Even as a teenager I was aware of the applicability of controlled demolition to that problem. It would be theoretically possible to do so with the right research.
However, that wasn't really the point of the Myth. The myth was the guy blew up his truck with a stick of dynamite. The employment of the ANFO was to show the required investment of effort to create a result commensurate with the Myth's outcome.
If anything, it was very educational in terms of demonstrating how much effort and oomph it takes to create a catastrophic failure of modern equipment; and instilling somewhat of a sense of security in that that sort of oomph was not necessarily something someone would just find laying around.
I mean, I get where you're coming from. They decided that blowing up the truck would be more entertaing than actually teaching how to go about resolving the problem. I think it's a missed opportunity in hindsight to introduce some fairly esoteric skills into the public consciousness; but the time (War on Terror in full swing) would have likely condemned doing so as reckless no matter how much you and I may disagree. People would have pointed their fingers at "teaching impressionable, unstable youths the finer points of controlled demolition and explosives handling" as a contributing factor in every subsequent explosives related incident.
Don't get me wrong; I hate ratings hunting programming, and the swill broadcast television has become today. That episode was legit though.
Plus the sound of a cement truck being annihilated by ANFO will forever be associated with the concept of the universe momentarily unzipping. That was a hell of a spectacle.
Even as a teenager I was aware of the applicability of controlled demolition to that problem. It would be theoretically possible to do so with the right research.
However, that wasn't really the point of the Myth. The myth was the guy blew up his truck with a stick of dynamite. The employment of the ANFO was to show the required investment of effort to create a result commensurate with the Myth's outcome.
If anything, it was very educational in terms of demonstrating how much effort and oomph it takes to create a catastrophic failure of modern equipment; and instilling somewhat of a sense of security in that that sort of oomph was not necessarily something someone would just find laying around.
I mean, I get where you're coming from. They decided that blowing up the truck would be more entertaing than actually teaching how to go about resolving the problem. I think it's a missed opportunity in hindsight to introduce some fairly esoteric skills into the public consciousness; but the time (War on Terror in full swing) would have likely condemned doing so as reckless no matter how much you and I may disagree. People would have pointed their fingers at "teaching impressionable, unstable youths the finer points of controlled demolition and explosives handling" as a contributing factor in every subsequent explosives related incident.
Don't get me wrong; I hate ratings hunting programming, and the swill broadcast television has become today. That episode was legit though.
Plus the sound of a cement truck being annihilated by ANFO will forever be associated with the concept of the universe momentarily unzipping. That was a hell of a spectacle.