MythBusters

Please, don't try anything

you're about to see us do at home.

Ever!

On this invigorating episode of "Mythbusters,"

we're turning the heat on three frosty Alaskan fables.

This is perfect for an Alaska adventure.

Adam and Jamie prove

this is no country for cold men...

Oh, great. We got a yeti outside.

... as cabin fever takes its toll.

I've just had the worst night of sleep I've ever had in my life.

Tory, Grant, and Kari see if hitting the gas

might lessen the damage caused by Alaska's scariest roadkill.

And we'll see if a dynamite-toting dog

really could devastate a drunken duck hunter's brand-new S. U.V.

Bye-bye.

Who are the Mythbusters?

Did you know what was lurking in your basement?

Adam Savage...

I am the fire ninja!

...and Jamie Hyneman.

Is that beautiful, or what?

Between them, more than 30 years

of special-effects experience.

Wow!

Joining them -- Tory Belleci...

I've been a bad pirate.

...Grant Imahara...

- -...and Kari Byron.

Let's do it.

They don't just tell the myths.

They put them to the test.

That is an iceberg.

It's really cold here, but it's also really beautiful.

This place has a mythology all its own.

So we've got a full hour of Alaska myths.

Tourism types up here market the 49th state

as the land of intensity.

It's twice the size of Texas,

so we figure it's big and intense enough

to handle some high-impact mythbusting.

Like most of our favorite myths,

this one involves some drunken friends and explosives.

You got a group of drunken friends,

one of whom's just bought a brand-new S. U.V.,

and they all decide

that they want to go duck hunting with their dog,

except there's nothing around them but a frozen lake,

and no duck is gonna land on a frozen lake.

So they need to make a hole.

One of them offers up a stick of dynamite with a 20-second fuse

to make a big hole

and throws that stick of dynamite as hard as he can.

I can see what's coming.

The dog, following its natural impulses,

chases after that stick of dynamite, catches it,

starts ferrying it back to the guy,

under the brand-new S. U.V.

Uh-oh!

The dog, the dynamite, and the S. U.V. go boom!

The S. U.V. goes down to the bottom of the lake,

and the guy who owned it is still making payments.

This not-so-urban myth

surely stretches the bounds of human stupidity.

My sympathies are all with the dog,

though you must admit it's as funny as hell.

But maybe it's too funny to be true.

As Jamie and Adam set off to find their frozen lake,

it's worth noting that this folktale

is almost as old as dynamite itself.

The first thing we obviously needed

was a frozen lake.

And the researchers found us one here in Alaska.

Behind me, this snowfield you see

is, in fact, Fischer Pond, a man-made lake,

which means there are no fish for us to kill,

with a nice coating of rock-hard ice on top.

The ice on the pond is too thick to dig through,

and that supports the myth.

But can it support a 2-ton truck?

Okay, here we go.

Orson Smith and his fancy ice drill

should give us a quick answer.

Fans of slapstick should appreciate

the breakthrough moment.

Whoa!

That's a hell of a thing.

The ice core cracks up as it's bashed loose.

Look at that!

Put back together, it's a foot and a half thick.

So, it's got vertical crystals

that make it really stronger than average.

So it's safe for us to drive our S. U.V. out here?

Yes.

Look, this story has a ton of components to it,

and the first part of it is,

how far can you throw a stick of dynamite?

Remember, kids, this isn't real dynamite.

We would never throw real dynamite,

and neither should you.

All right, Jamie. I want you to put your chi into this thing.

That's it!

Go!

Nice!

Jamie's toss is up over the 1 00-foot mark.

Now it's Adam's chance

to prove he's got the mojo of the throw, Joe.

Those look to be about the same.

Two hefty, manly throws

with an average distance of...

125 feet.

Okay, time to bring out the dog.

The myth is about a black lab

that retrieves a stick of dynamite.

That's what Rudy is.

As you can see, he's raring to go.

He really wants to retrieve that stick of dynamite.

And has no idea what he's signed up for.

Now we've got to get another myth started.

Okay, so, we're in Alaska in the snow.

What myth did we get?

Okay, well, this is a fairly gory myth

that affects a lot of Alaskans, but not so many in California.

What's that?

It's about the moose and what happens

when you hit one with your car.

This is what happens when moose meets motorcar,

and it's all too common here in Alaska.

A low-speed collision most often ends

with something bigger and heavier than a fridge

coming right through your windshield.

The myth says that speeding up instead of slowing down

might push the unlucky beast over the car,

meaning you might live to tell the tale.

Well, obviously we're not gonna kill a real moose

-to test this myth, right? -Right.

Yeah. We're gonna have to make our own moose analogue.

They'll also have to wrangle

a bunch of stunt cars and a safe test venue.

But those are problems for tomorrow.

Right now, they need to design a moose

that can bounce back from something like this.

Oh

Have either of you ever seen a real moose?

-No. -I don't think so.

Maybe we should try to find a real moose.

That way, we can make our crash-test moose

as close to a real one as we can.

These California kids have never seen a wild moose,

but they've had a tip-off from Alaska Fish & Game

to search no further than downtown Anchorage.

Whoa.

That's a big one.

This 1 ,200-pound bull named Buzzwinkle

is loitering by a two-story bar called Ernie's Bungalow.

I'm not sure what's weirder --

that the moose is in the middle of downtown at a bar

or that it's only like 1 :30.

The legs end right about where the hood is,

like right where you'd hit.

- -No way.

Look. He's going to the mall.

This mature bull

looks about 6 foot tall at the shoulder,

but they'll need to get much closer

to take accurate measurements

for a crash-test moose simulator.

Cue the Alaskan Wildlife Conservation Center.

Out here, moose are accustomed to the ways of men.

Ah! Oh! Oh! Oh!

He's stabbing me!

Well, most men.

Let's say we make this moose dummy out of ballistics gel.

If we hit that with a car, it's just gonna explode.

-Yeah. -So we need to get a feeling

for, you know, what it feels like.

Well, this is definitely not a ballistics gel.

No. Is he firm or squishy?

He's pretty solid.

I mean, it's like there's hardly any fat on him at all.

He's got sort of like the durometer of, like, rubber.

Really dense rubber.

Really? Yeah.

Seems we need to make a very dense rubber replica.

And that's something the team can't do here in Anchorage.

We don't even know remotely

how we're gonna get all of that weight

up onto such spindly, little legs,

so it's gonna take some planning, a lot of effort,

and we need the tools back in San Francisco.

Alaska really is a land of intensity --

the wilderness, the wildlife, and the winters.

It's those short, cold days

that make this state home to an all-time classic myth.

What do we got?

Well, you know, winters in Alaska are pretty harsh.

The days are short. The nights are real long.

People get snowed in with nothing to do,

and supposedly, they succumb

to a condition known as cabin fever.