MythBusters

Please, don't try anything

that you're about to see us do at home.

Ever!

On this episode of "Mythbusters"...

Ba-da-da-da! Ba-da-da!

... Doctors Hyneman and Savage raid the "Ark"-hives

for a movie myth about a bike flip.

If you poke a pole in the front spokes,

will it really flip out?

The timing was perfect.

-lf you say so, Junior. -

And Kari, Grant, and Tory are breaking bad...

I'm bustin' out of here, see?

... to test tall tales of prison breaks.

They want to know if you can rappel to freedom

using bedsheets, toilet paper...

Freedom!

... and hair? -

-Oh! Oh! -Ow!

Who are the Mythbusters?

Adam Savage...

That's 100 % wacky right there.

... and Jamie Hyneman. -Pain is your friend.

Between them, more than 30 years

of special-effects experience.

Joining them -- Kari Byron...

-Let's do it. ... Grant Imahara...

Danger! Warning! Warning!

...and Tory Belleci.

Okay, you want to play rough, little gopher?

They don't just tell the myths.

They put them to the test.

Let me guess.

-lndiana Jones? -Yes.

Cast your mind back to "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade."

Indy and his father are racing away from the Nazis

on a motorcycle.

Nazis come up alongside them and are about to get them,

but Indy doesn't have a weapon.

Quickly thinking, he grabs a flagpole,

jams it in the front spokes of the Nazi motorcycle and...

The motorcycle flips up in the air, end over end.

Bad time for the Nazi.

Exactly.

That is our movie myth.

It's a classic scene from the silver screen.

The Doctors Jones, Junior and Senior,

are being chased by the Third Reich on bikes.

But a flagpole in the front wheel of the nearest Nazi,

and a motorcycle flip-out sees our hero escape

with a trademark cheesy grin.

This one's really interesting from a physics sense.

Because when I look at that scene,

it doesn't seem awkward or out of place.

But it does beg the question,

is it really that easy to redirect all the energy

that's going this way to going that way?

I'm thinking that we break it down

to its constituent components, test each one,

and then put them all back together

for a full-sized finale.

This will be fun.

It's been years since I've been on a motorcycle.

Ever since that -- that gang, right?

So, first things first.

It's a motorcycle myth, and we'll be needing a...

That's a bike.

Exactly.

Aw, it's lovely.

Actually, we rode across the country in one of these things.

No way.

I'm just reeling from learning something about you

I didn't know.

It seems that there's a never-ending supply of those.

Okay, it may be old-fashioned,

but the movie bikes are vintage World War I I.

I know what you're saying.

You're saying this really doesn't look like

a vintage World War I I era motorcycle, and it isn't.

In fact, it's from 1981, but it is the exact model of bike

used by the stunt men to perform their stunts

for "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade,"

which means that it, and not some vintage bike,

is the perfect test platform for us for this for this myth.

Now that that's sorted,

let's kick things off as Adam and Jamie focus

on the first aspect of the myth.

Since this myth is all about the poking of a flagpole

into the spokes of a motorcycle,

one of the things we want to know is,

how fast can we poke a flagpole?

Because once they know the speed

of a human flagpole poke...

Nice, tiger.

... they can calibrate their remaining tests

to just that.

Just plain funny to watch you exert yourself like that.

I don't know why, exactly. It just is.

High comedy.

-Whatever floats your goat. -

And the high comedy on the high speed

reveals the magic number to be 30 miles per hour.

Cue part two of the experiment --

a remote-control flagpole thruster.

You might remember this puppy right here

from "Birds on a Truck" because this was our pigeon catcher.

Yep, it's not a prop from "Mad Max."

It really is a pigeon catcher.

Not that it caught any pigeons.

It has an air reservoir. It has a valve.

It has everything we need to shoot the stick

into the wheels of the motorcycle.

In 3, 2, 1...

Yeah, that looked a tad faster

than 30 miles an hour to me.

But let's see what Adam thinks.

One.

That might be a little too fast.

Hmm. That's what I said.

Is everybody okay?

That's dangerous.

Yeah, we might have to tune that one back.

I'm not gonna get tired of that.

And so, to get the speed they need --

around 30 miles per hour...

This is an exceedingly weird operation.

... they add some hose to decrease the pressure.

Firing in 3, 2, 1.

That might be it.

That's it. That's the butter zone.

12 p.s. i., we get 28 1/2 miles per hour.

That's perfect.

As odd as this sounds,

after destroying their wooden backstop,

they finally got the ex-pigeon catcher throwing a flagpole

at a realistic speed.

I'm free!

This might sound crazy, but a lot of the fans are saying

that you can actually make rope out of toilet paper,

and it'll be strong enough

that you could scale down a jail wall and escape.

Toilet paper? Are you serious?

Well, if we're gonna do that,

I think we should do the all-time classic --

making a rope out of bedsheets.

I know it's kind of out there,

but let's also do the "Rapunzel" version of this,

where you make a rope out of hair.

-Ew. -lck

Any prison break worth its place in urban folklore

involves a death-defying descent from a great height...

...including these fan-site fables.

Desperate convicts eager to be ex-convicts have escaped jail

with the apparent aid of cell-made ropes

of toilet paper and bedsheets.

And if you include Rapunzel's luscious locks,

that's three harebrained escape plans to test.

So, how are we gonna test this?

Why don't we each take one of the materials, make our ropes,

and see which one of us makes it down the side of the building?

And may the best rope win.

Wait, wait. I want bedsheets, then.

Too late.

Yes, in a vertigo-inducing finale...

Aah!

Oh, my God. I want to throw up.

... our fun-loving criminals will find out for real

if the ropes made from their mythical materials

will aid and abet their jailbreak.

Stupidest idea ever.

Or send them plummeting to their doom.

Ow!

But before all that,

let's take you back to the beginning...

...where Kari's plan for a braided escape

is giving her a bad hair day.

Is this not the most disgusting thing

you've ever seen -- an entire box of just hair?

Yes, coming in at number one

on the weirdest raw-material chart

are 50 human-hair ponytails.

We have to break out of a building that's 14 stories high,

so I have to make a rope that is 140 feet long.

I think the difficulty here is not gonna necessarily

be the strength of the hair, 'cause this feels really strong.

I think it's gonna be where the hair splices together.

I have to come up with some sort of knotting or braiding system

that it won't slide apart and, you know, 100 feet down,

I'm not just gonna plummet to the earth.

And it's gross.

Meanwhile, Grant's mythical method

is a little more conventional and a film-fugitive favorite.

In order to make sure we have maximum authenticity here,

we've gotten these bedsheets

from our friends in Alameda County,

and they're actual county-jail linens.

And finally Tory,

who has some serious tensile strength issues

with his authentic one-ply prison-issue tissue.

There you have it. It's not strong enough.