How do you break out of iron shackles?

So, Jack and MacGyver are stuck in a fallout shelter and they need to get out of shackles. Maybe they are just old iron or maybe they are old steel—either way, they need to get out.

There are several steel-busting options, but let’s go with something thermal. In this case he could do something similar to thermite (similar). How about glycerol and potassium permanganate?

Again, this is not thermite—this is the stuff that’s usually used to start a thermite reaction though.

Opening a door with thermal expansion.

MacGyver uses some butter knives and electric current to heat up a steel door. When the door expands it cracks the cement around it so that they can open the door.

Would knives heat up? Yes. When you short out an electric circuit, you get a bunch of current. Lot’s of electric current means that things get hot. This could theoretically heat up the door.

Now, if you are going to escape with this technique yourself you need to be careful. A steel door has a very large thermal mass. It would take some time to heat it up—but it would indeed heat up.

Do things expand when heated? Absolutely. Here, I made a quick demo for you.

Scuba shooting crossbow.

Yup. Basically this just takes some springs to store energy and then uses that energy to propel an empty scuba tank to break a door.

Zip gun

Jack has a small projectile in a tube with a spring—a zip gun. It’s basically a deadly sized nerf gun.