Ask Adam Savage: Testing the Bulletproof Water Myth
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- Опубліковано 29 сер 2024
- Tested member Evan Currie wondered, "When you did the gunfire into water myth, I noted that the higher powered rifles actually penetrated less than lower powered ones, however they did it by expending all their energy much faster. I was curious if you guys ever considered testing whether the shockwave from something like a .50 BMG rifle might actually be deadly even if the bullet never reached the target?" Thank you, Evan! Here are Adam's thoughts on the matter.
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What happened to the Raptor?!? Why are you ignoring your subscribers and fans?
@@mementomori4972 can you explain what that is?
@@saygoodnighttoghosts There is/was an ongoing series where Adam builds a totally awesome and realistic veloceraptor costume. It was amazing. Some weeks ago, Tested took down all the videos and didn't bother to give any clarification whatsoever. Many suspect that it is a legal issue with the company that provided Adam with know how and technical solutions, but nobody really knows.
Since you're on the water subject Adam, what's mind blowing is a M107 .50 Cal sniper rifle can NOT shoot through 3 watermelons.....
The shockwave from a .50 Cal in water won't kill you, but it can blind you make you loose your hearing. Maybe permanent.
And on hand grenades, this is why you always drop two hand grenades into a tank, 1 in each direction.
The shotgun into the vertical tank obviously had an effect on the tank. Therefore you could extrapolate that to the .50 cal but you would still have to be fairly close. You could also consider the fish in a barrel item 😉. So at close range to the impact you might not feel too good, any real distance and you would be fine.
A lot of the issue seems to be supersonic entry into water where the natural qualities of the liquid cause a shock to the bullet's structure. Water cannot move out of the way fast enough and effectively forms a wall similar to a human entering water at high speed.
I think the reason the patron questions are so much better and in-depth than the one's Adam is used to getting from interviewers is that these are heavily dedicated fans that have watched every minute of footage Adam has been in. They (mostly) know exactly what's already been said publicly and don't need to bother re-asking the same 15 questions Adam always gets, they already have the answers to those.
I've watched a video on Sean Evans (Hot Ones Host and Interviewer) and it said he is the best interview of this generation precisely because of those questions that have never been asked of celebrities before.
And because they can pick through until they find whatever question is interesting. Or they could just make it up.
In other words, Adam Savage essentially gets to choose whatever question is asked. Or whoever produces the shell. As opposed to an interviewer.
Patron?
,,Goose got me loose
Gone off *Patron*
Money in my pocket
And I'm all up in the zone like
Ooh I'mma act a damn fool!
Ooh I'm 'bout to act a fool!"
(Three 6 Mafia)
The way Adam talks and shares his ideas this video sort of feels like a production meeting and I love it!
And he does it without ever using footage from the show. That would be easy, if not cheap to license the footage. But Adam manages to do it just fine. That is talent and skill.
@@LatitudeSky I'm pretty sure discovery would allow him to use it for free tbh
I never cease to be amazed by how eager you are in these videos and the level of detail you put into them. I would not blame you AT ALL if one day you said, "look, Mythbusters ended 5 years ago, I've done many other things in my life and I'm ready to put this behind me, so I won't be talking about it anymore." You'd be fully within your rights to do so, yet you wade into these Q&A sessions with the glee of a child on Christmas morning and provide such detail in your answers. You owe your fans nothing and you continue to give us so much. You are a true class act sir and I thank you for continuing to pour so much of yourself into supporting your fans. Much love and respect to you.
I feel if he had unlimited funding and time hed never let mythbusters end
The biggest compliment Adam can pay you is to be stumped on a question you asked him. :)
It seems that Adam answers questions with more questions than answers.
@@nathannettik685 Such is life.
Not with the 50 cal, but they tested the bullet shockwave for fish in a barrel.
I absolutely love and respect the fact that he has the ability to think about it and try to give the best answer he can but still in the end say "I really dont know".
That is something that is usually very difficult for intelligent people to do
@@HariSeldon913 I was going to say the same thing. That episode was the first thing I thought of when Adam read the question.
Adam just strolling up to a swimming pool in the middle of the desert with an Anzio 20mm rifle and buster covered in shock stickers chained to the bottom would’ve been one hell off a finale to an episode.
Forget 20mm, get a Howitzer they use at ski resorts to purposefully set off avalanches before there are people on the slopes to set them off.
I am so mad it took me so long to find out you had a UA-cam channel. Mythbusters was my childhood and incredibly formative in my curiosity about every facet of life (especially explosions). Better late than never and glad I still have this brilliance in my life 😊
On the plus side, you now have hundreds (maybe thousands?) of hours of wonderful videos to watch digging through the archives.
You have backlog to work through :D
He also has a patrion. So these questions are sent by patrons :) (which I’m sure you’ve gathered) :) so cool, eh?
Man I loved the mythbusters and only discovered (no pun intended) this channel a couple weeks ago
Oh hey good to see you again! I'm glad spring has come again and you get to be around. I'm sure Hades will be happy to see you later, but I'm glad you're around right now.
@@ambiej123 That's super cool! Might have to consider joining up!
I imagine that a 16-inch shell from an Iowa-class battleship could produce a serious shockwave in water even if it didn't explode.
I think we're also talking about "within reason," lol. But obviously, I thought of the same question.
I don't remember the exact year, but I do remember when I lived in Galveston, Texas, that they sometimes tested Artillery pieces on the coast shooting out into the gulf of mexico on old ships and I remember talking to some of the soldiers who mentioned that there was fish floating up from as deep as 80ft from the shockwave from some of those 105mm and 155mm rounds from the M1119A3 and M777A2 artillery pieces respectively. I've also heard the same about some of the torpedo's from submarines. I would imagine it would be the same with the 16" Shell from the Iowa-Class Battleships as well.
@@soulessshadow5356 To be fair fish are a lot more susceptible to damage from shockwaves. They are not a great medium to represent humans.
If that wasn't big enough the ww2 Germans had a 31 inch
@@soulessshadow5356 I would guess the fish were being killed by the shockwave from the explosive charge carried in the shell or torpedo, and not just the shockwave caused by the shell or torpedo through the water.
There’s a reason 4 hour podcasts and streaming are growing. This is the type of content everyone truly enjoys and appreciates, raw “content” and authenticity. Love the whole tested thing, keep killin it Adam
Eh, there is something to be said for well-edited content too. Obviously edits in post allow for effects not possible in real time. And they don't have to be CGI/green-screen effects or impossible stunts, it can be as simple as overlaying a joke or reaction meme, which is also something we can relate to regardless of originality or lack of replication in real time.
Uncut stream footage requires hours of review to find a two-minute joke. Watching streams live requires a free schedule that is unrealistic for working adults and families.
There's room for both kinds of entertainment to exist and be valid for their respective audiences.
I would think that "Fish in a Barrel" might be an example of how they already tested a form of shock waves and the damage that occurs when rounds impact water.
I think the tricky part is that a barrel is small, and the water in it has a pretty small mass and volume for the impact to spread over. A swimming pool, lake, ocean etc would have a much larger volume+mass so it seems like it could dissipate the energy a lot easier.
Did they ever explain why they tried shooting a living fish in a barrel? Because I always thought that saying referred to recently caught (and dead) fish somebody was selling or shipping in a barrel, not a singular living fish that someone put in a barrel turned aquarium.
Hell, even if the fish were alive (for true fresh fish) in a weird aquarium barrel, there'd probably be so many fish so tightly packed, that you could fire a gun and hit at least one fish.
It'd also be pretty easy to shoot a bunch of dead fish.
I suppose they wouldn't have had a myth to test or film if they had just shot a bunch of dead fish in a barrel, but that's a mistake of whoever decided to pick the myth in the first place.
Thats what I was thinking, I thought at the end they thought that "shooting fish in a barrel" was suposta be easy, because the shock wave kills the fish no matter where it is in the barrel
I always thought that saying referred to there being so many fish in a small barrel, that no matter where you shoot you're likely to hit a fish, not that the shockwave would bounce off the small container in a concentrated fashion enough to kill the fish, lol.
I love how Adam smiles while talking about the mechanisms for how bullets are designed to shred as much of our squishy watery meat sacks as possible.
I read it as an awkward smile, not of some glee. I don't think Adam cares very much either for the destructive power of firearms against human beings.
What is wrong with you?
Was the smile of someone who went way far down a rabbit hole and is trying to summarize his experience in a way that makes sense to normal people.
@Anarchy Antz Perhaps it is from my many years of military service but I was perplexed by why Adam was calling it gruesome and being so hesitant.
It's not like people think bullets are designed to simply tickle you. Their function is to wound, kill or otherwise damage the target as effectively and efficiently as possible, pure and simple.
@@pauld6967 I thought they were just designed to kill you, end of, at least that is my understanding of them.
The description of humans as "ugly bags of mostly water" was lifted from Alan Dean Foster's book "Nor Crystal Tears" from 1982. Working it into a NextGen episode solidified it's entry into pop-culture.
Who said it? Watched plenty of Trek, from TOS original airings when I was 11, but don't have a Trekkers memory for these details.
@@donjones4719 I’d like to know the episode as well.
It was the enterprise computer after being infected with nanites by Wesley crusher. I think it’s season 2 ep 1
If you want to baffle any character guessing app, Ryozenzuzex will do it for you.
@@donjones4719 It was a Star Trek The Next Generation episode called "Home Soil" (season 1 episode 18). An inorganic crystal lifeform said it. Great episode.
It would be great if Adam started testing some of the audience's questions in his workshop
YEEEES!!
That takes a large budget.
Tested!
This channel began with Norm and a couple of other guys testing and reviewing the latest game technology. They brought in Adam Savage and it kind of became "Adam Savage's Cave show"
Adam speaks of how important it was to have a back and forth and tear each other's ideas apart. And also talks about how they'll probably not work together again.
Not saying he couldn't do it alone... but it wouldn't be the same.
Adam: "Thank you so much for a delightful question."
Me: Still thinking about the "coupling". 😨😨😨
Nobody tell this guy about RIP self defence rounds.
These are the times Adam probably wishes he still had the show so Discovery would pay to test this sort of curiosity he has about something
He currently has Savage Builds with Discovery. Maybe we will see this revisited.
do you need a shock to generate a shockwave? blast vs impact
The thought of Adam aiming a cannon at a kiddie pool in the middle of the desert is really delightful.
Hey Adam! I shoot long range and do contracted varmint hunting with custom rifles I put together myself. I've spent A LOT of time and money testing and validating ballistic data and the performance of bullets.
The main thing you're referring to, when the bullet enters a soft medium, is called terminal performance: what the bullet does when after it leaves the barrel and enters the target. Bullets are created and designed to do many different things for many different applications-- there is no "one size fits all". For example, when varmint hunting it is ideal to have a smaller diameter bullet traveling as fast as possible with a construction consisting of a very thin copper jacket over a lead core-- typically has a hollow point as well. This is so that the bullet is more frangible and dumps as much energy as it can into the target with little to no pass through. The same applies to self defense ammunition for handguns, however they are typically designed to be heavier than normal and open up once they pass through external material i.e. heavy winter jacket, windshield glass, fibrous materials. Most bullets intended to be used to take lives rely on hydrostatic shock to disrupt the nervous/ blood system and essentially "shut off" the animal/ being from the inside out, rather than take part of you with it. That being said, some ammunition designed for killing/ hunting is designed to stay intact and pass through, but the intended result is still to disrupt the inside through hydrostatic shock. The removal of tissue is just a result of the bullet retaining its weight and speed due to a list of variables in its design and construction. The results of fast traveling, light and frangible bullets is devastating and near-instant death for any intended target on the opposite end. This is just looking at two particular designs, but they are the most common in application.
As for shockwaves around bullets, the pressure they create in the air is not great enough to react on the air as it would in a true fluid medium. You've tested explosions using pressure caps to indicate whether or not the pressure cone can potentially harm or kill a human and, correct me if I'm wrong, but it usually took quite a substantial amount of force to produce those results. If bullets could kill without hitting a live target then there would probably be a lot more reported deaths from war.
Anyways, I've always loved your content, both on television and the internet. I also enjoy being able to share my hobbies and the niche part of my world with others. I wish you the best and stay safe!!
A lot of what Adam said about bullets really depends on the projectile itself. So many different bullet construction methods all for different things. Also, the shooting under water scene from Saving Private Ryan may be more possible than the Mythbusters showed. Considering those bunkers were several hundred yards away from the water, the 8mm mauser round may have lost enough speed to become lethal in water.
Again, so many variables to test bullets in water.
Shock waves form when something is moving faster than the speed of sound in a medium. Because the speed of sound in water is ~5000 ft/sec, and the range of bullet speeds I found when looking was ~1000-4000 ft/sec, I don't think a bullet makes a shock wave in water. A quick look confirms that discarding sabot antitank rounds do move in the 1400-1800 m/sec range, so I guess they would make a shock wave in water.
"we would find the biggest projectile anyone would give us access to..." I picture Old Moses firing into a swimming pool. And naturally some "cannonball" puns.
Love hearing Adams perspective from the show. Thank you Adam
I could listen to Adam tell stories and answer questions for hours.
Wait hold on that's exactly what I've been doing...
This myth is home to my favorite Adam Savage quote: "Hopefully we'll be out before the pool fully drains" (as the punchline to a joke as they're readying to fire the .50cal)
"This kills you, this kills you and everyone else in the room"
I think that with the exception of hollow points and similar items, the bullet is not designed to fragment in the body/water. It was designed to be cheap, easy to produce, not damage the gun, and keep energy through the air after being fired. The fragmentation is a side effect of the softness of lead. Perhaps a "good" side effect but I doubt that hundreds of years ago when the first firearms were made in bulk they did tests to see how well they would fragment. Great video otherswise!
It's important to note that the bullets described (hollow point) are the type for use on soft targets, like flesh.
There's also armor piercing, which is designed to couple with whatever it travels through as little as possible. It's for use on hard targets, like armor.
This myth is the one that stuck with me the most. I always remember that episode when I see a scene in a movie or game where you are underwater and getting shot at.
John Wick does this right. He uses the water to shield himself, then gets up close to the person as they reload, using point-blank shots instead of long range.
The scene in Saving Private Ryan where the D-Day landing craft are being shot at from the cliffs is accurate....according to the guys who were there. The bullets CAN travel 10-15ft easily through water with enough power to hurt you very badly. Mythbusters did everyone a disservice with their experiment because of a couple things they got wrong. First is impact velocity...point blank at 45 degrees into water isn't nearly the same as 300+yds away because the longer range impacts will be much slower. M80 ball (7.62 Nato) was found to penetrate sandbags optimally at 200 yards.....closer yielded less depth because the projectiles broke up where at 200 yds they did not.
The other thing they really blew was the projectile composition.....all the projectiles being fired by the Germans at the landing craft were steel cored along with steel jacketed. The Mythbuster 50 BMG was gilding metal jacket and soft lead core...hence them finding only shreds after firing. With proper military steel core and steel jackets along with correct impact velocity sub 2000 fps they'd have been bouncing them off of the pool bottom...or worse.
Thanks for continuing to solicit questions from viewers. Great work.
I dont believe itd kill you even with really favorable conditions, and heres my logic: Equal and opposite force. The shooter is actually being hit with the same force as the bullet they are firing, its just released in all different directions (In the kick of the gun, or where the gasses can be released after theyve done their job etc) so its obviously not nearly as lethal.
When the bullet hits the water, and assuming it slows in a similar distance to it accelerating up to speed, the shock wave is also being distributed in all different directions, in fact given its surrounded by the substance Id guess it was doing it far more efficiently than a gun ever could so itd be less lethal than firing the gun in the first place.
(This could go some way towards guessing when it could be lethal, with say a tank round thatd rip a human being apart if they tried to manually fire it with the force a tank can, thatd presumably output a shock wave capable of killing a human in the water on the other end.)
-
Of course, this is just my hypothesis, itd probably be quite entertaining for someone to test.
Makes a lot of sense. And it makes me agree that it likely wouldn't kill you, but I think it could at least deal some damage. Blown eardrums perhaps at least.
My reasoning coming mostly from the "fish in a barrel" episode where they proved that the shockwave itself killed basically EVERYTHING in the barrels
One of my favorites. The scene of that vertical aquarium/water container breaking with the shotgun is classic.
Still wondering how on earth someone said "sure you can use our swimming pool " lol
I think it was being resurfaced anyways so they didnt care very much if it put a hole in the bottom
I suspect they didn't know exactly what was going to be happening at the pool.
@@claudeworks2637
That wouldn't be possible, given all the insurance and legality that went into these myths.
Adam said regarding another question awhile back: "We tried to always leave the place better than we found it." So really what's the worst case, Mythbusters puts hole in your pool and has to pay to fix it? That's not a horrible deal even if the pool is fairly new. If it's an older pool, it's a great deal.
The standard m67 hand grenade is given an "effective" range of 15 meters for the shrapnel and 5 meters for the lethal range to guarantee damage. As you guys tested, thats totally dependent on if you're standing up straight or prone when it goes off and whether cover is available. There are also concussion grenades that rely wholly on blast strength that work well in close quarters where every corner diminishes their effectiveness. There's also thermobaric weapons, like certain warheads available for hellfire missiles or much more dramatically with the MOAB fuel-air bomb.
DemolitionRanch we need a melon, a coconut and a large container of water.
And a cannon ball with suitable cannon !
Actually, a lot could be learned from simply using/suspending zip-lock bags (filled w/food coloring for dramatic effect) inside the "large container of water". If the shockwaves are strong enough to rupture the bags (from whichever caliber) then DR could ramp up the experiment by adding food items w/varying levels of flesh densities... such as peaches, pears, apples, etc... then (if the experiment warrants) move up to increasingly thicker/harder items such as oranges, grapefruits, melons and coconuts.
Matt (Demolitionranch) did test this 4 years ago. No damage from near miss. ua-cam.com/video/YrHpe5Z93wM/v-deo.html
@@ianc4901 - lmao
@@tallokie67 Not quite the same, but a good indication that shockwaves doesn't behave like they do in the comics...
Oh the difference? This was done in air and the bullet was not disintegrating. The test suggested above would be with the bags of food coloring, fruit or whatever submerged in water. What the tests done by Myth Busters showed was that the moment the .50 BMG bullet hit the water it started to disintegrate and dumped almost all of it's power within a few feet of entering the water. This transfer of energy should cause a substantial shockwave in the water, that we can feel quite certain about, but just how would that affect someone in the water, and how far would it be noticeable?
So it's in the same category as the test linked to, but not quite the same.
Oh and note that in the Myth Busters test the slower bullets such as a 9mm would travel father through the water and lose energy slower than the .50 BMG. I don't remember the details as it's been a very long time since I watched that episode but I think they also tested 7.62 and 5.56 mm, and as I remember it (though it should be noted that my memory has become very unreliable lately) the 5.56 mm also lost all of it's energy very quickly, though as it is such a small and light bullet it doesn't have anywhere near as much energy to dump as the .50 BMG.
All in all I think it would be an easy and quick test for Matt to do if he is interesting. At best he gets to splash gallons of water laced with fake blood and fragments of ruptured coconut shell everywhere. At worst the water tank will disintegrate while the plastic bags with fake blood hangs there totally untouched. That would make for a pretty short video, but not any worse than say the cut resistant gloves tested for bullet resistance. That was the one where the first gun tested, a .22 LR pistol or rifle, punched right through the entire stack of cut resistant gloves he had bought. One shot and the video was basically over...
I remember this episode and thinking it had more to do with the surface tension of the water. You know how you can put you hand in water with little resistance, but if you slap the water, it acts more solid. Thus the more force the bullets had behind them, the more solid the water acted. this certainly lines up with the results achieved. It would have been nice to try firing 2 bullets rapidly, at the same spot , and see if the second bullet faired better than the first.
Yup. Going faster enough, water can feel like concrete. Just ask anyone who has belly or back flopped from a high distance, lol.
Damn it...I wish there was a universe were the show was revived with you and Jamie and crew back at it. These videos get me pumped for more Mythbusters. Love what you're doing now Adam!
Adam, expansion of the round in the water causing the bullet destruction is actually secondary to the fact that the rifle rounds are all well into the supersonic regime and the shotgun/handgun rounds are transonic to subsonic. The incompressibility of water causes massive loads on the bullet for which, it was not designed nor can it withstand. That, combined with your angle (30 deg I recall) causing a momentary asymmetrical load, I believe caused the majority of the damage.
Adam should make Jabba’s door droid, that was also in the Mandalorian. Would be an interesting build.
demolition ranch on youtube did a video showing a tank blowing a refrigerator apart from the pressure that comes from the muzzle of the barrel so not the tank shooting the refrigerator but it just sitting next to the barrel as it goes off blows it to pieces. thats always my favorite part about watching large rifles being shot, the concussion from the barrel an how it kicks everything around the gun up from the pressure.
I think that Fish in a Barrell shows that it can, but there's still the question of how close, and what kind of damage in our larger bodies
Yeah, I was waiting for him to mention that. Also, "This kills you. This kills you and everyone else in the room"
For the record, the 'bullets hitting water' episode is probably my favourite episode out of all of them. It's the one that stood out in my mind, and I've carried that one with me since. As a game master, (D&D, etc), that altered the way I dealt with bullets and water in my games.
Anecdote. Remember the myth where you sailed down a slide and through a inner tube in the lake? I tried something like that in a swimming pool. Tiny little floating ring, me jumping off a diving board feet-first, aiming for it. I figured I'd drag it under, and it'd shift to one side and we'd be good. Instead... I wound up right in the middle, perfectly, and it stretched all the way up to my waist. I popped it, but ... heh, I was wearing a kid's sized plastic inner tube around my waist, and had to pull it off, which was difficult. :D
Wait, but didn't they explore the shock wave effect when testing "shooting fish in a barrel"? I specifically remember they decided that they did not need to target a fish specifically and the shock wave from a randomly directed bullet tore several of the fish apart.
Yes, I was waiting for him to bring this myth up!
Yes but fish are a poor comparison to make with humans. Fish are way more susceptible to shockwaves than humans are
I'm not really convinced though, part of the reason for the fish in a barrel thing is the barrel. It helps to contain the shockwave, and people are more robust than fish.
Under water, the issues with shockwaves will be when the shockwave travels from the water, into your body and then transitions to the air in your lungs. It's the water to air transition that is dangerous, and so underwater shockwave injuries usually result in serious lung injuries.
I really don't know how this would go. A stick of dynamite the size of a 50bmg round would definitely be dangerous to be near under water. But the bullet doesn't carry all the explosive energy that is available in the propellant, and the deceleration in water would be fast, but not as fast as a detonation, so the shockwave shouldn't be that sharp.
I'd think the shockwave is likely dangerous in the immediate area of impact, but more maybe 50-100cm it would surely be far less dangerous.
I've been rewatching the episodes on Hulu and I just finished this episode last night! Nice timing!
Seeing Grant join the show in this and the previous episode is so wonderfully Bitter Sweet
Water(liquids) is not compressible, that's how hydraulics work. So a BIG boom in the water does make a lot of damage, but it takes a lot of energy. For bullets (e.g. 0.50 cal) there just isn't enough energy there,plus there are factors like the distance of travel ,even the shape of the bullet that one has to consider. I don't think that bullets fired in the water (passing relatively near you) can do any damage.(Sorry for any grammar mistakes English is not my first language)
A reminder that the *total force* imparted on the bullet as it leaves the barrel is exactly the same as the force imparted on the shooter. The bullet is normally just *incredibly* more efficient about *where* it applies all that force. A shockwave by it's nature of being generated and unfocused is not going to have anywhere near the localised amount of pressure as the tip of a bullet
I am watching that episode right now. It still cracks me up when you and Jamie blew out the fish take you first made.
That was a great and very real explanation on why the bullet is made the way it is. A friend of mine who served as Marine explained to me this fact and said “Guns were not created to hurt, they were created to kill”.
I believe Mark Rober did a video about how a grenade was more deadly in water. I don't recall all the science behind it, but it could be applicable to this topic.
Water is a non-compressible fluid. If you were patrolling the harbor in the Navy, concussive grenades were part of the kit issued - would ruin a diver's day pretty quick. I figure the military also has the option of explosive rounds too, so the hiding in water would only apply to avoiding lighter arms.
Re: Grenades, while the square-cube law of shockwave propagation will make the explosive overburst from a grenade unlikely to kill someone from a surprisingly small distance, _shrapnel can be lethal at considerably farther distance._ It's not reliably so, but shrapnel from a grenade - even a high explosive grenade (to say nothing of a frag grenade which is designed to do this) can kill someone at surprisingly far distances, and can wound at those distances too.
The best protection from a grenade is to be absolutely nowhere near it when it goes off. Failing that, being prone behind hard cover, or at least prone.
There's a scene in John Wick 3 where he pulls a "baddie" into a small swimming pool, swims to the far side to evade incoming fire from underwater, then swims back up to the baddie and shoots him point blank in the head
was looking for this comment, cheers
Different projectiles are designed for different purposes- some are designed for penetration, some are designed for expansion and thus will have limited penetration. No .50BMG projectiles are designed for expansion. The limiting factor in high speed bullets penetrating water is do they expand or not expand. In the show the .50BMG fired into the water not only expanded, they fragmented, which limited their penetration. To disprove the scenes in Saving Private Ryan you would have to test the ammo used by the German army in their machine guns, and have it enter the water at reduced velocity after having traveled several hundred yards through air. If those projectiles could retain their shape after hitting the water, they could penetrate a reasonable depth.
I love seeing the absolute moment when the thought train goes from “well, that’s simple there’s ..” to “Oh. Wait.”
I think part of it is also the volume of water you're in at the time. The shotgun slugs they were using Fish in a Barrel blew out the container... which wasn't much bigger than a 55 gallon aquarium. But it didn't actually blow out the barrel which would have been a hundred gallons or so.
It has recently been determined that the sailors aboard the H.L. Hunley submarine were killed by the shockwave from the bomb they exploded to sink the ship they were attacking.
Underwater shockwaves can be very deadly.
Explosive shockwaves behave differently to impact shockwaves, and are generally more powerful.
And the crew was inside a metal air filled tube which would alter the effect, might concentrate it. Mythbusters should test this.
"Wind of shot" was one of the most common causes of death during the Napoleonic/great age of sail where people would die without having other injuries that would be fatal. It turned out to be the pressure wave of cannon shot passing sailors too close and causing internal injuries. I reckon you'd have to have a similar sized projectile to kill someone with the pressure wave in water.
Love waiting for that few seconds of silence while Adam is thinking, so I can hear the brilliance that follows 🤣
Is the shockwave question the same as that tested when looking at shockwaves in shooting fish in a barrel?
I don't remember the exact values they got from the G force stickers but it did 'kill the fish'
This is what I expected the video would talk about. I suspect a human's threshold for death is higher than the fish, though.
That barrel was also closer confines than the swimming pool. I think the energy being reflected back into the fish by the concave sides of the barrel had an effect on the fishies.
Demolition Ranch tested this. He shot a 50 cal right through opening in a house of cards and the cards never moved. No shockwave from a passing bullet.
The MythBusters tested shooting fish in a barrel, and found that the shockwave kills all the fish
The explosion-in-water point is absolutely correct. I read a book on U-boat actions off of the Carolinas in WWII. A rather unfortunate incident was a destroyer that had forced a U-boat to surrender, the crew being in the water, another U-boat being suspected nearby, and the destroyer not dropping life rafts before detonating another salvo of depth charges. Most of the surrendered submariners had collapsed lungs or other internal injuries due to the much stronger propagation of a shock wave through incompressible water. I would think the shock wave from a projectile like a naval 5-inch gun might kill within a few feet, but ordinary gunfire doesn't cause enough displacement in a large enough area to cause that kind of trauma.
Love that Wilton Bullet Vise over your shoulder.
Thanks, I keep looking at it to try and read the makers mark. It's a very fine looking vice
I think the term you were looking for was terminal ballistics or wound ballistics. As for the shockwave, there are some videos of hunters just barely missing the head of a deer or whatever they are hunting, and with the larger caliber hunting rounds you do see the animal die. Either from the pressure wave passing closely, or the vacuum having some sort of effect, they do die. Some military stories are also passed around with shooters firing 50BMG, 338 Lapua, or other very high powered rounds, have had the same effect. Of course we are talking about millimeters of length from a hit to a miss for this to occur I believe.
"is there a _projectile_ " opens up a lot of things like the Rods From God could be called projectiles and those have kinetic energy comparable to nukes
The problem with the concept of Rods From God is that in order to get them into space you need to expend much MORE than the energy of a nuke, which makes them beyond impractical to actually create.
@@Chomuggaacapri a rocket achieving escape velocity expends more energy than a nuke? I suppose... if you’re including dirty bombs and the like
@@Chomuggaacapri never said it was a good idea, just that "any projectile" is a pretty broad category
@@Chomuggaacapri Or, ideally, you find the material on an asteroid or something similar and construct them already out of the gravity well.
@@user-sx4yu3nw4j oh no no no not a rocket. The concept of a Rod From God is a giant metal rod orbiting in space, and getting a rod big enough to have the destructive impact of a nuke up into space takes more energy than just using a nuke to blow something up the normal way, because its all gravitational potential energy rather than nuclear fission energy stored in the material itself.
I think this is a perfect opportunity for a collab between Tested and a bunch of maker/educational channels.
I’m thinking Smarter Every Day, Veritasium and others for the science, Simone Giertz and Mark Rober for engineering and building, Slo Mo Guys for some high speed, and Tom Scott, for obvious reasons, etc . . .
A special ‘Mythbusters’ UA-cam collaboration to test the lethality of shockwaves from various firearms underwater, t’would be awesome.
you could check the data from "shooting fish in a barrel"
Immediately thought about the same thing. I’m surprised he didn’t mention it. But, he’s done however many hundreds of myths, so I’m not surprised
@@zacharycampbell1002 The difference is that they didn't use a gun that had the bullet explode upon entry to get that data. Only the lower velocity rounds they knew would survive impact.
Adam, there are some things you guys did not take into consideration when testing the high powered rifles in the pool, mainly, that a great deal of the penetration into water depends on a couple of things. The construction of the bullet is one. The military uses full metal jacketed bullets, which do not come apart as easily as hunting type bullets, which readily expand in water and thus slow down quickly and do not penetrate as far. However, another thing is the distance from the firearm to the surface of the water. While it's a bit of a deeper dive into ballistics than most are willing to take, the fact is that most bullets fired from rifles are unstable when they first leave the barrel. At a range of 100 to around 125 yards they "go to sleep" or become much more stable, like a top that wobbles when it first comes off the string, and then settles down and becomes stable for a while (until it again becomes unstable due to slowing down). Thus, a bullet fired from a longer distance will penetrate much deeper into water (such as bullets fired from an airplane) before becoming unstable and breaking up. Honestly, I have no idea how much deeper something like a 50 BMG would penetrate into water if fired from a distance, but I would guess it's probably deeper than the average joe could dive if he started when he heard the plane's engine or worse, it's guns firing! In other words, if you're in the water and someone is shooting at you using military ammo, from a high bridge more than 100 or so yards from the surface of the water, you're probably toast!
Cheers,
crkckr
Awesome trek reference!
To give another good example of what Savage was talking about, on a youtube channel called "Tod's workshop" (which has some really intresting stuff) Tod collabed with another guy from the US to test a witness report he had heard from warzone refugees. It went, that rebels/soldiers/terrorists sometimes used bows to get past sandbagwalls. So Tod and the other guy build up first one sandbag, then two bags (one behind the other). The guy from the US tested all sorts of firearms, from historic rifles, to pistols like dessert eagles, to modern assault rifles, up to high powered sniper rifles. Tod used a couple of different bows. Almost all firearms were stopped by a single sandbag, all of them were stopped by two. All bows cleared at least one sandbag, a longbow easily cleared two.
Thats basically the difference between kinetic energy and momentum. The bullets travel so fast, that the sand has not time to move out of the way, so it acts like a solid wall. Arrows on the other hand move a lot slower, but also (especially in the case of a longbow) carry a lot of kinetic energy. So when they hit, they push the sand out of the way instead of trying to break through it. And now i wonder if a bow would do better than a gun when trying to hit a target under water. Actually i think Tod has a video on that too 🙂
Ideally the bullet never leaves the person and expends all it’s energy in it’s target. Also, the net energy of a bullet is extremely small in comparison to explosives immersed. It’s just not going to create enough of a shockwave.
it splashed the sealing of the pond they eventually tested it in, so some shockwave, clearly, was present. Probably not deep enough, but still.
@@yearswriter They busted their first test tank using a shot gun, I'm not sure whether that says more about the shock wave or about the build quality though.
There is a distinction between stopping power and penetrating power, armor piercing rounds vs soft deforming rounds let alone the myriad of other bullet and slug designs. I'm sure there could be a hand crafted round made to impact water and penetrate farther than a pistol caliber.
In water, the volume of the shock wave is expanding as a cube of the distance. Hence, the pressure is dissipating at the same rate. You need to be really close to feel the pain.
This doesn’t involve water, but it’s still interesting as all heck. There’s an older guy who is a hunter here on UA-cam and a while back, he posted a video about what his .50 cal would do to a deer. So he sets up his camera, waits around and as the deer is standing head-on, the guy decides on a head shot. He shoots, the deer goes down and he goes to check on the animal, expecting the head to pretty much be vaporized. But to his surprise, not only was the head intact, but he could find no entrance wound. The only sign of trauma was blood coming from the eyes, ears, and nose/mouth. He cues up the slow motion replay and to his and everyone else’s surprise, the bullet didn’t even hit the deer! The shockwave was so great that from an inch or two away, the brain of the deer was essentially scrambled inside the skull.
Very cool video. I recommend searching for it. It’s very easy to find, as it’s been very popular.
Did they ever test a subsonic round for this myth, cause I'm curious how well that'd work
I'm a bit too lazy to "check the tape" myself at the moment but their test is available on youtube, just search "Mythbusters Bullet Proof Water Myth".
IIRC I don't think they tested a subsonic round specifically but I think they tested an old musket and found it was the only one that could kill you directly... but don't quote me on that.
If I remember correctly they tested a slug from a shotgun, which did penetrate quite a lot. You want to have slow, heavy bullets that do not deform much. Pretty much like that spring-driven harpoons, wich have more reach under water than any of the tested guns in that myth.
@@Fley1965 The Russians actually made bullets that could be fired underwater. Each one was a finned dart, with...I think a cordite charge? Some kinda explosive that just created gas, not fire/smoke. Basically, they just made tiny harpoon guns, and fired them off rapidly from a magazine. Meant for frogmen units.
@@erinfinn2273 I did not know that, but it sounds reasonable. Not too fast, but heavier than a bullet, probably.
I think that most of these questions can be answered by one simple fact: speed of sound in water is something just under 1.5 km/s, while bullets do at most 1.2 km/s (1 for 50 cal, 0.4-ish for 9 luger and 1.2 for several weird Polish and German 8mm animaterial guns from WW2). This is interesting and important because of two things. First is that geometry of rifle bullets is made for supersonic speed and is less effective when is the bullet subsonic, while pistol bullets use to be modelled after their subsonic predecessors since they go much slower and aren't used at such distances that it would matter. And second is that bullet is just way too slow to create actual strong shockwave since even when it's going to bleed a lot of energy it's going to do that in a relatively long period of time.
Fish in a Barrel shockwave you did...
I believe that a naval gun shell exploding near the hull of a ship, or an air-dropped bomb, can do a lot of damage to a hull. But that's because the high-explosive is pushing outwards a huge amount of water relative to the volume of a .50 cal bullet. However, the force of water against the hull of a ship is different from a shock wave from a bullet entering water.
I tested something like the original myth as a kid with a bee bee gun and a pot of water. I expected the bee bee to stop, but that pot had a very nice bee bee dent in the bottom.
Lower mass and BBs aren't designed to deform the way the slug from a rifle or pistol does. BBs are typically made from a harder metal than a bonded copper jacketed lead core bullet so the slower velocity plus the harder metal would cause less of an energy release
@@SentinelGhost does it have anything to do with a smaller surface area piercing the water as well? I think I tried this based on something I had seen on TV, someone shooting a revolver into a bucket or something. I can’t remember anymore I was like 12, so it’s been nearly 30 years. I ask about the surface area because I assume that has something to do with larger bullets slowing down, that and mass. I don’t recall this episode of myth busters so I don’t remember all the conclusions.
@@bobrudolph5161 @Bob Rudolph well I cant be 100% sure but I will tell you that they tested a number of firearms and calibers on the show and almost all of them broke up.
Mind you that most pistols slugs are actually larger and heavier than rifle slugs and have more surface area (weird to think about if you dont know much about guns but its true) rifles just have larger cartridges over all and fire at a much higher velocity.
I believe it is mostly about velocity. I believe they aslo tested a musket and that was one of the few that didn't immediately break up (blackpowder muskets fire a much larger ball but at much lower velocities)
Think of it like if you jumped into a pool from a diving board. You would be just fine and likely even be able to touch the bottom of a pool.
Now imagine getting dropped (gruesome I know) out of a plane and hitting the water at terminal velocity. There really wouldn't be much difference from hitting solid ground and the body wouldn't hold up so well. The composition of the body is the same in both scenarios but the speed difference causes a greater release of energy in the second one. Einstein's old "energy = mass × velocity" equation in action
@@SentinelGhost That makes sense, and yeah... I can imagine a .45 slug being more likely to break up versus a longer skinner 556 projectile. I learned how to shoot at a very young age, grew up in a house with dozens of firearms. Dad was an avid gun enthusiast, Nam vet.
@@SentinelGhost it does surprise me a bit about the musket ball since it isn’t jacketed, even at the lower velocity I wouldn’t think it would fair well. 🤔
I think you could look at hydrostatic shock created by bullets passing through flesh or ballistic gel to see how dangerous (or not) bullet shockwaves can be. For most rifle rounds, there's a 3-4" radius around a primary wound channel that's heavily damaged by hydrostatic shock which is in fact just shockwave propagation. AM rounds like .50 cal or 12.7mm tend to have a shock channel of around 6-8" in radius, so that's about the expected range for shockwave trauma in water. In the first few inches it might be enough to seriously injure someone if it was in VERY close proximity to the head, but without already existing trauma I doubt it would seriously injure anywhere else on the body due to boundary losses.
"Ugly giant bags of mostly water" :D
ST: TNG S01E18.. 'Home Soil'
"A bigger gun"
I just imagine the thought of poor buster suspended in a giant plexiglass fish tank covered in those shock measuring stickers about to get his head rattled by the near miss of a howitzer shell.
The intent of a bullet is NOT pass through, and not to "couple", but expend all of the energy in you.
In the sense Adam used it, “couple” means to combine. I think that’s a pretty fair way to describe what a good bullet does when it hits a meat target that doesn’t get too gruesome. The bad bullet is the one that doesn’t couple as completely because, as you said, that is energy not imparted into the target
It expends its energy by coupling strongly with you. That's kinematics at play!
Expending all the energy *IS* coupling. Coupling is linking, but not combining, like rifling grooves couple to a bullet to impart spin without trying to combine or affix to it.
As an indie dev working on realistic shooters, stuff like this is really useful information, thanks for you work man!
"This is horrifyingly gruesome, this is the science of bullets!" - I really wish more people understood and respected this
Terminal ballistics is much more complicated than that. Military rounds and civilian rounds "function" differently. Under the "laws of war" you are supposed to be wounding. In theory an injured soldier also takes a second soldier off the battlefield. So military rounds are "through and through". Civilian rounds are meant to stop the target, be it an elk or an attacker. So they attempt to transfer as much energy into the target. Expanding bullets do a good job of this. The reason the .50 BMG stopped so suddenly is because it used a lot of energy translating its spin to move a vast amount (the pool) out of the way. The more acute the angle of entry the more energy a high velocity (think 1000 m/s) round uses.
Like I said, it's very complex. New bullets are designed using CFD for their best effect.
Mark Rober covered the grenade in water thing, and it transmits the force to you big time...
But those are explosive devices versus otherwise quickly moving solid objects. Bullets do not create their energy to travel, they merely impart what they have been given to another object. By comparison, ammunition charges are vastly inferior to the charge of C4 found in modern hand grenades. It's not just the size, but type of charge being used.
@@transtubular I'm not really sure what we're disagreeing on here? A round of ammunition is in fact an explosive device. It functions very similarly to a grenade in that an chemical reaction produces rapidly expanding gas, which imparts energy to a projectile. Imagine a grenade exploding above water. I think the issue is that a grenade in the water will more efficiently impart energy into the water than a bullet, whose explosion happens out of the water.
All the more reason Mythbusters needs a proper revival. So many new myths to test and old ones to revisit.
HE grenades are specifically "offensive" grenades since you can throw them while advancing on a position, and the pressure wave won't hurt you at all. Fragmentation grenades are classed by the US military as "defensive" grenades, since their shrapnel will travel FAR further at lethal velocities than you can throw it. When it training, you basically stand behind a waist high berm, chuck it, and go prone or duck right away
This myth always bugged me because I thought the reason the hero jumped into the water was because of the refraction of light. The bad guy is now shooting at a target that's just not where he's aiming. Of course, that begs the question of whether bullets go through a similar refraction because of their percussive force on the surface of the water. I can't recall whether you addressed that in the episode, though; it's been one or two years or so by now.
Bullets would ‘refract’ when hitting the water, but that refraction and change of course takes a lot of the energy out of the projectile.
It wouldn't matter either way though. It's the impact with the surface of the water that matters.
@@Richard_Nickerson I'm aware of that, but I'm wondering whether the bullet reaches its intended target at all or whether the refraction of light is so different from the refraction of the bullet's path that it doesn't hit the target in the first place. If one refracts more, then at a certain distance underwater they're basically firing at their target's projection instead of at the actual person.
Bullets obviously have a lot more mass than light, of course go a lot slower than light, and I suppose they have a flatter surface area as well, but I don't know how that would all affect the angle of refraction.
When I was super little and saw an action movie (yes, that I wasn't old enough to see) where the hero dove underwater, I thought it was really clever because I remembered how my bathwater made things look like they were in another place entirely. To me, that was the entire reason for the dive, so I was surprised when the myth was testing whether the water would take the energy out of the bullets. I was also fairly surprised at the result, but was left wondering about the refraction!
but here the thing if the bullet misses you and hits water with you next to it and can still kill you.. then technically those are worst chances to live then just standing on dry ground. He's right about pressure dispersing differently in water than through air. I thought I remember seeing or reading somewhere that pressure waves from explosions are more effective in water. Even if you had to be right next to it, that is still pretty significant as being just next to it on dry land would be enough to survive.
I love Adam but ngl its a little disturbing to hear him talk about bullets mechanically coupling with humans while he has that smile on his face that he gets when he's explaining something he's fascinated with.
I don’t remember where, but I have a memory of this being tested in air. They were testing whether the shockwave of a .50BMG would essentially tear limbs off. The test was very simple: the shot a round through a house of cards and they didn’t even move.
How this would translate to water, I have no idea.
In the "Shooting fish in a barrel" myth, they investigated the shockwaves a little. They noted that you don't have to hit the fish, the shockwave will kill the fish anyway. Since the human body is mostly water we take a lot more damage frome shockwaves underwater compared to shockwaves through air.
Mark Rober has a UA-cam video up about whether or not you’re safer diving away from a grenade on the ground or underwater… you’re safer on the ground. The shockwave of a grenade underwater is deadly at a shocking distance
I had always thought that the copper jacketing on the bullets contributed to them splitting apart on impact while a solid lead bullet (like the musket ball) would be less likely to do so.
Another reason a pistol round might travel further under water than those of a machine gun is that their shape appears to be more hydrodynamicly efficient. Pistol rounds are relatively blunt which is somewhat similar to objects designed to travel fast underwater such as a torpedo. Rifle round are more pointy and may therefore not work as well.
Over 20 years ago my friend's father took me to learn how to shoot a rifle. He have me a speech of how it is the water in our bodies that make bullets so effective. He then proceeded to shoot an empty pop (soda) can ... and I was so embarrassed for him, as he had clearly missed it. The can didn't move the slightest. Upon closer inspection I then got to see the hole...and the bigger hole on the back side ... through the can. The full can, when he shot it, exploded. It was a powerful experience.
"Ugly bags of mostly water" - YAY! also one of my favorite lines in the Star Trek universe - TNG specifically, when they find those crystal entities.
Season 1 Episode 18
You'll probably cover some/all of this in your quick answer, but I paused to get my thoughts out just to see how they compare.
1: the shock wave cannot carry more energy than the bullet itself, so at the very most it's going to have 100% of the bullet's kinetic energy. This will be at the moment the bullet comes to a stop, provided the bullet traveling through the water interferes constructively with the shock wave propagation and that no energy is lost to heat or other losses during the time it takes for the bullet to stop. Given that the bullet will gradually slow instead of instantly stopping, it cannot 100% constructively contribute to the shock wave. Given that energy transfer always has inefficiencies, there will be losses.
2: However, water's incompressibility would help it retain most of the energy that was transferred once the transfer happens, ignoring energy absorption from other material in the area affected. This is why underwater explosions or earthquakes can cause devastation much further from the epicenter than similar events in air.
3: This energy will be spread out over the "surface" of the shock wave, though, and since a sphere's surface area increases as a function of the square of the radius, the energy it could impart to a human-sized target will be much lower the further from the bullet said target is.
TL;DR: the shock wave will likely travel further than the bullet, but it'll have so many losses and be so spread out that it likely won't be any significant danger.
Shooting fish in a barrel had something like that. Though I think the estimates were for fish, the shockwave being contained in the barrel could have changed it, and the only time the tank broke was because shotgun pellets went wide enough to actually strike the tank.
Hydrostatic shock occurs in tissue from rounds moving at velocities higher than 2,000 feet per second, but that shock happens over a relatively short distance in the medium--the tissue contained in the body hit. Open water doesn't have that containment, and a handgun or rifle bullet lacks the mass to get enough water moving to deliver a shock to a person who isn't actually hit by the bullet.
You're correct about the drop off in the pressure. A 50 cal bullet isn't heavy enough or fast enough to make a damaging shock wave.
Something like a 100mm battleship cannon round landing 1 foot from your head might be able to kill someone, but I would have to do the exact math.
I love and respect Adams ability to think about a question and give his best guess based on what he does know, but in the end have the ability to admit that he really doesn't know.
I find that saying "I really dont know" is something intelligent people usually have a difficult time doing.
I imagine a good reference point must be taking the amount of momentum packed in a bullet and wondering which one and how close would be harmful. You'd have to take into account proximity, and how much energy is actually transmitted to the shockwave, and how effectively it propagates I think