The Sonic Horror of Adam Savage’s “Duck Bomb”

This isn’t a Halloween post, but it is certainly horrifying. On the most recent episode of Tested, Adam Savage and Will Smith up the ante on Adam’s viral 11-duck duck bomb video (see below). After the success of that video, Adam decided to try his hand at building a super-duper 16-duck sound bomb (actually, it’s a mix of albatrosses and flamingos).

Adam created this first “duck army bomb” after seeing this Reddit video that had gone viral. He tracked down the dog squeeze toys used and created his first 11-duck noise maker. After the video went viral, not satisfied, he decided to order a bunch more toys to create the noise bomb you see in this Tested build video.

The “bomb” is made of 16 “Squawkie Talkie” dog toys. These squeezable chew toys use a negative pressure sound generator located in the throat of the toy. Squeeze the rubber duck in and it expels air, making no sound. But as the bladder expands again, it makes the most godawful squawk you can imagine. Put 16 of these beasties together and you’re in for one epic orchestra of sonic pain.

Adam’s bombs were easily made by creating a rig that holds all of them together with the air pressed out of all of the toys. Then, when a pin is pulled, the toys expand and all hell breaks loose. Even though the goal of this project is super-silly, it’s always instructive to watch a master maker like Adam confronting a problem and working through to a satisfying solution.

And it turns out that the “duck army bomb” has become something of a meme, with a number of other bombs, video mashups, and other eye-rolling foolishness to be found on Reddit and YouTube. Do a web search for more.

Bonus: In the above build video we also get an interesting nerd-out on the incalculability of knot topology. Adam and Will talk about doing a Tested knot primer, which I really hope they do.