These guys have a great job:

We're very careful with these tanks — high and low pressure. We saw firsthand what they can do when testing that classic scene from the movie Jaws in which police chief Brody, played by Roy Scheider, shoots the scuba tank wedged in the mouth of Bruce the Shark with a rifle. The tank blows up, shredding the great white's head.

We tried it — minus the shark. We placed an M-1 Garand rigged for remote-control firing in the MythBusters testing facility — i.e., one of our scorched and battered shipping containers — and aimed the rifle at a 3000-psi scuba tank. The .30-caliber bullet drilled a neat hole, and the tank rocketed around impressively — but didn't blow up.

We like things to blow up. So we tried it again, this time with a cigarette-pack-size block of C4 explosive strapped to a fresh tank. When we detonated the C4, the blast from the ruptured tank was so powerful that it bulged the sides of the shipping container.

Another myth we tested was whether a high-pressure air tank would take off like a rocket if its valve was knocked off. So we dropped a large weight from a height of 10 ft. onto the valve of a tank at 2500 psi. The tank punched through two cinder block walls before it came to a dusty, battered rest. Scary stuff.

Most catastropic failures of dive cylinders I have read about or heard about are aluminum 80's and they tend to fail at the neck where the metal has the most stresses from forming. not to mention the valve transmitting shocks to this area.

Apparently a qurik of the alloy used is when they start to leak at the crack, they rapid cooling embrittles the aluminum and causes a ctastrophic failure.

Almos all of my dive cylinders are steel and they have a far more graceful failure mode.

If they crack and leak, they leak until empty. The steel is much more ductile at lower temps.

I would love to be working on that show..

I would love to be working on that show..

Me too, if I could afford the insurance.

I'd like to see them do the same thing with a CNG tank from a vehicle. Methane at 3000 psia -- instant car bomb.

I wish that red headed hottie on that show would make my high pressure man tank take off like a rocket.

I wish that red headed hottie on that show would make my high pressure man tank take off like a rocket.

Do you want her to use C4 or the M1 on your tank?