I will say, at least in the early episodes, they used a ton of human remains. Call me old fashioned, but I’m not sure it was a respectful to punch actual human skulls until they crumble for pure entertainment and the sale of ad time.
They used a lot of ballistic gel people and the crash test dummy (Buster). Don’t remember any real human remains. Fake bones are cheaper and easier to get, i dont think using real human remains was within their purview.
They used ballistic gelatine dummies for a while, then decided that they weren’t a good model of most injuries, so had an episode where they designed a new dummy by buying human bones and breaking them to see how much force they could take, then picked out a material with similar properties (which surprisingly ended up being wood), and from then on, built fake skeletons to put in the gelatine dummies.
IIRC, the bones were bought from a shop that just sold human bones. They’d ended up there nominally because their previous owners’ wills had permitted it. E.g. lots of people want their skull to be used in productions of Hamlet, so drama groups often end up owning real skulls. I’m not sure whether Mythbusters was buying things from a general-use shelf or if they counted as medical science due to doing some kind of experiment - the US military counts even if they’re just using corpses for target practice.
Publicly recorded data about the properties of bones just seems like science to me. Science exists outside of corporations and universities. I’d be happy if my remains were that useful to mythbusters.
I stand corrected I don’t remember that at all. Pretty wild they just went to store that sold human bones. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that’s a thing.
Human remains are not humans. I think we obsess way too much about what happens after a human dies, mostly due to historical reasons (i.e. it makes sense to be afraid of dead bodies or consider them sacred, because interacting with them could make you sick).
If you make sure that the remains are not identifiable to anyone, why not use them for anything you like?
If anything I am more annoyed that at some point they stopped bothering about only buying corpses of pigs which died from natural reasons, and started supporting the meat industry more directly by buying from the regular butchers/supermarket. Even then, I’m only very slightly annoyed.
I don’t think this is really an excuse, but compared to a lot of other terrible things the US does to human remains, it’s not as bad. Like, at least it didn’t benefit the US military.
I will say, at least in the early episodes, they used a ton of human remains. Call me old fashioned, but I’m not sure it was a respectful to punch actual human skulls until they crumble for pure entertainment and the sale of ad time.
If my skull getting punched until it’s dust is what it takes to get even one American to get interested in science I would consider it an honor.
They used a lot of ballistic gel people and the crash test dummy (Buster). Don’t remember any real human remains. Fake bones are cheaper and easier to get, i dont think using real human remains was within their purview.
They used ballistic gelatine dummies for a while, then decided that they weren’t a good model of most injuries, so had an episode where they designed a new dummy by buying human bones and breaking them to see how much force they could take, then picked out a material with similar properties (which surprisingly ended up being wood), and from then on, built fake skeletons to put in the gelatine dummies.
IIRC, the bones were bought from a shop that just sold human bones. They’d ended up there nominally because their previous owners’ wills had permitted it. E.g. lots of people want their skull to be used in productions of Hamlet, so drama groups often end up owning real skulls. I’m not sure whether Mythbusters was buying things from a general-use shelf or if they counted as medical science due to doing some kind of experiment - the US military counts even if they’re just using corpses for target practice.
Publicly recorded data about the properties of bones just seems like science to me. Science exists outside of corporations and universities. I’d be happy if my remains were that useful to mythbusters.
I’m almost positive I remember that episode where they made the new dummy and they used pig bones lol.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2F-XVXJI7Vk
8min in they test a human femur
I stand corrected I don’t remember that at all. Pretty wild they just went to store that sold human bones. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that’s a thing.
Human remains are not humans. I think we obsess way too much about what happens after a human dies, mostly due to historical reasons (i.e. it makes sense to be afraid of dead bodies or consider them sacred, because interacting with them could make you sick).
If you make sure that the remains are not identifiable to anyone, why not use them for anything you like?
If anything I am more annoyed that at some point they stopped bothering about only buying corpses of pigs which died from natural reasons, and started supporting the meat industry more directly by buying from the regular butchers/supermarket. Even then, I’m only very slightly annoyed.
I would be so stoked if I donated my body to science and my body went to the Mythbusters crew instead of the united States military
I don’t think this is really an excuse, but compared to a lot of other terrible things the US does to human remains, it’s not as bad. Like, at least it didn’t benefit the US military.