Testing Out Earthquake Fables! | MythBusters | Season 9 Episode 14 | Full Episode

on this groundbreaking episode of Mythbusters oh man someone here didn't flush Adam and Jamie get down and dirty oh gross as they tackle two viewer tales about toilets first there's hot air power as the guys try to solve a classic hand drying dilemma ah yeah I do this in every airport I get to then they flush out which communal cubicle is the most contaminated oh this is nasty meanwhile Grant car and Tori that's an earthquake coming drop cover and hold as they find out if during the shake of a quake this is terrifying the best survival solution is to dive for the doorway and the Miss break out the house can they break out the house who are The MythBusters Adam Savage that's science and Jamie heinan I'm ready between them more than 30 years of special effects experience together with Grant Imahara buring Carrie Byron always makes you feel dangerous and Tori bichi there's something you don't see every day they don't just tell the myths they put them to the test [Music] first up it's time to get down and [Music] dirty hey sorry about that I won't ask what kept you yeah call of nature but get this while I was sitting there I was thinking of a couple of toilet stories that we could test seriously yeah the first one involves those blow dryer jet dryers in public restrooms that are supposed to to be super sanitary yeah there's a myth going around that they are in fact less sanitary than a regular old paper towel huh the second one involves testing which stall in a public restroom is in fact the cleanest great we get to spend time in a public restroom do you mind if we start with a hand dryer first not at all there are over 12 million hand dryers in the us alone so can they really be a hygiene Horror Show well the theory to this myth is twofold first dryers supposedly Purge fewer pathogens than their paper counterparts and second they can also fan a fog of micro my Asma that's a contamination catastrophe but will this myth be hot air this story doesn't make any sense to me how so well if you're drying your hands that implies that you've washed them absolutely and if you've washed your hands youve removed all the bacteria so whether a drying method is cleaner than another is irrelevant right I see your point but only some people use the full soap and water for washing their hands some people they just get their hands wet before drying them off why don't we test both of those and see which is the proper worst case scenario for testing hand towel versus dryer okay that works so how do people wash their hands well to my way of thinking there are three things people do in a restroom regarding washing their hands the first is they pretend to wash their hands the second thing people do is get their hands wet but use no soap the third thing people do and the thing we all know you should do is wash their hands with soap so first things first Jamie and I are going to wash our hands using each of those techniques and compare the bacterial loads to see if Jamie is in fact right just washing your hands in soap and water leave them completely clean and first to go is Adam who after each cleaning custom hands over to the hinaman I'm swapping Adam's hands with a soy based growth medium so if there's any bacteria on his hands I'm going to find it this is the last one yeah let's plate them and bake them okay well I've done my round of handwashing now it's Jamie's turn perfect not a drop of water once Jamie's also swab for for science it's time for some germ germination okay Adam first process is pretty simple we've collected our samples we've spread them evenly across soy Ager and a petri dish and we've put them in an incubator we're going to let them sit there overnight we'll come in in the morning and see what we've got it may not look like much but with soy to saver at a temperature of 37 C this is a pathogen paradise and sure enough 24 hours later let's see what kind of surprise we have all right well the soap wash not a freaking nothing yep the soap Plate's great which cannot be said of the water wash how come your bacteria are bigger than mine sometimes that's just the way it works and as for the no wash oh gross given that this myth isn't about the advocacy of washing your hands it's about a worst case scenario for bacterial spread I vote in the interest of the worst case scenario that we go with water rinsing yeah so the whole reason we were doing this test is because Jamie suggested if you wash your hands with soap and water and it eliminates all the bacteria who cares about the drying method there's no bacteria to be more or less clean with and turns out he's right look at that washing our hands with soap and water yielded no bacteria that we could find on this petri dish but when we only pretended to wash our hands when we rinsed them in in water but use no soap check out what we found so this is the method that we are going to use to test the cleanliness of air dryers versus paper towels and the first task for that test is to rustle up a restroom well this is a nice clean white space it is I imagine that this is exactly what it's like inside your brain perfectly Blank Slate except for the one thing that you're thinking about am I right pretty much shall we get to work yeah we're here to test whether air powerered hand dryers spread germs around a bathroom more than paper towels do and so of course to test that we need a bathroom one bathroom coming up it's all hands on deck is the guy set up an experimental setup we call this hiding the crime see ugly seam pretty seam it's just that easy with a sink perfect and a room device spider a blow dryer the power and a towel dispenser it works their banged up bathrooms ready to lend this myth a hand ah yeah that was the last favor tail looks like you're going to have to get some more those hands look pretty wet I don't want to tell your business but that was the last favor tale yeah how you doing [Music] next up a myth that's shaken not [Music] stirred okay so I've got a myth that's ready to rumble all right what is it the myth is that the best place to be in an earthquake when it hits your house is in the doorway yeah that's what they've been telling us since we were kids but I mean isn't the new technique to get under something and hang on true that is the current advice but some fans still believe the doorway is the best place to be and that is what they want us to put to the test all right sounds like it's time to shake for science no not that kind of shake oh that kind [Applause] [Music] of what's matter Earth there's no doubt that earthquakes can literally rock your world oh my God we're having an earthquake wait a minute hold on hold on but when the Earth moves should you really die for the doorway or will this myth be at fault [Music] all right so I love this story but I foresee a couple of problems okay like what well first of all doesn't the answer depend on the type of house you're in how it was constructed how old it is true so why don't we test this on a couple of different kinds of homes uh first a newer sort of wooden style house and then maybe an older masonry one okay fair enough but then there's a second problem we can't just sit around waiting for an earthquake to happen well we could do is find one of those giant Shake tables and see if they'd let us borrow it you know what I know just the place place now we are testing the myth that during an earthquake it is best to stand in a door jam in a building now ever since I was a kid growing up in California that is what they told us but I don't know if that's true so we are here at the California Academy of Sciences and they are going to let us use their earthquake Shake table so we can get to the bottom of this myth let's hope we don't break it yeah breaking this Museum Masterpiece would be bad news so first the guys go in for a trial tremor all right you guys ready for an earthquake oh my God at the L I want out of here this is terrifying thanks to a battery of air bladders the shake table can simulate San Francisco's 1906 nightmare the 15th most energetic earthquake in US history but given its engineering Excellence save the bobblehead are they really going to let the MythBusters meddle with it holy moly we're all going to die well since you already have a shake table we were talking about making a brick and mortar style building as well as a wood structure building do you think maybe we could just use yours and shake them till they fall down um well it's uh it sounds like a great idea but this is actually a working Museum so maybe you have to build your own or something okay so how does your shake taste able imitate the forces of an earthquake well we don't do the Z plane which is up and down we actually do the X and the y direction and we do that movement because that's the the strongest Motion in an earthquake all right well thank you very much for all the information I think we got a lot of building to do oh that's great so we have visited the California Academy of Sciences earthquake table and it is awesome we're all gonna die and basically we're going to copy it but make it our own mythbuster style the first step with that is to build a model and that is with all of these cylinders are going to be pushing and pulling just to see what we're getting ourselves into with a build as mindboggling as this look I know it looks like a mesh right now but it's totally going to make sense in the minute Grant starting with a proof of concept and if this 2x two model shakes perfect rattles and rolls the guys will cue the heavy metal as they attempt to build its way bigger brother it's a fine adjustment tool a bigger brother that'll Measure 11 by 13 weigh 5,000 lb and be capable of shaking down two builtup houses so our earthquake Shake table concept model is complete now what this is is a loadbearing platform supported by casters it's got actuators in the X and Y direction to shake it what we're interested in is what happens to the house after it's been collapsed when subjected to earthquake magnitude forces kind of like [Music] this i' call that about a 10 there's no doubt that their shrimp shakers the business but next it's time to build the be East can the humble hand dryer really create a pathogen Paradise or is this myth bathroom baloney to find out the MythBusters have rustled up the recipe I do this in every airport I get to ah yeah and it's almost time to get cooking the myth is that drying your hands with an air blower is less sanitary than using a paper towel in order to test this we'll be putting a bacterial marker on the hands of each of our 16 volunteers and then swabbing them both before and after they use each of these devices if the myth is true we should see far more bacteria on their hands after air drawing then after using the paper towel indeed but before that first we need to make a clean space there's one final secret setup we're cleaning our bathroom with a mixture of water and ethyl alcohol which will not leave any residue that could harm any bacteria this is for a test we'll do after we've finished with all of our test subjects but more on that later okay so more on that later done I was taking so long Slowpoke with the volunteers to hand next Jamie's special Brew can be Uncorked this is a culture of eoli bacteria now eoli can sometimes be harmful but this particular strain was designed by a lab and it's completely harmless okay all our participants will be immersing their hands in this stuff and it'll create a consistent bacterial load for all our testing it's all hands to the pump Now flip them as Jamie applies the same amount in the same way to get the same bacterial load excellent and with that the mother of all washing wipeouts can begin and here's how let's do a little editing trick give me a screen between my two hands perfect now each of our test subjects will go through the exact same set of procedures first they will get their hands sprayed with a bacterial marker and they'll let them air dry then they come to me and I swab their hand then they go and wash their hand and I swab it again after they've washed then they go and dry their hand and I swab them one last time they'll go through this with both the paper towels and the air dryer at the end we take all 96 of our swab samples back to the shop culture them and find out where the bacteria really ends up that's the plan so it's time to get this sanitary Showdown on the road all right first person please volunteer one steps up to get swabbed thank you then washed 1 1,00 2 1,00 3 1000 then swabbed again left hand again if you would sir next he heads for some towel traction which is followed by one last swap science next and so the pattern repeats thank you very much as all six steam volunteers get sampled before washing excellent after washing thank you and after towel Dy excellent thank you thank you to say it's a little repetitive is an understatement thank you excellent thank you but to really see a pathogen pattern a solid sample is essential 48 pieces of data down nice work thank you with 48 swabs the guys are exactly halfway through so it's onwards and upwards here we go again with the bacterial load reloaded the entire swap mob hits the washroom once more very strange our test subject group seems to have developed its own ritual like last time next the volunteers swab wash and swab before this time turning blue with the hand dryer but will this different drying device really let microbes make hay number 16 There It Is Well with the final test finally done the guys have a hunch you know I am noticing something sort of interesting I'm wondering if it's the same thing that I've been noticing well I'm smelling the odor of the growth medium a lot more now because the air dryer aerosolizing the stuff I think and I didn't smell it before with the paper towels I'll tell you what I've been noticing I notice a lot more wet hands see it takes longer to dry your hands with the air dryer but people aren't taking that extra time thus they're coming back here and their hands are wetter than with the towels both the smell and the clammy hands suggest that the dryer is not eliminating pathogens from people's Palms but what does the data say here it is all of our data gathered from 16 test subjects on both the air dryer and the paper towels 96 pieces of data in all and this is isn't everything that we're Gathering today you remember how earlier I said that we were cleaning the bathrooms for a reason that would become apparent later well later is happening right now because we're not just concerned about spreading bacteria on people's hands we're also going to test the immediate environment around where they dry them to see what if any bacterial spread there is there as well so Adam gets down and dirty with one final swabbing sequence but there's a lot right here as he collects 10 samples from identical points in each bathroom so after all that repetitive work what did we end up with well one answer is 116 test tubes full of growth medium and probably some bacteria but another answer is an answer an answer to the original question which is more sanitary the air dryer or the paper towels that answer is inherent in these 116 tubes right now we've encoded that answer into a live medium and we will decode it by growing that live medium how cool is is that well let's get these back to the shop and start growing some bacteria I've got my incubator warm and ready to go that sended creepy let's go 24 hours later with bacteria sprouting like there's no tomorrow ah there's a lot the guys count every Colony 59 60 61 lamp in every sample here we go before they're finally ready to wrap up the results all right the great hand tow versus Air Dryer debate the results are in are you ready to hear them sure pretty stunning when we had our test subjects dry their hands with the air dryer they were able to reduce the bacterial load on their hands by 23% okay but when we had the individuals dry their hands with the handheld they were able to reduce the bacterial load on their hands by 71% almost three times as much that's amazing but that's for the individual what about for the environment well when we swab the area around the air dryer we found a total of 41 colonies of bacteria when we swab the area around the hand towel we found three which yet again indicates that the air dryers spreading more bacteria than the handels indeed they do this myth is totally confirmed the claims of the air dryers just don't hold up it's just hot air [Music] when an earthquake Quivers are you better off DE camping in the doorway well to find out the MythBusters must first conjure up their little Shake tables bigger brother the small scale is done now it is time to move on to the full scale Shake table now the construction of this is going to be a bit of a challenge looking good looking good the dimensions will be 11 by 13 ft we're going to be using square steel tube with 1/2 in thick wall I think we're good this stuff is strong it has to be strong because once we start building buildings on top of it and shaking them down this thing has to withstand thousands of pounds of force their steel is clearly the real deal there's about 5,000 lb of Steel here and according to my [Music] back that's a lot and once the top sides weld it tight cue the forklift [Music] foxtrod moving around the shake table frame is so nerve-wracking stop okay on a scale of 1 to 10 what's the pucker Factor not only is this thing 5,000 lb and we're moving it around with our forklifts in our shop which has zero room this is probably one of the scariest things we've done in a while huh but I also I don't want to kill Tori slow down [Music] Carrie all of the enamel on the top of my teeth is gone let's get to welding with the frame finally flipped out the guys make short work of a long job and yet still the build has barely just begun did you hear that that's an earthquake coming we've now completed the heavyduty steel structure which is going to be the base of our Shake table now we need to build what shakes it for that we're building eight monuments these are nomatic Springs or air Springs usually they're used in semi-truck trailer beds so that it can balance loads or provide some extra spring for us they're going to be on the edges of our Shake table and they're going to provide 10,000 lb of force each with eight of them that's 80,000 lb that ought to shake things up now this one's finished we only got seven more to go these noons pneumatics will help shake the Quake back and forth it's like an erector set a giant erector set and once they're secured into place nothing more satisfying than drilling through concrete and attached to the frame cool suzan don't you CLE me the guys have one more trick up their sleeves these are the air casters this is the most exciting part remember the shake table at the Museum their Shake table was able to move on an XY plane ours is going to be even better ours is going to be able to move on a z plane as well how with these These are arago air casters and they're able to lift 8,000 lb each now we're going to have six of them four in each corner and two in the middle these are going to allow our Shake table to not only move side to side forwards and backwards but also up and down so let's face it if it's worth doing it's worth overdoing indeed and the one thing that's still needs overdoing got to show them who's boss is to put in place the plumbing this is the biggest air hose I have ever seen I've seen [Music] bigger a process that that like the entire build takes longer than two shakes it's pretty manly work putting the man into manifold by Nightfall it's finally ready for a [Music] test and here's how I think we got a shot at Dancing with the Stars I really do after hours of Designing and days of heavy building the earthquake table is finally done now behind me is a fleet of air compressors now it's important that we have a lot of air for this table to work and I'll show you why now compressed air will be moving through these hoses into this manifold where it will be distributed to six separate air casters now once those air casters inflate the whole table will lift up and it will actually ride on a cushion of air our second source of air is going to come through these hoses through these pipes and these air bladders they're going to control the shaking so the table stops a quaking now all the valves that control the air bladders are going to this Bank of relays is going to this microcontroller and this computer we can control each of those valves separately so that we can get exactly the magnitude of earthquake that we need want to see it fire up the compressors it's time to put the sucker to work with the air on the guys are going to kick off charging the air casters with the up down test here we go in three two [Music] one it's working first impressions are good Second Impressions it's like an earthquake are even [Music] better it's working dude all right so that's the up and down all right let's see what the side to side can do okay you guys ready three two one the 6.0 on the awesome scale ain't that the truth with the air casters controlling the up and down and the pneumatic cylinders Pumping Iron back and forth the biggest build in MythBusters history is ready to rock this is an amazing success now all we need to do is build a house and then see if we can shake it down this is awesome to test admit that a doorway is the best place to stand during an earthquake we built a shake table it's working great it's giving us a really bad bu in earthquake now all we need to do is build a house and take it down too much f there's no restroom respite because next up is it all for one and one for all next up in toilet trouble we have a myth that in a bathroom a public restroom of multiple stalls the stall closest to the door is going to be the cleanest and also least used stall why would that be the case I personally avoid that stall because I'm assuming everyone else has jumped in it and it's probably filthy well I'd imagine some people also want more privacy so they'd go to the other end of the bathroom in either case the myth is the same that people for whatever reason are avoiding the stall closest to the door and thus it unexpectedly is a Bastion of cleanliness in a public restroom well I guess it's time to get down and dirty nice F restroom routines waver widely but is it true that we all tend to steer clear of stall one making it the freshest faucet of all I'm going to go out on a limb and say I think the plan here is pretty straightforward can you guess what I'm thinking find a public restroom stake it out count how many people use what stalls yes but we'd also use some of our bacteriological testing knowledge to measure how dirty each of the Stalls is at the end of our test sure why not how hard could that be over the years we've been doing MythBusters we've been granted access to props and locations to do our experiments that well when we first started would have seemed completely impossible we got a 747 that we were allowed to get behind and test the power of Hurricane Forest winds we were even allowed to sink a boat in the proteced wildlife sanctuary of Monteray Bay and then to raise it back up again with 30,000 pingpong balls but finding a public restroom with four stalls that we could film and test in has proven to be one of the biggest bears we've ever had to tackle luckily we believe we found the bathroom and it's here at the Cal Maritime Academy not only is it one of the best Maritime cies in the country but they've got a bathroom that they're willing to let us film in and I think it's going to be perfect it's not often a public bathroom can be perfect but for this stall tall tail this restroom rules now please bear with us there's only so many interesting ways you can film a restroom but the basic myth is this that in a public restroom stall number one that is the one closest to the door is both the cleanest and the least used because of two assumptions people make about human behavior the first is that people assume because of its proximity to the door the first stall is the most used and therefore the dirtiest and therefore they pick another stall the second assumption people make is that people will avoid the first stall and go all the way to the end because they want privacy auditory privacy either way the net result is the same is the first stall the least used and therefore the cleanest that's what we're going to test and to do just that the guys need two dollops of data that they'll collect over 4 days bathroom bacteria and you bend Usage Now throughout the course of our test we're going to need to know how many people are using which stalls in this bathroom how are we going to do that I mean we could be in here with a clipboard just counting it off but I think that would be creepy don't you we're going to avoid that with a mechanical solution I'm going to install it now whoops a mechanical door clicker is a simple solution for logging toilet traffic perfect and with all four in installed on the Stalls next it's time to cut the crap I win as Adam and Jamie along with some mean cleaners give the bathroom a bacteria Blitz for us to record the amount of bacteria in each stall we need to start with a clean slate that's what all this cleaning is about eliminating traces of bacteria so any colonies we find at the end of the experiment have all grown during the test and not before that's the theory and once the restroom is a pathogen free zone the experiment can begin that's it all the counters are zeroed well everything's been swapped let's get out of here all right so let the crapping [Music] commence so after a monster build we're finally ready to start testing yes and you know what I found some research that indicates the dive for the doorway part might have come from older construction where they didn't have the benefit of modern earthquake proofing well that does does make a lot of sense I mean the doorway would be the strongest part of the construction exactly all right why don't we proceed like this we'll build an oldtime masonry building and then a modern-day wood structure we'll stick Buster and his buddies in there we'll stick one of them in the door jam and see what happens when they get All Shook Up ohuh okay so by now you know that we are testing the myth that standing in a doorway is the best place to be during an earthquake now we learned from the California Academy of Sciences that the origin of this myth is possibly in unreinforced masonry buildings now a common type of building around the world as well as in historical buildings in the United States so we found ourselves some skilled Masons they're going to build a structure on our Shake table and once it's cured we're going to try to shake it down yep for test one The MythBusters don't need to be movers or shakers between the lines because this house is being time-elapsed into place by experts and once the concrete's left to cure for three whole weeks it's time to decorate [Music] wow I really like what you did with the place Grant you really made this a home for the subsequent Shakedown it's important that the inside is as realistic as the outside a quack damn you am I missing an eyebrow this is why we can't have anything [Music] nice and that means Furniture knickknacks and mannequins I'm placing three mannequins around the room one underneath the table one just standing in the room and one standing in the doorway now for this myth to be confirmed the one in the doorway is going to farare the best in the quake and to assess relative damage we have an accelerometer in the head and I'm placing Shock watches around their bodies they may not look like much but these pink missing links very muscular rock hard hals thanks to their sensors will register any impact or crushing injury in the subsequent Shakedown so I'm no Mason but I did observe how this building was being built and it conforms to how you would have built something in precode olden days which means that there are strong points and weak points now these Corners are one of the strongest parts of the building there's rebar going all the way up to the ceiling with poured concrete same thing for the door all the way around the arch that's all solid so by the end of this my personal opinion is that the only thing left standing is going to be this wall with the front door so grant money is on the myth but before the Earth moves excuse me there's one final piece of the puzzle some us Geological Survey sensors that will record the magnitude of their Tremor and once wired up it's time to shake baby shake all right we are set to shake the building down okay 5 4 3 2 [Music] 1ow wow the chandelier is going crazy wow that is a lot of power right from the get-go their Quake is quivering up down left and right with the same power as San Francisco's 1906 Shar and yet this olden day style building is holding firm but not for long the window above the window coming out oh crap look at that after just 15 seconds the sidewall is already in pieces and mannequin one is also down for the count oh my God look at back wall goinging that is terrifying moments later the back wall and then the other side wall follow suit this is terrifying I think it's going to go it's Quake Carnage everywhere except incredibly for the doorway all right so far though the doorway does seem to be the safest place to stand yeah no I mean given all your other choices in this situation I think the doorways got it even after a longer than typical 2 minutes of quake and shake the doorway still holds firm until kill the air kill the air the machine itself gives up and with that the conclusions are quick to follow well I think it's pretty clear I mean the only wall Still Standing is the one with the door and the only mannequin that didn't sustain any injury is the one standing in the doorway yeah he looks all right other than being whacked by the door a few times I mean I think we can call this one plausible for this kind of construction yeah it's totally plausible so this is a pretty fantastic result as I expected this front wall with the doorway stayed intact everybody inside the house totally devastated guy in the doorway totally fine but there are two caveats the first one is that this is only good for a certain amount of time if your earthquake lasts for several minutes that wall is going to come down too second thing there aren't many buildings built like this these days most of them have modern seismic coats in mind in fact you watching at home you're probably in a modern building so that's what we got to do next build a modern [Music] building welcome back MythBusters has been attempting to answer the age-old conundrum of which bathroom stall in a public restroom is the cleanest which is the dirtiest and which gets the most use in order to test this we have commandeered the bathroom behind me by cleaning it within an inch of its life adding clicker counters on each of the four stall doors and we plan to come back in a few days to test how much bacteria built up over the time the public was using it but now it's time for people to come in and just start using it like they normally would so come on public time to use the bathroom although the toilet is now open for business users are a little reticent but they needn't worry now normally we'd have a whole bunch of cameras everywhere to record the process of our experiment but well in this particular case it might not be such a good idea and anyway why would you want to watch what happens in here I certainly wouldn't me either so let's stick with some cryptic close-ups a time-lapse montage and some inappropriate interviews here comes another a member of the public Hy uh what's your name my name is Brad Brad uh mind if I ask you a personal question uh sure why not okay uh did you use one of the Stalls in there when you went in I I did okay which one did you use which one are you normally inclined to use number two number two the second one yes sir all right thank you very much sir no problem all right have a nice day number two so it's one point to stall two and there's more to come did you in fact use one of the Stalls in there uh yeah okay which one did you use I like the one in the back corner one in fact throughout day one nobody used stall one at all I choose the third one uh the fourth one the big one number three I used the one far on the left as he walk in we are taking a break from our regularly scheduled programming in the men's room to visit the ladies room where we discovered to our astonishment not one or two but three freaking couches in this joint now I know why they always go to the bathroom to get and why they take so long you can write to us about this sexist talk later but first I'm actually kind of interested in the interviews we did outside the restroom yeah it was a little creepy but um they all seem to Value their privacy more than anything else yeah and seek out the farthest stall from the door like I do me I don't care you're all just like ah hear me day two at the gents and business is booming as this myth gets flashed out over 96 hours which with one final farewell come to a sticky end well are you ready I am it's been 4 days let's resap this joint remember there's two bits of data they need to collect oh man someone here didn't flush that's gross first is the bacterial load of each Stall oh this is nasty which this time round is not quite as much fun the last time we did this it was perfectly clean now it's disgusting and second is the door clicker data which is much easier on the eye what you get well I can tell you but I can't tell them they're going to have to wait till we get back to the shop see even if I turned it around and showed it to you it would still be blurred that's right it's television let's go well it's been 3 days since we started our toilet experiment what have we got wow nice Graphics we actually got some great numbers nobody messed with our counters and starting with the stall farthest from the door stall number four we had a total of 24 users stall number three 34 users there's a few more for stall number two at 38 but stall number one had a total of 23 users well that's the least number of uses how does that correlate with bacterial count here is where it actually gets really interesting we counted the number of colonies from all of our swabs starting again at number four the number was 231 moving in closer a little more 290 267 stall number one 162 it's not only the least used but it is by far the cleanest of all four stalls wow that's definitive yeah this one is completely confirmed well looks like in future I'll be using stall number one I'm still going to stick with stall number four in earthquake emergency oh my go the door just scorned the only mannequin that didn't sustain any injury is the one standing in the doorway so as spectacular as that result was does it mean that diving for the doorway is the best thing to do well not necessarily you see simply houses just aren't Built This Way in the US anymore I mean they used to be which may be where the myth came from but with modern building codes is the doorway still the best place to be time to build something a little more up to date here comes the house so for their upto-date shaking setup Grant's got wood it's amazing what you can buy online these days he's montaging a timber frame housee that's being constructed strictly to code which has Grand thinking we'll see a very different result so this is our wood frame house built to Modern building codes it's got studs every 16 in it's lagged into the floor the roof trusses have hurricane ties now one reason why a woodframe house might Fair better than a masonry house is when a brick wall flexes the mortar simply pops out and the wall crumbles and fails with wood frame house it can flexs equally in both directions so it can absorb some of that energy and probably Fair better now the doorway might be the strongest part of a masonry house but my money is on the woodframe house being equally strong all around that's the theory and once the roof and walls are up that just leaves the finishing touches hi everybody Welcome to our house the windows and the all-important door good night next comes the furniture ooh be careful with that it's been in the family for years which is identical to that used in the masonry house totally not narcissistic at all then in go the USGS sensors whose owner is adamant that this myth is at fault okay Dave what do you think about the myth that the doorway is the safest place to stand in an earthquake I wouldn't do it the USGS Advocates that you drop cover and hold on which means drop under a sturdy table or a desk and hold on to it so that you don't separate from the table and if that advice is true dudes and ser short it's totally normal then the under the table dummy should do better than the doorman good luck but who will be the last man standing this [Music] time this is an 8.0 magnitude earthquake with a wooden frame two code house starting the sequence three 2 1 immediately medely the table Roars into life look look at the chandelier the chandelier swinging around the room and it's not long before the bookcase takes out the mannequin one oh my God everything is falling over while the inside may be imploding the guy under the table is injury-free which cannot be said of the dman that dude got space yeah the door just smack in the butt a full 2 minutes of spanking later and the house stays standing strong the construction's way too good so the guys decide to come up for it okay shut it down shut it down so we shook our house at an 8.0 and you can see it's still standing it's built to Modern building codes which have seismic concerns in mind now inside of the house it's a different story there's stuff everywhere but the important thing is that the guy under the table did just as well as a guy standing in the doorway and in some ways actually better see the table provided shielding whereas the guy in the doorway he got smacked several times with the door as it swung around but we're not done yet we're going to shake it one more time so unlike the masonry house this Modern Marvel is made of Sterner stuff which means the duck cover and hold technique is so far the safest but what will happen when they crank the machine to the max this is Quake Villa with a two code wouldn't stratch your house three two one with the air pressure firing at all cylinders the earthquake hits at 9.5 making it the strongest Quake ever recorded what the heck is going on yet the house still stands which is more than can be said for the [Music] doorm unable to maintain stability he's hit the deck and is out for the count that's not good which means the only merry mannequin is the Crouching Tiger I can't believe you but perhaps the biggest surprise is that the built to code building appears to be unbreakable so as you can see the modern building codes are that way for a reason this house which we built in a day and a half stood up to a 9.5 earthquake enough to bring down an unreinforced masonry house it's a feat of engineering for sure but with two different results for their two different houses the guys head home for the wrapup okay so how are we going to call this one well given that the myth is that diving for the doorway is the best thing to do in all cases I I think we're going to have to call this one busted cuz that's not always the case exactly I mean maybe if you're in an old unreinforced masonry building which are very rare in the United States getting to the doorway is a good idea but a better idea is getting out of the building all together exactly and as far as modern buildings built a code they're probably not going to collapse anyway which means the current advice of drop cover and hold on is your best bet that's what I'll be [Music] doing [Music] [Music] no [Music]