Episode Name:   Buried Alive

Original Air Date:   October 24, 2003

Myths:  Hammer Drop, Buried Alive, Cola Myths

BURIED ALIVE!
 
Myth: Someone could be mistakenly taken for dead and buried alive, only to wake up later in their casket and suffocate.
 
Experts:
Heather Joseph-Whitham tells of two known stories, one of a woman who is pronounced dead but who's husband believes her to still be alive. After the woman is buried her husband has recurring nightmares in which the woman is scratching and clawing at her casket. After some time they dig the unfortunate woman up and find the interior of her coffin to be scratched to pieces. The second story is of another woman, pronounced dead and buried. A few hours later she is exhumed by grave robbers looking to steal her jewelry. When they open her casket, the woman sighs and wakes up. The robbers run off and the woman returns home, and outlives her husband.

Dr. William Miller of St. Luke's Hospital doubts anyone would be buried alive accidentally in this day and age, but sees how it could have happened in the past.

Brother Guire Cleary of Mission Dolores tells of how people in times gone by feared being buried alive and took several steps to prevent it from happening.
 
Quotable Moments:
Adam to Jamie on caskets: "Your comfort, Jamie, is our first priority."
Jamie: "I need to be able to rest in peace."
 
Action/Results: The boys construct an above ground chamber in which they'll place Jamie in a 20 gauge steel casket and cover him with tons of dirt. Inside the casket Jamie will have several monitors (Blood Oxygen Sensors, Heart Rate Monitors, Carbon Dioxide Detectors, Night Vision Camera) to record his reaction to being buried alive. They do a dry run in the lab environment, in which Jamie lasts nearly 50 minutes in the sealed casket. When the real test is performed Jamie isn't quite as complacent. When the Bobcat drops the first load of soil on the casket Jamie is unnerved by the amount of dirt entering the casket. The team completely covers the casket with dirt, but the test only lasts 30 minutes due to Jamie's concern of the lid slipping off the coffin and the sides collapsing. When he is uncovered the 20 gauge steel casket shows signs of being crumpled under the weight of the earth, and Jamie tells of hearing several creaks and groans from the inside. The boys declare that you probably could not be mistakenly buried alive in this day and age, and if you were you would not survive long before you suffocated.
 

101 USES FOR COLA
 
Myth: Cola can be used for anything: cleaning blood, degreasing engines, cleaning chrome, dissolving a tooth, shining pennies - it can even be used as an effective spermicide!
 
Experts:
Dr. Paul Turek from the UCSF Medical Center weighs in on the myth of cola being used as a spermicide.
 
Quotable Moments:
Jamie: "It's aluminum foil."
Adam: "What did I say?"
Jamie: "Tin foil."
Adam: "Tin foil, aluminum foil...it's all the same!"
Jamie: "I thought you wanted to be scientific?"
Adam: "Just be quiet and scrub, Cinderella!"
 
Action/Results:
 
Test 1 - Cola as a blood stain remover: The boys spray some animal blood all over the parking lot outside and let it bake in the sun for a couple of hours. Once it's dried they treat one side with cola and the other with just water. They declare cola helped to remove the blood, but not much.
 
Test 2 - Cola as an effective chrome cleaner: The boys put cola to the test on an old truck's chrome bumper by comparing it with the leading chrome cleaner. They determine that scrubbing the bumper with aluminum foil and cola did a better job than the leading brand chrome cleaner.
 
Test 3 - Cola can free rusty bolts: Adam and Jamie soak a rag in cola and leave it on a rusty bolt on the truck's engine. After a few minutes they try to loosen the bolt, and are unable to. They find that cola doesn't do much to free rusty bolts, aside from making them sticky.
 
Test 4 - Cola can shine a penny: Cola is put up against pure phosphoric acid in the battle to shine a penny better. After 24 hours of soaking, the cola penny did appear to be brighter than the penny that soaked in acid.
 
Test 5 - Cola can dissolve a tooth in 24 hours: Two teeth are soaked for 24 hours, one in cola and one in phosphoric acid. The acid tooth is reduced to half it's original size, but the cola tooth just turns an ugly brown color. Neither completely dissolves. Myth busted.
 
Test 6 - Cola can dissolve a T-Bone Steak: Two steaks are put in decanters, one covered in phosphoric acid and one covered in cola, and left for 48 hours. When time is up the boys try to pull the moldy steaks out of their respective containers and find that the acid steak falls apart, while the cola steak seems fairly tenderized (rancid, but softer). Neither steak is completely dissolved, so another myth is busted.
 
Test 7 - Cola can clean battery terminals: Adam and Jamie pit cola against baking soda and a toothbrush on two dirty car batteries. They find that cola and baking soda do just about the same job, but it's hard to tell if plain water doesn't do just as good of a job. Cola doesn't do anything spectacular.
 
Test 8 - Cola can remove greasy stains in your laundry: Jamie puts on a pair of clean coveralls and rolls around on the truck engine. Adam does his best to help Jamie get dirty. They put two different swatches of greasy coverall in different decanters, one with cola and one with a laundry detergent solution. After soaking for 48 hours the most the cola did was turn the material a nice brown color. No grease was removed.
 
Test 9 - Cola as an engine degreaser: The boys cover the truck engine in cola, wait a spell and then rinse it off. They find that the cola may have removed some of the rust and corrosion, but didn't remove any of the grease.
 
Test 10 - Cola as an effective spermicide: Adam and Jamie take sperm samples (origin of samples unknown) and place them under a microscope. They add cola to some slides and saline solution to others. They count the number of live sperm in 60 second intervals and find that the number of live sperm in both saline and cola was relatively the same. With the help of Dr. Turek they determine that cola doesn't do much more than dilute the sperm.
 

HAMMER JUMP
 
Myth: If you fall off a high structure over water (like a bridge) your chances of survival are greater if you throw something into the water ahead of you to break the water's surface tension.
 
Experts: Author Steven Cassidy relates how the myth may have originated during the building of the Golden Gate Bridge, in which 12 workers fell from the structure. One worker survived, and it was suggested that he escaped injury due to his tool belt breaking the water first.
Cooper, from Cooper Cranes, hadn't heard the myth himself but said that others in his office had heard it, and he believed it to be a popular story.
 
Quotable Moments:
Adam to Buster: "Do you want to get hit in the head? You're going to anyway!"
Jamie: "Adam will really use any excuse to run around in his undies, I think."
 
Action/Results: The boys visit Mare Island Naval Shipyard, the site where they plan to drop Buster from a crane over a hundred and fifty feet in the air into the water below. Adam fits Buster with an accelerometer to measure the G Forces of his descent, and Jamie fits Buster with a guide wire so they can easily raise him once he's done his death dive. Jamie gets the thankless job of sitting at the top of the crane to prepare Buster for each drop, while Adam stays on terra firma to watch the poor dummy hit the water. On the first drop Buster loses one leg, which Adam goes fishing for but cannot find. On the second drop the other leg is broken right off, but is recovered. The accelerometer registered G Forces in the upper 200's, with and without the hammer breaking the water first, which illustrated that when you're falling towards water from a fair height you're pretty much done for no matter what. Buster takes some fair damage, losing pieces of his body and some packing foam. The boys call it a day, much to Jamie's relief (he couldn't wait to get off the crane), and declare the Hammer Jump myth busted.

- episode description by Amanda