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Could These Two Iconic Action Movie Moments Work In Real Life? | MythBusters
MythBusters tackles Hollywood myths about grenades and pirates, testing if a hero can survive a grenade blast by diving on it, if a bucket of water can contain an explosion, if a refrigerator offers protection, and if a pirate can slide down a ship's sail using a knife.
Watch on YouTube ↗The digest
Hollywood has long been a master of cinematic spectacle, but how much of its on-screen heroism holds up to real-world physics? The MythBusters team, Jamie Hyneman and Adam Savage, put several iconic action movie scenarios to the test, from diving on grenades to sliding down sails with a knife.
The Grenade Dive: A Hero's Sacrifice?
The central myth revolves around the ultimate act of cinematic heroism: a character diving onto a live grenade to shield their comrades from the blast. To investigate this, the team first constructed a human analogue using ballistic gelatin, designed to mimic the density and composition of human flesh. This dummy, weighing and sized like an adult male, would serve as the 'hero' for their explosive experiments. To measure the impact of the blast, plywood cutouts, representing the hero's companions, were positioned at five-foot intervals around the grenade's intended detonation point. The initial control test, without any 'hero' intervention, revealed a terrifying truth: grenade shrapnel, traveling at speeds up to 24,000 feet per second (ten times the speed of a bullet), easily perforated the plywood figures. Even at 10 feet away, the damage was significant, indicating that in a real-world scenario, multiple casualties would be inevitable.
Keep reading in The Digest
The full 5-minute article, 6 more sections, and every new episode from MythBusters and the creators you follow.
- Diving In: Does the Hero Survive?
- Alternative Grenade Containment Strategies
- The Refrigerator Bomb: A Chilling Failure
- Pirate Sail Sliding: Fact or Fiction?
- The Physics of a Pirate's Descent
- The Human Element: Can a Pirate Hold On?
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