What about deflecting a bullet with a sword? It is common in a lot of ninja movies.

quote:

Originally posted by private16702:
What about deflecting a bullet with a sword, in a lot of movies you see it.

Deflecting it with your hand is just plain stupid and impossible unless you were maybe Terminator or something. But with a sword it might be possible, but also still very dangerous. You would have to see the bullets coming at you to do it, which is possible BUT you cant react that quickly. However, they should try it with a sword, good idea.

I'm sure not going to suggest the guys and gal ignore mythbusting because of something the IOC implemented, but I seem to remember the 1996 Summer Olympics as being the first year that starting blocks with pressure sensors were introduced: in addition to more accurate timing, they allowed measurement of false starts by DQ-ing a competitor if he reacted faster than "x" hundreths of a second (my recollection is 27 hundreths.)

In light of the fact that the IOC says that the best trained human beings on the planet with the greatest amount of fast-twitch muscle fiber and incredibly tuned reflexes with plenty of adrenaline in their systems cannot under any circumstances react faster than "x" time, it occurs to me that when a 9mm bullet traveling 20 yards (60 feet) in 5 one-hundreths (.05 seconds) of a second (at the rounded-down speed of 1200 FPS), the likelihood of a human, male or female, no matter how highly trained (and you can't beat guys like Michael Johnson) to slap a bullet out of mid-air is so improbable that it would require so many attempts over such a great amount of time (one or the other approaching infinite) as to reduce it to impossible.

This applies to most if not all of the "ninja" and other "that sounds like you'd need to be Barry Gordon/Wally West to pull that off" myths.

Respectfully,
Gifftor

Tory, why you gotta act like it hurts when you give away the fact youre shooting at 190fps? Where's the reasearch dept when you need it, and wheres the paintball eye protection for that matter? Maybe its not such a big deal at <200fps but it's still not cool to broadcast a dumb idea like that... especially with the great emphasis that is placed on safety on Mythbusters

Last I checked, paintball sites at the midwest set the speed top-end at 300 or 350 FPS. 190 <I>is</I> kind of slow.

OK I am tired of the movie crowd with "ninja can do anything" garbage yes they were very skilled at there art but they were not super human. First they should try it with a dull sword? OK I thought most swords back they were so sharp you could drop a hanky or hair on it and it would effortlessly be severed it two. of course the myth busters could never obtain a sword that sharp because the goverments have supressed all the technolgy for that. (sorry for the sarcasm but I deal everyday with a tinfoil hat society member)
I looked around in several sites, like about.com ect and the fastest human nerve impluses travel at about 328 feet/second and a hand gun muzzle velocity is between 700 and 1200 f/s. given that it would sound impossible for this to happen at a close range, the ninja needs to first hear the sound nerve impluse from ear to brain, (short distance) decide what steps to take ( o seconds because ninjas are magical) the nerve inpluse need to go from brain to arm and the rest of the body because they have to rotate and posistion the body to enable the arm to slap the bullet. gun site info.
http://www.recguns.com/Sources/VIIE8.html

quote:

You would have to see the bullets coming at you to do it, which is possible BUT you cant react that quickly.

Okay, a paintball travels at 300 feet per second or so.

It's diameter is .690" or so.

A modern firearm bullet is around .22" to .50".(Let's figure handgun bullets only.)

Velocities range between 800 to 1500 feet per second for handguns.

See any discrepencies between a paintball and a real firearm projectile?

It is not possible to swat a real firearm projectile out of the air.

You can't see it, and you for sure don't have the reaction time to swat it.

If a projectile is coming at you at 1000 feet per second, if the gunman is 125 feet away from you, you have 1/8th. of a second to react. If he is 62.5 feet away, you have 1/16th. of a second.

No human has reaction times this fast.

I think we certainly need to get away from Ninja Romanticism. Given the nature of the historical ninja was for assasination, sabotage, siege messengers (to escape besieged castles), etc. The skills put forth in fiction and myth serve two purposes, one is for strict story telling and another is the advantage of the myths for intimidation, etc. Now then, this myth in ancient historical Japan was very handy indeed, since Daimyo went to extreme lengths to protect against Ninja. But as one Ninja during the Tokugawa period illustrated, the art of the ninja is subterfuge and misdirection. The specific example was a bet to hold ones breath, the ninja simply went deep under water, swam downstream, got out and took a nap, then swam back up and popped out. Ditch the romanticized notions and embrace the value of being able to create such plausible myths that we still hold onto them regardless of the facts, there is the true triumph.

quote:

This applies to most if not all of the "ninja" and other "that sounds like you'd need to be Barry Gordon/Wally West to pull that off" myths.

I think you meant Barry Allen. For those wondering it's the secret identity of DC comics Flash. Wally West was his successor. Anyway I agree with you gifftor. Though I wonder if a bullet could be deflected with a music stand or any small piece of metal as they do in the movies and tv.

hhuumm. let me see.... speed of sound 990 fps-ish altitude dependent. slowest rounds that will function a auto somewhat reliable are 147 gr. at 950, these loads are a funny story by themselves, so our little ninja dude cant hear it at 25 yards with any time for nerve conduction or even a reaction. even visual recognition would give less than 0.08 of a second to do anything. torres "lack" of success at a ridiculously low 190 fps only under scores this point. dont even get started about the physics of "slapping a bullet the 8 to 14 inches to miss a body in a z axis of only 12 to 20 inches. the "ninjas shown to have caught an arrow used long bows, not even a simple recurve. and the arrow fletching was flu-flu. bullet slapping is only gonna happen in the movies. yeah im new here, but i didnt fall off the potato truck yesterday.

Barry Gordon. Oh crap. My inner DC Fanboy Nerd is screaming in agony. Been watching "Flash Gordon" on Sci-Fi lately, I guess. Damn. Thanks for the correction, <u>jaten</u>.

I'm sorry, I'm a "gun guy" and love when you guys do gun myths, but I think you need to have a firearms expert on staff or at least on the speed dial. Some of the things you say about various matters involving guns is confused, partly wrong, or sometimes completely incorrect. Granted, you do get a lot right, I think you need some help.
For this test, there was just a minor problem, but the slowest 9mm bullet available is much slower than 1250fps. With a quick search, I was able to find 147 grain 9mm ammo from Fiocchi at 975 fps. Even at 115 and 124 grains, I can find velocities less than 1250 fps. This wouldn't bug me, only Grant said that, "the slowest 9mm load they have is 1250 fps." Now Grant might have meant by "they" the store at which the ammo purchase was going to take place, but he didn't say that, rather, he made it seem that it was the slowest available.
Sorry to be a nit-picker, but I just thought I could help/annoy. I really do love the show and have since it started. Keep up the good work.

WOW hot topic! Um..this may get moved but I'm gonna try it here anyway - we've mentioned slapping a bullet, chopping a bullet, swishing a bullet, slapping on gloves or handguards, catching bullets with one's teeth and splitting arrows - however -

one of our fearless MythFighters mentioned during the show tonight that the myth about catching an arrow by hand is totally busted and just blathered on without giving it another moment and I have to say that I beg to differ. Do any of you good folks who post here happen to watch A&E on Tuesday nights?

Listen up Jaimie and Adam! There is a regular old flesh and blood dude that CAN catch a real arrow shot by a real professional archer with his bare hand and I've seen him do it. I wondered hows come I didn't hear about it from anyone on here, but I guess that's what *I'm* here for

The person in question is Criss Angel. I know a lot of you who read this are now groaning and saying "Right! That was just an illusion, ya goofball!" but not so... It was a demonstration, not one of his usually very good illusions or "tricks". He worked with his friendly neighborhood archer alone in an indoor studio environment for two solid days and many hours each of those days trying hundreds and hundreds of times to catch a single arrow just once.

The thing that I think someone (like MEEEE) might want to interject perhaps is that WOW hot topic! Um..this may get moved but I'm gonna try it here anyway - we've mentioned slapping a bullet, chopping a bullet, swishing a bullet, slapping on gloves or handguards, catching bullets with one's teeth and splitting arrows - however - but - Criss has been practicing doing amazingly quick things with his hands, arms, and other various parts of himself that I won't mention here and I don't have a doubt in the world that he indeed accomplished the successful arrow-catch in question. I saw it. He actually did it twice.

I know that I will love MythBusters as long as television exists and I have one that plays VHS tapes but there are people out there who can and do (for some special reason like Mr. Angel) have abilities, intuitive reactions, and whatnots to actually accomplish many of the "myths" that just really can't be duplicated by an untrained everyday dweeb like me or you. I just wanted to say somewhere on here that the Arrow-Catch IS possible and has been done by someone alive on the earth right now..he's even on television, can ya imagine that! Ok. Feel free to throw stuff at me if you must. Tah!! *wave*
The Mouth

I hate not being able to preview a post.. hello Mr. Moderator. Hope you read that.

Anywho, what I meant to say was that Criss Angel has been practicing doing what he does using unbelievably fast motions of his hands and fingers for about the past 20 or 25 years and I know that's why he was able to catch an arrow but not even your machines could. I think it would make a really cool and entertaining show to invite him on to see if he can duplicate his arrow-catch in front of YOU folks! Whadyathinkaboutthat?!? Sounds like good T.V. to me *hugs ya* Ok. I'm done again. Bubye~

Criss Angel is an illusionist, a pretty good one.

The fact that he could catch an arrow tells me that it was a trick, and that anyone with good reflexes could be trained to do the same stunt.

Now, put Criss in front of an archer using real hunting arrows with a full powered bow and have the archer, a stranger to Criss, shoot at his chest, while Criss is facing him, like a person would be in real life if a killer was trying to stick him with an arrow, and Criss is going to get hit.

Has anyone seen the folks who do this stunt EVER let someone shoot an arrow directly at their chest?

An assassin would not be shooting to one side of someone who they were trying their best to kill.

If you can't build a robot that can break bricks with a palm strike, how could you ever build a robot that can slap bullets away? <<<Chi cannot be reproduced with machinery.>>> BTW- I've also personally witnessed arrows being caught from the air and being cut from the air with a sword.

I have a question...
The first time they went to the range..what was the problem? Guns do not fire in the same place everytime. You aim at the same place and you get a cluster. Right?
So what did they do to try to correct whatever problem they were having?

they did a good job on this one but revist it the catching an arow myth. what if someone started to close there hand milliseconds before the arow made contact.

quote:

Originally posted by cpakkie:
Regarding the use of paintballs and paintball markers in the test, there are some factors to consider with paintballs.

My observations are based upon my experiences with paintball and playing paintball for the past 4 years.

Paintballs are made of gelatin based shells which are at times temperature sensitive. Looking at the container, it looked like the paintballs were softening up in the heat. This would cause them to be more likely to bounce on impact. There are many instances where paintballs bounce.

Seeing Tory's hands, he was wearing some thick gloves. That extra paddding would more likely cause the paintballs to bounce.

And paintball guns are normall shot at 300 fps :P Just to let you know. Well that's the max on fields.

All of this is correct, I have worked at a paintball field for a few years and if im not mistaken when Tory swated the paintball out of the air it was shooting at 192 feet per second. And as it is stated above the average field max is 300 feet per second. Also when paintballs are left out in the sun for even a short period of time the shells will become very flexible and can almost be compressed flat before breaking. All in all bump up the fps and keep yer paintballs cool!

Did anyone else notice in the high-speed footage the fact that the bullet grazed the hand before the hand even had a chance to move? That's why the bullet's trajectory wasn't altered. They gave up too easy. Especially when they assumed that "normal" human speed would be too slow to react to the bullet. The bullet went through before the hand even moved. The only thing that is proof of is that the rig was off. They got really sloppy. They couldn't even get a good enough control because the bullet wasn't hitting the same spot every time, or even getting close to the same spot. It could have been the gun's fault or maybe the wind was a factor. They should do this experiment indoors if they ever re-visit this myth... which they need to do.