'Mythbusters' cannonball hits Dublin home, minivan

[denem]

Source: San Francisco Chronicle

DUBLIN -- One of the zany experiments staged by the "Mythbusters" television show nearly turned into a suburban tragedy Tuesday afternoon in Dublin when the crew fired a homemade cannon toward huge containers of water at the Alameda County Sheriff's Department bomb disposal range.

The cantaloupe-sized cannonball missed the water, tore through a cinder-block wall, skipped off a hillside and flew some 700 yards east, right into the Tassajara Creek neighborhood, where children were returning home from school at 4:15 p.m., authorities said.

There, the 6-inch projectile bounced in front of a home on quiet Cassata Place, ripped through the front door, raced up the stairs and blasted through a bedroom, where a man, woman and child slept through it all - only awakening because of plaster dust. ...

It exited the house, leaving a perfectly round hole in the stucco, crossed six-lane Tassajara Road, took out several tiles from the roof of a home on Bellevue Circle and finally slammed into the Gill family's beige Toyota Sienna minivan in a driveway on Springvale Drive.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/12/07/BA1D1M99V5.DTL

---

To summarize:

1. Homemade cannon.
2. Fired at large containers of water
3. Missed
4, Tore through cinder block wall
5. Skipped off a hillside
6. Flew 700 yards into the Tassajara Creek neighborhood
7. Bounced in front of a home
8. Smashed through the front door
9. Raced up the stairs
10. Exited through bedroom wall (picture)
11. Crossed six lane highway
12. Skipped across a roof, taking out tiles
13. Slammed into a Toyota minivan.

No way.to this 'Single Cannonball Theory'. Appoint a commission.

[RushIsRot]

1. Oops! Do over!

[MADem]

2. HOLY SHIT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

That's going to be one helluva episode!!!!!!!!

[denem]

4. I stole your picture. Thanks. Too good to miss.

[MADem]

13. I swiped it from the paper! nt

[mrdmk]

3. Oops, good thing they have insurance for mishaps!

:shrug:

[slackmaster]

5. Bad hop

Let them take a Mulligan and do the shot over.

[kayakjohnny]

18. !

:thumbsup:

[Blue_Tires]

46. Winter rules, anyway...

[Bladian]

6. That's a freak accident if I've ever seen one.

Not only missed the target, but blasted through a wall, bounced OFF a hill, AND flew into a neighborhood? They couldn't do that again if they tried.

[Bosonic]

7. House Busters

[Warpy]

8. I can't wait to see this episode!

That has to be the best screwball cannon they've ever built to have launched one that far.

They'll likely be banned from that area for ballistics experiments and sent way the hell out in the desert.

The stories about this get a little shriller as time goes on. The good news is that nobody was hurt.

I can imagine the calls to the insurance company, though. "A WHAT hit your minivan?"

[kentauros]

15. I'm having a hard time understanding how one person

(not to mention three!) could sleep through this:

"...ripped through the front door, raced up the stairs and blasted through a bedroom, where a man, woman and child slept through it all - only awakening because of plaster dust."

How can dust wake a person up, but not all that noise? Even dead-tired, I would have been standing next to my bed in a second...

[RaleighNCDUer]

21. I can believe it. Of course, I have slept through hurricanes and tornadoes. nt

[Warpy]

23. The only thing that wakes me out of a dead sleep

is the smell of smoke. I lived in a Beacon Hill firetrap for a few years and the area is extremely densely populated, meaning fires could spread fast. All these years later I'll be standing next to the side of my bed before it registers "fireplace next door."

I was also a night nurse, meaning I could sleep through the clap of creation after my last in a series of 12 hour nights.

Kids sleep like the dead, anyway, which is why some of the newest smoke alarms feature their parents' voices on a tape loop screaming at them to wake up.

It's just a little odd that they claimed to be asleep at 4:15 PM. I'm thinking there's a little embellishment there to increase the drama. I don't think they need have bothered, watching a cannonball crash through your front door and hop up the steps would do it.

[PavePusher]

42. I have slept through a rock concert and a hurricane.

'Course I trained for it by sleeping on military aircraft. But that's another story.

[kentauros]

44. Those are kind of "droning" sounds.

If an amp blew up, or the plane was hit by something like a cannonball, I think that would have awakened you ;) I've slept through hurricanes, too, though Ike woke me up when the direction of the winds changed and started slamming my bedroom window.

It's not just the loudness of the noise I'm thinking, but that it would be banging around in increments, as well as shaking everything it hit. Whatever this thing was made of, it didn't seem to lose much momentum bouncing through this house. And yet, three people asleep in the late afternoon (I question that part, too) didn't wake up until they were dusted with fine debris.

[Xithras]

17. Highly doubtful that it will be shown.

There have been a number of accidents around the Mythbusters sets (a stray bullet hit a house a year ago, one of their explosions blew out windows in the town of Esparto several years ago, etc), and those accidents never get mentioned on the show. The Esparto accident was only discussed on-air by Kari Byron this past year, during a "Best Of" bloopers moment. Even then they didn't actually show any footage or show the damage, but simply mentioned it and discused how she had to personally apologize to the owners of the damaged properties...and how she was sent because she was ~6 months pregnant, and the producers correctly assumed that nobody was going to start yelling and screaming at a pregnant woman.

[Warpy]

24. Oh, they'll show it

along with the dropped jaws and "where the %$@(%)#(U$)(@ did it go?"

[ljm2002]

45. They won't be showing it...

...according to today's story at sfgate.com:

The special-effects gurus who host the television show "MythBusters" were cast Wednesday in an ignominious role: visiting a home on a quiet street in Dublin and apologizing to a family for firing a 30-pound cannonball through their front door a day earlier.

"Come in," said Hitha Shetty, 39, ushering show hosts Jamie Hyneman and Adam Savage across a floor still speckled with paint and plaster.

(...)

After assuring Shetty, his two children, his wife and her parents that they would never again blast a home with heavy ordnance, Hyneman and Savage said the incident was the worst thing that had happened during thousands of experiments over eight years on the Discovery Channel show.

They also promised they wouldn't air the footage they had filmed of the near-catastrophic cannon shot.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/12/07/BAN31M9Q81.DTL#ixzz1fy9oaAaE

[Sancho]

9. i don't believe the single bullet theory

so this will probably end up as a CT in the 911 forum!

[provis99]

10. this could be used to fool gullible tourists.

"And here's where George Washington nearly got hit by the cannonball!"

[PoliticAverse]

11. Local CBS TV video report here...

http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2011/12/06/tv-experiment-goes-awry-sends-cannonball-rocketing-through-homes/

[tularetom]

12. They'll be banished from the bomb disposal range for this

And JD Nelson their explosives expert from the Sheriff's Dept., will probably get his weenie wacked for his part in the mishap.

But the worst part? There's not a chance in hell that fans of the show will ever get to see one second of this little episode.

[Gore1FL]

37. They could turn this into a winner.

They could point out that even with years of experience things can go terribly wrong. That is why home viewers shouldn't do dangerous experiments at home.

They could focus a show on failure analysis of the experiment. There are a lot of angles they could include. Plus, the ratings would be insane as it already has publicity.

[jayfish]

41. Strange they didn't do this one at the airstrip or in the desert. -NT-

[tawadi]

14. "turned into a suburban tragedy" ?

Did anybody get hurt?

:shrug:

[RaleighNCDUer]

22. Yeah - kinda stretches the definitiion of 'tragedy'. nt

[muriel_volestrangler]

34. "*nearly* turned into a suburban tragedy"

Yeah, nearly. Because that 'cannonball' went through a bedroom where 3 people were sleeping, at a speed enough to blast a good round hole through an outer wall, cross a 6 lane highway, take out some roof tiles, and hit a car in another road. If it had hit one of those people in the room, they'd probably have died.

[tawadi]

38. Missed the word nearly

That's what happens when I read too fast. That makes more sense.

[Journeyman]

16. Exactly what "myth" were they trying to "bust"? The belief they are intelligent? . . .

[Tutankhamun]

19. I thought they were more competent than that.

I had faith in their expertise. I thought testing hair-brained schemes is safe in the hands of highly intelligent, experienced, well-funded experts such as the "Mythbusters".

Another myth, "busted"!

[octothorpe]

29. Well, considering the amount of crazy stuff they do, I think they have a decent track record

I bet they won't be doing any more tests at that place though. heh

[RaleighNCDUer]

20. I don't believe one cannonball could do all that.

SEND THIS STORY TO MYTHBUSTERS FOR DEBUNKING!

I'd LOVE to see that show!

[Speck Tater]

25. Never mind that. Was the myth busted or confirmed? nt

[sakabatou]

26. Well there's your problem

[lbrtbell]

27. I hate the Mythbusters

They act as if one experiment is somehow definitive proof of their opinions.

By their way of thinking, this experiment proves that every single cannonball will fly wildly off course and crash into someone's house.

[octothorpe]

30. AND minivan!

[IDemo]

28. Reminds me of why I gave up golf n/t

[octothorpe]

31. Reminds me why I don't drive a minivan.... Minivans attract cannon balls.

[baldguy]

40. Not to mention bedroom walls.

[bvar22]

32. OMG. I have GOT to get one of those!!!

Don't try this at home.
We are, what you call, EXPERTS!

One of my favorite shows.

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

33. It would be worth the damage...

just to have that bunch sheepishly explaining themselves at your door.



"Yeah, we were shooting a canon and missed..."

[bananas]

35. They should call in Ghost Hunters to see if the cannon was haunted.

They should do some cross-over episodes between Myth Busters and Ghost Hunters.

[DRoseDARs]

36. But is anyone missing an eyebrow?

eom

[exboyfil]

39. 20+ years ago I worked for a weapons manufacturer

We were doing an explosive experiment at our test site which was a former farm. On the farm the caretaker lived with his wife and child.

We dropped a large piece of armor plating on his front yard. I still think about that - no one was hurt but someone could have been. I have had colleagues that have died in explosions at munition plants.

[Name removed]

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