Hammertime

Amy had to work late on Monday, so our anniversary dinner consisted of pizza and the rest of a fantastic bottle of champagne left over from the weekend (a wedding gift). We gave each other our “paper anniversary” gifts: she got me a wonderful print of a New Orleans photo by Frank Relle, and I gave her an IOU for a photo album / book of memories that I’m in the process of making. It’ll be great. Just late.

In keeping with our made-for-each-other-ness, we also hunted through TiVo to find an episode of Mythbusters that we wanted to catch: Underwater Car. As the episode guide says,

If you’re unfortunate enough to drive your vehicle into the drink, is it possible to escape, or will a watery grave be your fate? Heading poolside, the guys get their feet wet by doing some intensive underwater training. Then the pressure is on as they seat themselves inside a submerged car and do their darndest to get out.

Entertaining and educational! It promised to be even better than the Diet Coke & Mentos episode!

We zipped through the “B-Team” segments, which we were convinced was assigned to them as a joke: “Why don’t you guys go figure out if a piece of paper can actually be folded more than seven times or something?”

The first thing I learned about a car in the drink is that, once the vehicle is completely filled with water, the pressure equalizes and the doors will open pretty easily. Getting to that equalization point without running out of oxygen is a challenge. And before that point, the pressure of the water makes it impossible to get the door open.

The Mythbusters tested to see whether windows are openable underwater. As it turns out, the manual window strips its gears without opening, while an electric window, though still operable despite the presence of water, isn’t strong enough to open the window against the weight of the water in even minimal circumstances. So if you go in the drink, get the door or window open quickly, before too much pressure builds up.

Now, faux macho psycho that I am, I’ve long contended that, were I trapped in Underwater Car, I’d kick out / shatter a window and escape that way. This belief is based solely on the fact that I once cracked the windshield of my car with a single punch, about 15 years ago. (My brother was pretty impressed.) I always figured that it meant a panicked Gil would be perfectly able to crack one of the windows enough for the water-pressure to shatter the whole shebang, allowing me to escape. (Of course, it’s possible that Hyundai was using substandard glass in its windshields, but hey.)

Or, as it turns out, I could just use the LifeHammer.

After discovering that windows aren’t openable, the Mythbusters tested various ways to break an underwater car window. They found that standard “things you’d have in the car,” like keys or a cellphone, wouldn’t make a scratch. Even kicking the glass with steel-toed boots didn’t do the trick. So they resorted to a hammer designed to shatter the window in emergency situations (or if you’re a carjacker, I guess). It smashed the glass so completely, with what appeared to be a moderate swing, that I immediately jumped onto Amazon to add a couple of them to my shopping list.

Now I just have to figure out which wedding anniversary is the “glass-shattering hammer” one.