I think I know what the Mythbusters added to the H2SO4. That exothermic reaction is familiar to anyone that took high school chemistry. I’m pretty sure that equation was on one of our exams. Geez there wasn’t much left of that pig.
I wonder if that final explosion was really 250g of mercury fulminate? I can’t imagine anyone allowing them to spray that much mercury dust. Kari said the entire room was covered in that dust after the smaller 50g went off. That big explosion would have contaminated a fairly large area. I wondered if Frank Doyle just used a regular explosive and let us think it was 250g of mercury fulminate?
Heck this school freaked out when a mercury thermometer got broken in a school classroom. They literally called in the fire dept and a haz mat alert. A over reaction for sure but it shows how seriously mercury spillage is taken these days. I recall at least two mercury thermometers breaking at my parents home. Mom just swept it into a dustpan and dumped in the trash. But that was 40 years ago.
It would have been Hydrogen Peroxide to make Piranha Solution:
They basically gave it away when they said “its a bunch of hydrogen and oxygen”.
Was pretty easily worked out with just a few minutes on google.
But from what I saw it would NOT be a good way to dispose of a body, the amount of it you needed and the amount of fumes released you couldn’t be mixing it up indoors (unless you had a fume cupboard) and if you’re in a remote enough outdoor location where the fumes wouldn’t be noticed then you have other options to dispose of the body.