Think you could MacGyver your way out of a dangerous situation? Solve this emergency scenario in a creative way and your solution could be featured in the next issue of Make: magazine! Submit your answer down below by June 30.
Written by MacGyver TV creator Lee David Zlotoff and his partner in predicaments, Rhett Allain, here’s the new challenge: Death Valley Blowout! Share your best solutions for a chance to be in the magazine and win some Make: goodies.
Lee Z wrote the popular MakeShift challenge in Make: magazine from 2005 to 2011. Now we’re bringing Mac back to help you think — and make — your way out of natural disasters, power failures, and other emergencies. There seem to be a lot of them these days. As Lee wrote in Make: Volume 82, “We are all MacGyvers now.”
Death Valley Blowout!
The Scenario
You borrowed a friend’s 2000 Ford Ranger pickup truck to help you move, and you’re on your way to return it, which requires a drive through one of the most barren and inhospitable — not to mention hottest — places on the planet: Death Valley, California. It’s August and at 9 am in the morning the temperature’s already over 90 degrees, when the truck’s right rear tire blows and, by the time you pull over, is a shredded mess. Lucky for you, there’s a spare and a lug nut wrench. But you quickly discover there’s no jack! You’ve got no cell signal out here, so calling for help is out. And it could be hours — or days — before another car comes by. There’s nothing at all in the surrounding landscape that you can use to lift the truck high enough to get the spare on.
The Challenge
In a few hours the thermometer is going to hit 120 degrees or more. So, using whatever you have in the truck, how are you going to replace the tire before the truck is too hot to touch and you become another sad statistic that helped give this place its name?
What You’ve Got
And it’s all you’ve got:
- 2×2-foot sheet of old plywood
- 6-foot light duty chain
- Road flares
- Deflated yoga ball. Yoga mat, bungee exercise cords
- Soccer bag with shoes, shin guards, extra clothes, folding ball rebounder, 1 soccer ball, ball pump, running drag chute
- The terrain has light brush and mostly just dirt. There are some rocks around, but the biggest one is the size of a basketball.
- Garden hose (but no extra water)
Share your best solutions below for a chance to be in the magazine.
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