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Red Rag To A Bull/Hot Bullets |
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Written by Antigone68104
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Sunday, 09 September 2007 |
Red Rag To A Bull/ Hot Bullets
Episode # 84
Original Air Date: August 22, 2007
Red Rag to a Bull/ Hot Bullets
Myth: Hot Bullets
There are several versions of this story, but they all follow the same basic pattern: family is going on vacation, husband decides no one will find his guns and ammo if he hides them in the oven. When they return, his wife preheats the oven to fix dinner, and the ammo explodes.
The Experts:
John Stankewicz oversees the control tests at the firing range.
J.D. Nelson oversees the tests at the bomb disposal range.
Memorable/Quotable Moments:
Adam: Smells like ... science.
Adam: This. Is. SPARKY!
The Action/Results:
Under ideal (or, if it’s happening in your kitchen, worst) conditions, can a bullet penetrate an oven door? To find out, Jamie, Adam, an oven door, and a ballistics gel bust of Grant visit the South San Francisco PD firing range. The door is anchored in a frame, with ballistics-Grant behind it as if he were checking on dinner.
First up is Jamie with a .22 caliber pistol. The bullet easily penetrates the double layer of glass in the door and ballistics-Grant, but cannot penetrate the steel door itself. Adam steps up with a .44 caliber handgun, which puts a hole in both the steel and the ballistics gel. Finally, though it goes a bit outside the myth, Jamie breaks out a shotgun, blasts through the steel door, and puts ballistics-Grant out of his misery.
Since it’s possible to take a lethal hit through an oven door, testing goes to the next stage. Jamie and Adam adapt an oven so they can film what goes on inside, rig it for faster heating, and set it up in the bunker. A soundboard and plywood backstop is set up to catch anything that makes it outside the oven – a quick flashback shows this backstop arrangement being calibrated (spelled “shot at”) at the firing range. A .22 caliber bullet is placed inside the oven, and the gas is lit. The bullet explodes at around 500 degrees Fahrenheit, a temperature easily reachable by a normal kitchen oven. The bullet bounces off the glass; in fact the most damage the oven took was a dent on the far wall from the casing. For the next test, with a .44 caliber bullet, they turn the bullet around so the casing faces the glass. The casing still goes further than the bullet, but fails to break the glass. Finally, a .50 caliber round goes in to bake. This produces the most impressive fireball of all, and breaks the inner layer of glass ... but the outer layer is intact.
But the myth says both loose ammo and guns were in the oven. The guys anchor a .44 caliber revolver inside the oven, pointing through the door, and chamber one round. This time, the bullet punches through the door, and damage to the backstop shows anyone standing there would have taken a lethal hit. Between their tests and several news reports, this myth is ruled CONFIRMED.
But why stop here? There are several accounts of bullets and other objects being thrown on campfires. So, Jamie modifies one of the shop robots to dump items by remote control, while Adam builds a “ballistics tepee” with more of their soundboard/plywood sandwich and a supporting metal frame. (Adam points out that the campfire would melt ballistics gel.)
Out at the Alameda County bomb disposal range, the guys build a campfire, set up their ballistics tepee, and load “Sparky’s” hopper with a mix of .22, .44, and .50 caliber rounds. They start to go off almost as soon as they go on the fire, but the exploding, like popcorn, goes on for a while. Once the fire is put out, they find that not all the rounds exploded; some were tossed out of the fire by other explosions before they got hot enough. The tepee shows some damage, but primarily from casings, not bullets. Next, “Sparky” carries some aerosol cans to the fire. They rupture and jet around the place, producing some very nice high-speed footage. Finally, Adam’s found accounts of beer kegs being thrown on a fire. A keg is mostly emptied, but it’s too big for “Sparky” to handle. Jamie and Adam don protective gear and put the keg in position. There’s no shrapnel from this explosion, but that’s purely from chance – they point out two pieces that almost came off, either of which was large enough to injure or kill.
Jamie and Adam sum up these tests:
Bullets on campfire – bad idea, would probably cause injury, but probably not kill
Aerosol cans on campfire – bad idea, would probably cause injury, but probably not kill.
Beer keg on campfire – very bad idea, has a good chance to kill someone ... and a waste of beer.
Myth: Red Flag To A Bull
Do bulls really become enraged when they see a red flag, cape, or other piece of red cloth?
The Expert:
Rodney Gaston, rodeo clown for the Grand National Rodeo.
Professor Janet Andrews talks about bulls and color vision.
Memorable/Quotable Moments:
Tory (holding a cast of Kari’s face in front of his): So, Tory, what are we going to do next?
Grant (holding a cast of Tory’s face in front of his, while flexing his free arm): Well, what we’re going to do right now, is, uh, weld some of that stuff together. And then, uh, maybe I’ll do something dangerous.
The new sequel to Dancing With The Stars, Dancing With The Mannequins.
Kari: Well, now that we’ve wrecked three of our dummies, I guess we have one left.
The Action/Results:
Tory volunteers to test this one by donning a red suit, but Grant and Kari overrule him after talking bull-inflicted injuries with rodeo clown Rodney Gaston. Instead, Kari whips up three flags for the bulls to attack or not attack, one each in red, white, and blue. The team also makes three foam mannequins, in case the bulls are reacting to the matador rather than the cape. They already have a life cast of Grant’s head; they make casts of Kari and Tory and mount a different head on each matador. Grant comes up with a simple remote-control rig to make the matadors move their flags, and each is dressed – the fake Kari in red, the fake Grant in white, and the fake Tory in blue.
The flags and “matadors” head out to the Kish bull ranch, where several bad-tempered bulls await. For the first tests, a single flag is hung on a zip line in the middle of the pen, and each is attacked by a bull. When all three flags are hung at the same time, the bull takes them in order – no preference for the red flag can be seen. Then, the red flag goes on a stationary line while the blue flag goes on one that Grant can move by remote control – the blue flag is the main target, red is largely ignored. Finally, the foam matadors go out. Foam-Grant and foam-Tory, both of which were waving their flags, go down, the red-clad but immobile foam-Kari is almost an afterthought for the bull.
The team’s results are confirmed by Professor Janet Andrews. She states that while bulls are not color-blind, they don’t have the full range of color vision that a human does. Bulls only have two types of color receptors, while humans have three. Bulls can see red, but there’s nothing about that color or how they perceive it that would cause rage.
Since all the evidence agrees, Tory gets to don body armor and a red jumpsuit and go in the pen. Two bullfighters, wearing other colors, go in as well – Tory will be standing still, the bullfighters will be as active as possible. The bull clearly can see Tory, but ignores him for the moving bullfighters. This myth is ruled BUSTED.
Myth: Bull In A China Shop
Is this phrase accurate? Would a bull in a china shop spell disaster for the china?
Memorable/Quotable Moments:
Grant: You know how they say Tory is like a bull in a china shop?
(simultaneously) Kari: Yes.
Tory: No.
The Action/Results:
Kari builds a set of foamboard shelves (to prevent injury to the bulls), sets them up in a pen, and adds all the china and ceramic/glass knickknacks she and Tory could carry off from the thrift store. Then, a bull is released into the pen. Surprisingly, as the bull runs around the pen, only one shelf goes down (and I think it was the one that was wobbliest during setup). They get up to four bulls in the china shop-pen at once, but no other shelves go down. Some of them are bumped, and one or two knickknacks fall over, but the bulls easily avoid collisions.
This saying is ruled BUSTED, and to celebrate the team breaks all the shelves and china themselves.
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Episode Descriptions 