Why Did One Air Tank Blow Up the Shark? JAWS Warned You First.

One bullet, one scuba tank, and three tons of shark come down as rain. MythBusters tested it twice, Peter Benchley told Spielberg it was "in no way realistic", and the explosion wasn't even Spielberg's idea. But 73 minutes into Jaws, in fifteen seconds on the back of the Orca, two men tell you exactly how this shark is going to die. Another day in the yard!!!! The yard checks the ending in the order the shark meets it. The bite: white sharks investigate with their mouths, and a metal tank in salt water makes its own weak electric field. The tank: a full one holds a lot of energy, and some really have exploded, at the fill station, from cracks in the neck. The shot: a bullet makes a hole, and the tank becomes a rocket, not a bomb. Verdict: BUSTED. CHAPTERS 0:00 Intro 1:12 The warning, 73 minutes in 2:59 The bite: why a shark would bite a metal tank 5:22 The tank: can a scuba tank explode? 7:15 The shot: MythBusters, twice 8:44 The book's ending, and whose idea the explosion was 10:30 Bruce, the shark that kept breaking 11:52 Blow up: why the shot still works 13:21 Another day in the yard Narrated by: Me :) SOURCES - Jaws (1975): Hooper's warning and Quint's "Might eat it, I suppose" at 1:13:45; the M-1 on the gear list at 1:09:14; "Show me the tank" / "Blow up" / "Smile, you son of a-" at 1:59:53-2:00:18 - Jaws @ 50: The Definitive Inside Story (National Geographic, 2025): Steven Spielberg on Hal Barwood and Matthew Robbins' note, the bite-force version ("not credible") and the rifle; the storyboards; James Cameron ("I was a diver... so I bought it"); Bruce named after Bruce Ramer; "80% of the time, the shark didn't work" - The Dick Cavett Show (July 1, 1981): Spielberg on electrolysis and on the great white that bit a shiny cage off Australia - Peter Benchley, Jaws (Doubleday, 1974); Kathi Scrizzi Driscoll, "Author Peter Benchley tries to sink 'Jaws' stories", Cape Cod Times (2000; republished June 18, 2025) - MythBusters "Jaws Special" (Discovery, July 17, 2005) and "MythBusters vs. Jaws" (Aug 29, 2015): Wikipedia, MythBusters (2005 season) and (2015 season) - A. J. Kalmijn, "The Electric Sense of Sharks and Rays", Journal of Experimental Biology 55: 371-383 (1971); Scripps Institution of Oceanography, "Adrianus Kalmijn: 1933-2021" (photo courtesy of Thera Kalmijn) - Save Our Seas Foundation, "Why do white sharks bite people?" - U.S. Department of Transportation notice RSPA-99-5143 (1999), via Bill High, PSI Inc., "Cracking and Ruptures of SCBA and SCUBA Aluminum Cylinders Made from 6351 Alloy"; Federal Register 70 FR (Oct 26, 2005), aluminum alloy 6351-T6 cylinders - Wikipedia: Diving cylinder (test pressure), Scuba cylinder valve (bursting disc, CGA S1.1), Jaws (film), Jaws (novel) - The "about 100 g of TNT" figure is my own rough estimate: an 11.1-litre tank at 207 bar expanding adiabatically to 1 atmosphere FOOTAGE Film clips are used under fair use for commentary and criticism: Jaws (1975), 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954). Clips and footage via: National Geographic, The Dick Cavett Show, Discovery, MythBusters, Adam Savage's Tested, GBH News, CBS Sunday Morning, Geraldo Rivera, Deep Look (PBS Digital Studios / KQED), 9 News Australia, EasyTek (Rudolf Schlatter, Marine & Motors Engineering), Alec Peirce Scuba. Stills: Wikimedia Commons ("Lorenzini pores on snout of tiger shark", Albert kok, CC BY-SA 3.0), Scripps Institution of Oceanography.