MythBusters: Killer Tissue Box

Was it just me, or did Jamie look like he either had a mad sunburn, high blood pressure or was holding his breath for too long last night? Well anyway, in this episode the MythBusters take on just two myths: The Killer Tissue Box and Splitting an Arrow.


I had heard about this myth a long time ago, probably when I first learned to drive: if you have a tissue box sitting on the shelf over your back seat and get into an accident, the tissue box could come flying and smack your head open. Like Adam and Jamie say later on in the episode, the last thing you'll worry about in a 60 MPH crash is whether the tissue box is going to deliver a killing blow. J&A take on this myth by creating a mock up "car" of their own, which Jamie tows behind a truck. Once the cable attached to the rear of the car reaches its end, the car should come to a complete halt. After several attempts at this (and some admittedly poor math considerations by Jamie), they finally get a rig that works. Not only do they test a tissue box, they also try a bobble-head doll, a hatchet, a fire extinguisher and, yes, a bowling ball. They test all of these against an improvised wall of ballistics gel, and the results aren't at all surprising (the hatchet buries itself in the ballistics gel box and the bowling ball completely obliterates it). Finally the team tries just the tissue box with a normal car and Buster, and still they have no choice to conclude that this myth is totally BUSTED.

In the Splitting an Arrow myth, the secondary team tests whether it's possible to split a wooden arrow completely in two with another arrow, right down the middle. This is not the same as "telescoping" another arrow like the typical metal ones used to day. This is actually splitting it exactly in half. The team challenges a bunch of Renaissance fair, um, folks to try this the old fashioned way, but nobody can do it. Back at the MythBusters HQ, the team tries several tests using a machine that will allow for greater accuracy in shooting the arrow. Attempt after attempt, they just cannot get an arrow to split, so they resort to a bundle of wooden dowels stuck into the target, hoping that will increase their chances. When that doesn't work, they take the arrow-shooting machine and set it up with the point of the arrow within an inch or so of a dowel to improve the accuracy even more. After reviewing that failed attempt with slow-motion video, the team concludes that, due to the arrow following the grain of the wood in the dowel, there is simply no way to split another wooden arrow completely in two. So, they all agree that this myth is totally BUSTED.

Honestly, I'm not sure I liked the final conclusion to the arrow myth. They used wooden dowels as a test, when there's a good chance they are not constructed the same way as a typical wooden arrow, especially in the days of yore. I wonder if they actually tried to get a better look at an old arrow from a museum or some other source to see how the grain in that wood ran. Perhaps it was straighter? How does yew wood differ from the ceder they chose. I dunno, that bundle of dowels just seemed to me like they were getting lazy about it, and Kari's insistence that they just bust the myth didn't make me feel any better about how it all ended.