38

I have encountered a picture on 9gag, one of "weird facts" ones, that stated following:

Mythbusters once investigated the explosive properties of an easily available material. It was so explosive that they decided to destroy the footage. They contacted DARPA to warn them about how it could be used to make a homemade bomb.

Had this happened? And if it did, why DARPA and not something like Homeland Security? To my understanding, it's not DARPA function to protect from those who can create a bomb, and they already know how to create a bomb of their own.

toriningen
  • 483
  • 4
  • 5

1 Answers1

51

It's true, according to what Adam Savage (i.e. one of the MythBusters) said at Silicon Valley Comic Con 2016, as can be seen in this video here. This is what he said:

The biggest disaster we had was Kari, Grant, and Tory were investigating an easily available material and its supposed explosive properties. What they found out was so explosive that we destroyed the footage and agreed never to say what we learned.

Seriously! Like when DARPA just put out the request for civilians to design bombs that might be really hard for them to deal with I wrote to them about this because I'm sure they already know about it—many bomb techs do. It was absolutely terrifying.

The DARPA project must be Improv, which was announced mere days before that con (March 11, 2016 vs. March 18–20, 2016).

Laurel
  • 30,040
  • 9
  • 132
  • 118