Do I really have to remind you that the fish they used were killed?

The question isn't whether they should have used fish that were killed. That would have happened in any case. The only question is whether it would have been better to kill them in a less gruesome manner that fit the myth on-screen rather than a more gruesome manner that did not fit the myth off-screen.

Killing happens. It's the circle of life...and death. Watch the Discovery channel sometime and you'll see it. It's not so much "entertainment" as education.

quote:

Originally posted by dansswing:
Do I really have to remind you that the fish they used were killed?

No, you don't and yes, I thought of that, but the fact remains there is a substantial difference between properly witnessing and documenting an unfortunate but necessary act of violence without interfering and committing an act of violence for the sake of entertainment, or even for educational purposes. Looking at it another way, and presupposing it is acceptable to perpetrate a violent act for educational purposes, it is only valuable from an educational stanbdpoint if the violence itself imparts educational value which would be lost in the absence of the violence. Put more simply, if they were studying the effects of the bullets on living tissue, then using a living subject would be potentially advisable. Since noting if any significant import would have been added to the test by using aliving subject in preference to a dead or artifical one, there is no good reason to use a live subject.

Oh, I almost forgot! I have one more comment on this episode. I was surprised Adam and Jamie made the mesurement of the trauma potential so difficult. There is a simple, readily available, and inexpensive device whose sole purpose is to measure shock waves. It's called a microphone. (Although in this case they would have had to use a hydrophone, wich is a bit more expensive than a regular microphone , but not all that much.) Indeed, why they we to allthe trouble to convert from dB to prerssure and use that stress meter is beyond me. Why didn't they just attach a hydrophone to a digital oscilloscope and drop it in the water? It would have cost less, been much easier, and saved them quite a bit of time and hassle.

Ok
Someone might of suggested this already.
I noticed that when you shot into the barrel, all the trauma stickers tripped.
Lets revisit the shooting into water myth, but shoot at buster, and have him wear the trauma patches.
basically, could you be killed in the water, without being hit my the bullet?

quote:

Is shooting fish in a barrel all that easy?

The real question raised in this episode: Is Shooting Fish in a Barrel the same as Jumping the Shark?

Concerning the single shot to the fish. When Jamie was shooting a single shot to the first mechanical fish, he completely forgot about light refraction. When you see the fish in the water, the light is bent. thus, he would have had to shoot about 6 inches lower than what he did.

I am not going to discuss about if it is right or wrong to kill a fish (or any animal). If you are going to eat it, that's fine... but if you want to kill it "just because it is fun", then you need therapy... Anyway, the real question raised in this episode was: What does it mean the expression "Like shooting fish in a barrel"?
I found this on the internet...

Idioms:
like shooting fish in a barrel


Ridiculously easy. This hyperbolic expression alludes to the fact that fish make an easy target inside a barrel (as opposed to swimming freely in the sea). [Early 1900s]

from: Answers.com

PS. I must to apologize to you for my bad english. I am form Mexico and I don't practice my english a lot...

My post is about "shooting a fish in a barrel". Do you think that "shooting" is the same as "killing". Shooting a fish under those conditions is really HARD.

When the mythbusters were testing the myth they didn't think about that physicall property called "refraction" .

If you are outside the water and the fish is inside it, the place where you see the fish is located isn't the right place. The refraction makes you see the fish in another position, that's why the mythbusters couldn't hit the fish. Even if they used a sniper rifle wouldn't be able to hit it.

As an advice, I recommend to try it again differently and to explain this question: If it is so easy, why couldn't you make it?

Of course, at the end of the episode, it was so easy to show that you could KILL a fish, of course you can do it with any kind of explosion, but is that the meaning of "shooting"?

Thank you very much

Ruben Dario Vasquez
Control Engineer
Master in Engineering - Industrial Automation
rubenchov@hotmail.com

Adam and Jamie should like a pig carcass because that's like human skin. just to see what it would do the the carcass

Did you all miss the episode where they shot everything from a old musket to a 50 cal rifle into the water? They proved you could not get shot like in the movies when someone is underwater. They proved that all you had to be was 14" below water and the bullet would disintergrate before it hit you. So how the holy heck can they hit a fish with a bullet if they already proved you cant shoot into water?
WTF?

http://www.eduqna.com/Quotations/349-Quotations-7.html

It just means that it is easy . . . 'cause you don't have to hit the fish . . .

they left out a part on shooting fish in a barrel.. of course shooting fish in a barrel full of water is easy. you really don't even have to hit the fish to disable the fish. the water pressure increases when the bullet enters the water, shocking the fish.. kinda like depth charges work on submarines.

reply to rhinno.. the higher the speed of the bullet the more the bullet disintegrates. a slower speed bullet would have a better chance of staying in one peace or less peaces. a rifle bullet has a lot of speed. well over super sonic. a 9 mil is a slower round. about 1200 fps. your average nato 5.56mm (.223) is about 3200 fps. the faster the more it comes apart.

oops apparently i when i was on the phone they did cover that in the show. sry

heres why shooting into water was so hard to hit fish,take a clear glass of water and place a pencil in it,the pencil appears to be bent,this is a illusion that is obvious,I learned by trying to shoot fish with a arrow(for survival practice)that depending on the fishes depth you must aim a little higher than the fish appears,I have seen this mistake made by many people,including Les Shroud and Bear Grillis on there shows when they have tried to catch fish,with practice it is possible to make up for the optical illusion that the water presents,and even trying to use a spear, rock, or stick,you can catch fish,so if the gun was used to aim a little high it will work.

Surely shooting fish in a barrel implies hitting the fish, not killing them through shock waves. I think they have made a mistake on this one.

quote:

Surely shooting fish in a barrel implies hitting the fish, not killing them through shock waves. I think they have made a mistake on this one.

The mistake they made was in "recreating" a situation which never existed.

The phrase derives from the practice of packing salted fish, mainly cod, in barrels for shipment. A layer of coarse salt was laid down, followed by a layer of fish, then more salt, then fish, and so on until the barrel was full. This dried the fish and preserved it in an era without refrigeration. Salted cod is still prepared today, and has become an ingredient in it's own right in several cuisines.

Once packed and ready for shipment, the barrel was essentially a solid block of fish. If you couldn't hit a fish shooting at it, you should probably have spent more time shooting at barns before trying.

That this went without even a mention, while they lept to the slack-jawed literal interpretation shown in the segment, was just plain stupid. There's no kinder way to say it. It was as pointlessly dumb as the "Pirate Eyepatch" segment, which likewise "tested" something which never existed in the first place. We're left with an explanation that explains fiction, and has nothing to do with fact, in both cases.

Shooting fish in a barrel as I would think should be understood, would mean that it should be easy. ei: they can't get away! The saying is "should be as easy as shooting fish in a barrel!"

Adam and Jamie deserve 40 lashes with a wet noodle on this one. In addition, everyone who has posted anything in connection with this saying and a gun and bullets. Guns andd bullets had nothing to do with the saying originally. You had a barrel of preserved fish, which, as you can imagine were tightly packed. The person wo ran the store or wantedd a fish would take a tool like a frog gig and stab a fish and pull it out of the barrel. That was shooting fish in a barrel. Since the fish were dead and packed in the barrel pretty good, it became the benchmark of somthing that took no real effort. Hence, something was known to be "As easy as shooting fish in a barrel."

I had an epiphany that will be boring to prove...

But what if the 'shooting' was originally 'chuting'? Someone had an easy job of filling barrels of fish with a chute, and someone misheard...

I know. Watching them prove that is about as much fun as watching bread mold.