THE MYTHBUSTERS RETURN TO DEBUNKAND DECODE MORE URBAN MYTHS AND LEGENDS WITH NEW EPISODES COVERING EVERYTHING FROM STAR WARS TO ZOMBIES

- New season to kick off with a one-hour special DANGEROUS TOYS -

Over the past 11 years, Discovery Channel's Emmy^®-nominated series  MYTHBUSTERS have tested more than 925 myths, filmed over 7,600 hours, created more than 840 explosions and used in excess of 50 kilometres of duct tape. Come July, Discovery Channel brings back your favourite cool geeks – Jamie Hyneman, Adam Savage, Tory Belleci, Kari Byron and Grant Imahara – for brand new episodes from season nine of MYTHBUSTERS. Together with guest appearances by actor Michael Rooker (The Walking Dead), award-winning actress Sophia Bush and world record-setting tightrope walker Nik Wallenda, the gang will sort out facts from fiction by using their signature brand of real-world scientific experimentation. Join them every week for explosive new episodes as they prove or disprove popular myths, misconceptions and legends starting Wednesday, July 16 at 9:00 p.m.

 

Photo courtesy of Discovery Channel

The season kicks off with an hour-long, epic toy-themed special DANGEROUS TOYS, executive produced by Jamie and Adam. After years of working together, the pair is finally squaring off against each other in a no-holds-barred, all-out war! Jamie and Adam are taking their talent for building awesomely destructive gadgets and crossing it with kids’ playtime to compete in an elaborate child’s game of war. Their ultimate goal: to try to take each other down.

To create their twisted adult interpretations of fortifications, vehicles, weapons and other child-play favourites, the two will draw inspiration with their “Dangerous Toys brain trust”, a pint-size think tank made up of a group of imaginative pre-teens who offer up limitless ideas including a 25-foot (7.6 metre) couch fort, combustible robotic armies and a thing Jamie affectionately calls “The Kraken”. With ingenuity and innovation, a sandcastle could be a fortress and a cardboard box can open an entire universe of possibilities. Jamie will do whatever he can to conquer Adam’s fort, while Adam does the same, as each man fends off a succession of blistering attacks to be the last one standing.

Don’t miss this and many more mad-cap experiments in 17 new episodes of MYTHBUSTERS! Encores every Saturday at 11:00 p.m. and Sunday at noon.

Some of the myths they’ll tackle include:

Star Wars: Revenge of the Myth: The gang, along with special guest – award-winning actress Sophia Bush, examines and tests three scenes from the Star Wars series for plausibility. Could Luke really have swung across a huge chasm to escape Stormtroopers while carrying Princess Leia with only his belt-rigged grappling hook? Could the Ewoks’ primitive swinging-log trap have realistically crushed one of Darth Vadar’s most sophisticated weapons - an Imperial “Chicken Walker”? And would a Tauntaun’s carcass have kept Luke from freezing to death on the bitterly cold climate of Hoth?

Zombie Special: What would happen if there really was a zombie invasion? In this episode, the team challenges three tall tales of apocalyptic proportions with The Walking Dead’s Michael Rooker as a special guest. When it comes to wasting “Walkers”, is an axe the more efficient weapon of choice, or are you better off with a gun? Meanwhile, Adam turns undead to test another zombie myth: can the ‘might of the living dead’ bust down Jamie’s door or is the physical force of the unwieldy mob just filmic fiction. And, if you’re swarmed, can you outrun – or outsmart – a hungry horde? Tory, Cary and Grant investigate why fleet-footed film human heroes still end up at the wrong end of the brain buffet despite zombies shuffling at the speed of an arthritic grandma.

Mythssion Impossible: The team tests three implausible idioms. According to the saying, “like herding cats”, shepherding a throng of feisty felines is not just difficult, it’s downright impossible. So Adam and Jamie set out to learn the herd mentality and then attempt to apply it to some crabby tabbies. Kari, Grant and Tory bring home the bacon with a porker of a phrase, “catching a greased pig” is another challenge that seems out of the question, but when they combine pigs, lubricant and athleticism will this mythical expression turn out to be a load of old hogwash?

Duct Tape Canyon: Lost in the wilderness, Adam and Jamie survive the desert, repel down canyon cliff-faces and brave Class 5 rapids – all with just duct tape and a bumper load of bubble wrap. Can they traverse a desert with duct tape travois, repel down canyon cliff-faces on a duct tape rope, and create a pair of daft rafts to navigate through thunderous rapids? It’s their most ambitious duct tape adventure yet…this time with a special guest appearance by Discovery Channel’s Nik Wallenda, the famous daredevil who walked across the Grand Canyon on a tightrope last year while millions watched live.

Bullet Baloney: The MYTHBUSTERS take on five filmic firearm clichés and fables. Can a gun fire lethally if its barrel is bent? Can you fire a gun in space like they do in science fiction movies? Can tape measures, wallets and golf balls stop a bullet? Will a neon sign blow out in shower of sparks if hit by a bullet? Will a shotgun shell on a tip of a wooden spear detonate if jabbed into an attacking animal à la the movie The Gray? And finally, if a gun is dropped in the boiling oil of a deep fryer go off?

Do Try This at Home: After more than a decade of testing impossible, dangerous and downright crazy myths that you shouldn’t or couldn’t try at home, the team investigates a host of myths that maybe you can! Be sure to break out the safety googles and get ready for Do-It-Yourself (DIY) science from chemistry conundrums, to a veracity of viral videos, stopping time in your living room, and some extreme fire-fighting and metronome madness thrown in for good measure.

Hollywood Car Crash Clichés: It’s wall-to-wall automotive mayhem as the crew drive through glass, tackle a cinematic solution to congested roads and plough through traffic, and fire a rocket-propelled grenade at a Sports Utility Vehicle (SUV) to see if they can flip it to take aim at classic Hollywood crash clichés.  

Car Chase Chaos/Animal Antics: Can you really switch drivers, share the driving duties, or dump a dead body in the middle of a Hollywood high-speed getaway? To tackle a trio of Tinsel Town car chase clichés, our dynamic myth-busting duo puts the pedal to the metal, gets their action movie hero on and brings Buster a body bag for the ride home. Also, the team tests a host of fan-suggested homemade deterrents for keeping critters from crawling, creeping and causing calamitous catastrophe on the property.

Supersonic Ping Ping/Ice Cannon: Adam and Jamie ask if supersonic ping pong can go lethally wrong. Supposedly a lightweight table tennis ball can top the speed of sound and become a lethal projectile. To find out if this unlikely premise is possible our dynamic duo turns the dial marked supersonic science to 11. The rest of the crew looks into a ballistic mystery from history – by lighting the frozen fuse on a cannon made of ice. It could be an explosive combination!