Crazy 50 Cal Muzzle Blast

Have you ever wondered how much power, how much energy, comes from the muzzle break of a rifle?, especially from a 308 or a 50 BMG. Matt of Demolition Ranch Youtuber shows off the power of the muzzle blast from a 308 and a 50 BMG.

If you’re not familiar of what muzzle blast can do then this demonstration should give you an idea of how dangerous it can get. Especially from a plastic bottle, head of lettuce, a roll of hand towel, light bulbs and bags of flour point of view.

See the footage below, its a blast. (no pun intended)

Video Transcription
[singing] ~He just wants a life…for his fifty… all on his own, no one will come he’s gotta save ’em… He tells ’em oh love, nobody’s gonna hurt you love, I’m gonna give you all of my love, nobody matters like you~

[Musical clip]

[Intro] Welcome to Demolition Ranch. Have you ever wondered -ok, let’s just start off- we know that bullets have a lot of power, right? I mean let’s just all agree: Bullets have a lot of power. But what I’ve always wondered, and I’m assuming you guys, your inquiring minds, have also always wondered, is: How much power, how much energy, comes from the muzzle break of a rifle?

The muzzle break is this. So you’ll notice there’s holes in it. So, bullet comes down the barrel, and then all this shoots out a bunch of hot gasses to keep the muzzle from flying up. So it’s shooting out energy to keep the muzzle where you want it.

So let’s just talk about this gun first, because it is my brand-new 308 AR-15. This is my first 308 from F1 Firearms, and it is so awesome looking. So let’s just go over the features really quick.

Has a rose-gold, super smooth bolt-carrier group in here, and you’ll notice that the whole gun is skeletonized, so it has a skeletonized lower here, so you can see straight through it. Also has a skeletonized upper, both sides. So when that bolt is not there– I’ll just show you guys! When the bolt is not there, you can see straight through the gun. That’s to make it lighter, it also just makes it cooler. I guess like, temperature-wise *and* awesomeness-wise.

We also have a fluted barrel. This is an 18-inch barrel, and then they have this crazy muzzle break, which has a bunch of little holes that all direct gas out in certain ways. This is called the Slayer muzzlebreak. And then I hve a vortex razor Gen2 1-6 topping it off. Really nice scope. Then a little skeletonized things that are kinda neat on this gun.

So this is a super-accurate gun. Today we’re not shooting for accuracy. I’m actually gonna do some long-range shooting– probably in a few weeks, in an upcoming demolitionranch video, I’m gonna take all my, like, really precision rifles, and take ’em out and shoot long range. Because I’ve done like 400 yards, we need to go further though. But today we’re shooting close-range. And we’re really not even caring about the bullets coming out of these guns. I just wanna see the muzzle blast coming out of these guns. So we’ve got a variety of targets that we’re gonna put right next to or around the muzzlebreaks, and fire these guns, and see what kind of damage all that energy being released does. Not the bullet, just the gas coming out of here.

And, uh, we also have a 50cal, so. Coming out of [explosion noises] here.

Let’s start small with the 308. That sounds weird, 308s are huge, but compared to a 50 it’s small. So let’s start with the 308 and see what we can do.

I have actually never fired this gun. But it has been fired, because this gun, this actual gun, was in Guns and Ammo magazine, they did some testing on it. So, it has been fired. It’s a brand-new gun, but it has been fired before, just not by me, so we’ll fire a couple, make sure it works.

[Shots]

Ok, pretty sweet! So. Let’s see what kind of force comes out the side of this. We have a milk jug full of water. I’m gonna touch it to the side. Let’s do it on this side.

[Bang, laughter]

Uh, I’m gonna be honest, I did not know if that would break it. I thought it might, but I didn’t think it would like, splatter all over me. I knew the 50 would do something like that. Ok, test 1 complete.

Now remember, a bullet did not go in this. This was just gas, going straight in, and exploded our water jug. Let’s try something else!

So, I’m gonna cut a hole straight through this head of lettuce. After seeing that water jug, this is definitely gonna get destroyed. But I want to… I just wanna see it. I just wanna see it go everywhere. So I’m just gonna cut a hole straight through the middle so that the bullet will pass through without hitting any of this head of lettuce.

Ok, can we all agree that a bullet will not touch that?

So I’m gonna put the head of lettuce here, stick the barrel inside it, pull the trigger. So the bullet will fly straight through, and then the blast from the muzzle will destroy the lettuce. Probably.

Definitely.

308 muzzle blast vs. head of lettuce. [BLAM]

That answers that! I have lettuce in my mouth.

One last test, I don’t think this one’s going to destroy it. We have a regular paper towel roll. I think it’s going to be fine.

[BLAST]

[Laughter] When you’re wrong, you’re wrong! My god. So it totally separated the top from the bottom of that paper towel roll. Goll-y! Ok, so there is a lot of power coming out of the muzzle break. Who knew?

With this much power out of a 50bmg, I don’t really wanna be holding the gun when I pull the trigger and things are exploding… you know, three feet from me. So I’ve hooked it down to the table, it’s very secure, and then I will have a long string, and I will be back over here, probably just sitting in my truck, and I will pull it. [Click] Just like that.

Since the paper towel roll is fresh on our minds from what I did on 308, let’s do that first. 50BMG. I’m gonna load it up, I have a few camera angles to make sure we get this thing. I’m excited!

Safety’s off. Giddiyup.

[BLAM]

Here’s most of the mess from the 308, here’s the mess from the 50BMG. It did quite a number. It doesn’t look a whole lot different from 308 though, I mean, definitely threw all the pieces further, it chopped them up into much smaller pieces than these guys from the 308, a lot more energy. But I feel like we could do better. There’s still lettuce on this from the 308. It’s lookin’ really good.

Let us try the lettuce! Hahaha! [pretend shooting noises] But for real, look at this. That’s gonna blast some lettuce everywhere. Same drill, step back, pull it from a distance, ‘cuz it’s gonna be nasty. Fire in the hole! [BLAM]

This looks like lettuce that’s been in your fridge for like, two weeks. It’s all mushy and not crisp anymore. That’s gross, get outta here.

Whaddiya think about this? Lightbulbs.
Are they gonna break? I think they’ll break. The question is, one’s close, one’s far, on both sides. D’you think all four will break? D’you think just the close ones will break? I could see it really going any way. None breaking, close ones, all of ’em; but I’m gonna vote ‘all’. S’only one way to know.

Safety’s off, let’s do it.
[BLAST]

I actually don’t know why I keep underestimating it, like ‘maybe it’s not gonna destroy it’, because every time, it totally destroys whatever I’m shooting at. Like, oh here. We found one. There you go. I don’t know why I thought that the lightbulbs would have a chance, because they obviously did not. Like, it just disintigrated these things. Well, let’s try something else.

Some people like new guns. Some people like antique guns. Some people like new guns… that are antiqued. For those who don’t know what antiqued means, it’s when you throw flour all over someone and they look old.

Fire! [BLAM]

It antiqued this camera, it antiqued my drone controller and my phone, it antiqued my go-pro- (-blows camera off- hello!) -It antiqued my truck. Yeah. That’s pretty gross.
-blows it off- cool. Aw, my– I was inside this door, sitting, when I pulled that. Oh my gosh, this is so gross. This is why I can’t have nice things.

And of course, it antiqued the gun. The worst. I mean, it looks cool and all. It’s so gross!

It hurts me to see it like that. Just a little.

If you thought the last one was gross, man we’re going big now.
Big red.

Big red, and a little rootbeer, and a bunch of totally full soda cans. Or pop cans, for you wierdos up north who call it pop. We’re gonna shoot 50BMG straight through the middle. Out of 22 cans, how many are going to survive?
I think the ones on the bottom will survive, I think they’re not gonna blast down there very much. I think everything up here will be popped. So I’m going to say ten cans will survive. Place your bets. That gun is gonna be SO gross.

Time to get wet ‘n wild!
-BLAM-

Empty, definitely empty. Oh we’ve got a full one! One… two… it blew some of them VERY far away. Like this one is a good… twenty, thirty feet. There’s one. Could be full. Yep. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine. One off, that’s not that bad!

Last thing I wanna try, we have some of these plates, they’re super thick. Like, ceramic plates. They’re not like the thin glass ones. They’re really thick. We have four on each side of the muzzle break. How many will it break? How many will the muzzle break break? I think it’s gonna break all eight plates. This thing has continued to amaze me every time, has a lot more power than I thought, so I think… I think all eight. Place your bets!

Ready for action! [Blam] Oh my gosh!

Amazed once again, it liquefied the plates. And possibly broke my table. No, I think we’re just leaning. It threw pieces of plates everywhere. I mean those are thick, that’s… that’s pretty thick plate. Pretty sure it hit my truck with pieces of plate, so that’s great. I mean look, way over here, there’s some, here’s a piece, here’s some more, there’s another one over here, there’s another one there, we are pretty far away.

This is so disgusting. And uh, oh my gosh. That’s gross. Can you guys see this? [scoff] I’m gonna be up for hours just cleaning this gear. Actually… [dumps water on it] that’s not bad. S’probably good enough.

I have so many ideas, like, my mind is racing now after doing this, because I knew the muzzle blasts could be powerful, but I didn’t know it was gonna be this powerful. So now I’m like, ‘what else can I do?’ and than I started thinking, when we shot tanks the other day, the tank has a muzzle break on the end of that barrel, and the projectile is this big around. And the muzzle blast was crazy! So like instead of putting… instead of putting like, milk jugs next to the muzzle break, we could put like a fridge next to the muzzle break. [laughter] I’m not gonna be able to sleep tonight, ‘cuz I’m too excited thinking about that.

Thanks for watching DemolitionRanch, thanks for being here, I love you guys, and I will see you next time!