the stand.
But will it really change mankind for the better? 3, 2, 1! - Agh! - No.
Well, one story that just might involves landmines.
Oh! For years, I've been wanting to do this story.
It's so great! Can you traverse a minefield in a hovercraft? We never got around to doing it because we were never successfully able to find either mines or a minefield or a hovercraft.
Oh, yeah.
Here it comes.
But, this season, we finally got a chance to do it.
Sure, when we filmed it, it was kind of a pain in the ass because I pretty much did all the work, while Adam just messed around on the hovercraft.
Whoa-oa-oa! But, anyway, thanks to me, we do have an actual experiment.
Yep, with a hovercraft finally located and some homemade landmines, the guys do put this long-awaited myth to the test.
And, while we're keeping the results under wraps, there's one thing we can reveal.
Yeah, landmines are awful.
They're really awful, awful devices.
So, if you can find a way for innocent people not to get blown up by 'em, that'd be really good.
- Ah! - Oh, you big baby.
In addition to making sure that the stories we choose this season are as epic as possible, it was also really important to us to make sure that the visuals were the best we've ever done, and I think it's mission accomplished.
Really, I think the stuff that we've shot this season is as beautiful and as cinematic as anything that's on television right now.
My DP is behind the camera right now, giving me a kind of a "really?!" Look, and I'm totally serious.
This is a beautifully filmed season.
Yep, this final season is a visual treat, not least thanks to the drones.
We have dabbled with drones and UAVs over the years, but, this season, they were used in every single episode, not just for cool shots, but also as key elements of our storytelling process.
Probably the best example of that is our duct-tape special.
I'm ready.
We knew we had to make a duct-tape episode for this final season because making weird [Bleep.]
Out of duct tape is kinda what we do.
That really is quite hairy.
But, because it's the last season, we wanted something bigger than we'd ever done before, so, obviously, we made a duct-tape trebuchet.
Trebuchets are not just large.
They're long-range weapons that are part of a landscape and we wanted to film them in a way that demonstrated that.
Drones were perfect.
Here, you see the trebuchet getting built, rising up from the mishmash of duct tape and timber, eventually becoming a weapon of war.
Here, you see flaming fireballs whizzing by the camera.
And that, by the way, is not a spoiler.
Adam's right.
The duct-tape trebuchet has a secret twist in the tale.
But it wasn't all good news.
The drone cameras worked beautifully for the trebuchet shoot.
Other cameras? Didn't fare so well.
At one point, our trebuchet misfired and sprayed its fireball just 50 feet in front of it, landing right in front of a pair of $3,000 cameras.
Whoops.
Despite that duct-tape snafu, the rest of the final season sees the camera team crank it up to the max, and beyond.
Whoa! Having fired over 500,000 bullets That was an adrenaline rush.
And destroyed over 280 cars and having lost their dignity too many times to mention Is this as disturbing as I think it is? The Mythbusters are shutting up shop.
But not until they've had a spectacular final season.
Whoo! That was a good one.
We made sure that this season is jampacked with a lot of fan favorites.
There's a viral video that's already become a classic that more than 5,000 people suggested to us.
Dude! There is more to duct tape than giant trebuchets.
Here we go! Awesome.
And then, there's rockets, of the airborne kind, but also of the sled kind.
Go! Whoa! But, of course, we've also included plenty of explosions.
Whoa-oa-oa! Blowing [Bleep.]
up.
Holy [Bleep.]
.
Our best explosion this season? I'm gonna have to go with one that involved a famous fictional honorary Mythbuster, Angus MacGyver.
Come on, there's no way we could finish "Mythbusters" without doing one more MacGyver myth.
I like this look.
Maybe I'm gonna try it out.
Indeed.
And this one involves finding out if wet cement can really smother an explosion.
How you doin'? And, after one of the craziest controls in "Mythbusters" history, it's over to Jamie.
So then, we set up for blast 2: An identical Van with an identical amount of dynamite, but, this time, we're filling the Van with cement before setting off the blast.
Perfect! Right there.
Only there's a problem.
Kill it.
The dynamite, which is meant to get smothered by the cement, floats up to the top.
Oh, [Bleep.]
.
So this is absolutely an impasse.
We cannot continue.
And then, Jamie and I look at each other and think, "what would MacGyver do?" So we cut this hole just big enough for me to squeeze through, lay down a board, and I shimmy down it, using muscles I didn't even know I had.
Hoo! All right.
I'm in.
I can't even describe how hot it was in that Van.
And I'm wading with my pants, rolled up to my knees, in wet, funky concrete, moving live dynamite.
Yeah, you aren't goin' anywhere.
It was like perfect.
MacGyver inside the MacGyver episode.
It is a classic moment of "Mythbusters" ingenuity.
But was it worth it? That totally went off and all the dummies are standing.
So the second explosion happens and we are astonished.
I mean, we are high-fiving.
It's exceeded all of our expectations.
It is a totally surprising result.
And then, it turns out it's surprising because it's not a result.
It's actually a total failure.
It's a snafu.
We're gonna have to redo it.
Look, I know I say that failure is always an option, but I gotta tell you, sometimes it's really tiring when it happens.
"Failure is always an option" become one of our major mottos over the last 14 years because, well, you screw things up from time to time.
This final season, we kind of had more screwups than ever, though.
I got shrimp up my nose! Aah! Whoa! That hit a lot of things.
Go.
But the biggest failure of the season is from car lift.
It's a myth that says you can supposedly lift a family car clean into the air using nothing but a humble vacuum cleaner.
This is a great example of a classic Mythbuster story that got Jamie and I superexcited.
We loved the build, we thought it was gonna work, and then, very quickly, we ended up wishing that we had never seen this story.
- Ah! - Ahh! Rats! Rats! Rats! We tried everything.
It's gonna work! It's gonna work! But whatever we did, we couldn't get the car off the ground.
Yes.
Ah-ah-ah! What what what What what?! That's a result.
I mean, myth busted, right? Well, we thought so, but, the very next day, we're rehearsing the blueprint wrap when our producer finds something that stops us completely in our tracks.
Look.
We're running out of time.
So, to me, we might have to bust this.
The math says it should work.
Yeah, I know.
It's just that Hey, guys, before we call this, take a look at this.
What is it? This is a working vacuum car lift? - Yep.
- No.
So we gotta do it.
So our producer found this really obscure video from the 1960s of someone actually succeeding at this, which, unfortunately for us, means failure is not an option.
We have to keep going.
Yep, it was suddenly action stations on plan B, where the guys actually build something way more simple than plan A.
Let's do this! But we won't yet reveal if simple is effective.
Whoa! I realize there are a lot of people who like watching "Mythbusters" and shouting at the TV as Adam and I make mistakes.
Whoops! What can I say? Those people are gonna be doing that in car lift and quite a few other episodes, too.
With so much failure Whoa! Aah! It's no surprise that, at times, this season You're borin' the [Bleep.]
off me.
The tension has been telling.
Ow.
[Bleep.]
hurts.
Okay.
Slow down a little bit on that.
All right.
Don't do that [Bleep.]
.
We love making the show and, when you love doing something, you want to do it, really, to the best of your ability, and that means that it's often quite difficult.
So it shouldn't be any surprise that, at times, the stress level on our set is very high.
All we have to do is take off one of these and run it to our AC line.
You still have to run a separate line to each one of these five for the second leg.
No, all you have to do is unscrew one of these and then run AC into it.
Okay.
I don't think you're right.
The switch only activates one of two legs.
I could be done with this in like 5 minutes.
And you can see.
All right, I'm gonna walk away for a while.
What's absolutely crucial to the relationship is that Jamie and I don't hold grudges.
We always eventually make up.
Although, I will say we should've set those timers up in my way.
- Oh, [Bleep.]
.
Jamie.
- What? Sorry.
I got pissy 'cause it's like I'm done with the other method and we're still fartin' around with this one.
Whether or not Adam and Jamie's - timer issues get sorted - Fire! is being kept under wraps.
It made it through! But we can say that, this season, failure's not always the option.
This season, we take on a story called "what is bombproof?" The myth is that, if two identical explosions go off at exactly the same time and you're standing right in the middle, between them, do you survive because the blast pressures cancel each other out? The key part of this experiment rested on the two explosions going off perfectly simultaneously.
- Wow.
- Not to the millisecond, but to the microsecond.
But, in this instance And I don't know who or what was smiling down on us, but, literally, the first test we did, those two explosions went off perfectly at the same time.
We even checked the high-speed and it was like one frame to the next precisely.
It's kinda crazy.
That was probably something like a one-in-a-million shot and we got it right on the very first go.
In this final-season sneak peak, we've seen there'll be some incredible highs.
Yeah.
And some predictable lows.
Aaaaaaaaaaah! But, for this season, it's also the case that the gloves are off.
Oh! This final season is about as diverse a season as we have ever made.
It's time for zombies! Aggh! But for one episode this season, we decided to break the rules and cut loose a little bit.
Groovy.
Yeah, after almost 1,000 myths, there's one episode in this rundown where the showrunner says, "Jamie, you're always wanting" to do stuff just because you find it interesting.
"Well, here's your chance.
" No myths.
No movie scenes.
No urban legends, just Jamie getting the green light to tackle something he's interested in and what he chooses to tackle is about 11 kinds of awesome.
Yep, cars, physics, and ANFO.
Jamie chooses to find out if you can ever flatten a car with a massive amount of explosive.
And, right from the get-go, he's already in his element.
Look at him.
Sometimes, I think that Jamie is the human equivalent of a hermit crab.
Like a hermit crab can't survive outside its shell, but it doesn't make it's shell.
It has to go find it.
I think, in an alternate universe, if you gave Jamie the choice, he would choose the hard shell of a piece of earth-moving equipment to exist in 100% of the time.
Having primed the bomb range, Jamie does a series of small-scale tests, some of which work well.
Yeah.
And some of which go out of control.
Whoa.
I don't think they've landed yet.
But, eventually, he figures out a plan for full-scale and the guys head to their home away from home.
There's our setup.
It's perfect.
At NMT, the setup was really pretty elaborate, with I beams and large sheets of steel.
You mean come up and over? Not to mention a real hefty amount of explosives.
All that stuff was great, but what's really meaningful to me about this kind of thing is that these experiments are adventures.
You never know where they're gonna lead.
Some people climb mountains.
We blow [Bleep.]
up.
What're you gonna do? It's interesting, but there's a lot of episodes we do that Jamie is just not that interested in.
"Star Wars," particularly, but I really don't get why you're into these things.
Laws of attraction? Just a little bit awkward.
Hello, angels.
Hi, Jamie.
But, this time, we saw a side of Jamie we had never seen before.
He was excited.
He approached it with gusto.
He tried multiple iterations and he was even giggling between.
This is what it turns out Jamie had always wanted: To just be free.
Of course, we're not gonna reveal the result of the car carnage now.
3, 2, 1! Whoa-oa-oa! Oh, that's a piece of the frame.
Wow.
Some stuff is still falling.
But we will say that Jamie's not the only one who's got a favorite this season.
When all is said and done, my favorite myths often happen to be the ones in which we come to a conclusion that could actually positively affect somebody's life.
From our back catalog, I love our underwater car, where we show a technique with which people could actually save their lives.
I survived! The "Mythbusters" technique worked! I also loved plane boarding, where we came to a result that might actually positively impact the flying experience.
In an orderly fashion.
So, for this final season, it was really important to me to find a story in that vein and I found one that I got really excited about and it has to do with how we line up to buy things at the store.
Most stores use the pick-a-lane lineup method.
But, apparently, the snaking, serpentine system is a way more efficient way to wait.
Unfortunately, when we came to start filming, we found that no store would actually let us use their premises, so we had to build our own, which was kind of annoying.
Oh, yeah, cash registers.
It's real.
Yes, what should've been a straightforward story soon becomes anything but, as it's all hands on deck to build their own "Mythbuststore! Where shopping is fully experimental!" Our other tagline was "we're making this up as we go along.
" So we had our store complete with 5,000 products we had to price in the old-fashioned way.
And then, with something like 120 volunteer shoppers, we basically opened up and let them line up, just like you do in a normal store.
I felt a little moment of pride that we just opened our first business and we've got all these customers.
You know, over the years, we've gotten a lot of grief about our sample sizes, but, for this myth, we've got hundreds of bits of data, all of which were analyzed by some experts from UC-Berkeley, so it's one of the most scientifically valid tests we've ever done.
It's definitely scientifically sound.
But will it really arm the audience with important information? Cleanup on aisle 5.
Well, one myth that probably won't is the zombie revisit.
We've logged some pretty impressive numbers over the course of "Mythbusters.
" We've used over 15 tons of explosives.
- Whoa! - 83 miles of duct tape.
This is a long way down.
We've destroyed over 200 cars.
Whoa! But the figure that really blows my mind is that we have used over 3,500 volunteers.
I had no idea the number was that high.
From every state in the U.
S.
, volunteers have come from far and wide to help "Mythbusters" test all sorts of tall tales.
- Give me a hooah! - Hooah! But none are taller than the zombie apocalypse.
This season, we did a huge retest of gun vs ax because so many people said that we screwed it up.
So we put out a request for volunteers, asking them to show up at our location on a specific day, already dressed as zombies.
Now, you'd think that, because that's a bit of a hassle, that we'd only get about 10 or 20 or something, But, in actual effect, we got 200 "Mythbusters" fans in full-on zombie getup arrive.
People are weird.
But there's something bigger at play here, something about the reach of "Mythbusters" or maybe the reach of science? 200 people turn up for a full day in the middle of the week to be shot at in the face while wearing dressup? While it's absurd, it's also kinda humbling and it makes you realize how important this little science show of ours really is.
Across this final season, we'll be revealing Mythbusters by the numbers.
Like 2002, the year the adventure began.
That was absolutely outrageous.
And 2016, when the journey ends.
I killed all the zombies! This season, we're using 5 tons of explosive.
That was a bone-rattler.
And we're destroying 178 props from the past Oh, yeah! 5 busters, and one epic cement truck.
Adam and Jamie are giving us an insight into their final season.
Here we go.
Are you okay? A season that's got spectacle, science - Hello.
- Oh, hey.
And seediness like never before.
"Boobs".
But it's also got the emotion cranked up to the max.
Ah! It's gotta go! So this is the last season of "Mythbusters.
" It's real and 14 years and it's over.
I Ahem.
Sorry.
Am I emotional about the end of the show? Well, yeah, I suppose I am, a little bit.
We've been doing it since 2002 and it has been more than just a job, to be sure.
We've done some amazing things over all those years.
We've made lead balloons fly, we've shown that elephants are afraid of mice, and we put square wheels on trucks, along with a whole bunch of other stuff.
But more than that, we seem to have played a real role in making science cool, and that was genuinely an accident.
That's crazy! But I think it stems from the fact that, no matter how ridiculous and ludicrous the opening question is, we will tackle it methodically, with the scientific method, moving from experiment to experiment, genuinely building our knowledge.
Nothing, to me, could be more awesome than that.
Yeah, I'm really happy that we may have had some small role in getting people interested in science.
But not just interested in science, being physically active with science and trying things.
That's a bit different, you know.
I've always been really fond of building and it's been a really key part of the show, so, if we've encouraged somebody to form a question, a hypothesis, about something, rig something up, build something, or whatever, to test it, then that's a job well done, as far as I'm concerned.
14 years ago, the Mythbusters started a journey.
This is M5, my special effects shop.
A journey that, thanks to cool science and how-to builds Wow! Took them all the way to the top.
Welcome to the White House.
Thank you, Mr.
President.
Everything they've learned along the way, they've thrown into this epic final season.
Especially the grand finale.
We happy? Adam! We happy? Yeah, we happy.
So we're getting to the point.
It's time to start talking about the finale, our last episode, ever.
I'm good to continue.
We wanted to go out with a bang, but, because we've set the bar so high, it's hard to work out what exactly to do.
But after a lot of discussion, I think we finally got something that actually holds up pretty well.
I don't want to give too much away, but I think you'll be very satisfied.
We give buster the sendoff he always deserved.
Buster, I'd like to say that it's been an honor and a pleasure working with you.
I have gained much enjoyment and knowledge in our association and I'm gonna send you down with your favorite bottle of "Mythbuster" champagne.
You ready, buddy? Here it goes for old time's sake.
That is so perfect.
Sorry, this one's real.
Oh, man! That's it.
Thank you, sir.
We do something to leave our high-speed legacy absolutely second to none.
And we set off the biggest explosion in "Mythbusters" history.
I mean, how could we not? Inside this cement truck? One hundred 50-pound bags of ANFO.
- One pound.
- One pound.
5,001 pounds, the largest explosion in "Mythbusters" history.
3, 2, 1! And, well, we put our entire "Mythbusters" history on the line in one of our favorite locations, ever, to retackle one of our favorite stories, ever, and take it to the max.
Yeah, it's something else.
- I'm just sayin'.
- Here we go.
Oh, yeah, the "Mythbusters" grand finale has to be seen to be believed.
But there's more to this sendoff than Adam and Jamie.
Whoo! Yeah! One more thing: We thought it was important to spend some time reminiscing about the history of "Mythbusters" and we spent an entire episode this season doing exactly that.
In fact, we reunite with the awesome talents of Kari Byron, Tory Belleci, and Grant Imahara to talk about these last 14 years and what they've meant to us.
The highs, the lows, and everything in between.
It's an emotional roller coaster.
Seriously? It says so right here in the script, like we always do.
Really know how to kill a moment.
Yep, that's written down, too.
At any rate, the final season is awesome and it is epic and we hope you have every bit of fun watching it as we did making it.
I think it's time to cue the awesome montage.
Are you ready? Yes.
Let's get to it.
Okay, we're gonna count down.
3, 2, 1.
We are getting into hovering position over the target.
Fire! Warning.
Warning.
Yeah.
Whoo! Mua-ha-ha.
Yeah-eah! You ready? Ready to fire.
3, 2, 1!