'Mythbusters' cannonball hits Dublin home, minivan

[Vizth Hal]

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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.

The ball wasn't done bouncing.

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.

That's where Jasbir Gill, 42, who had pulled up 10 minutes earlier with his 13-year-old son, Manvir, found the ball on the floorboards, with glass everywhere and an obliterated dashboard.

"It's shocking - anything could have happened," Gill said after the van had been taken away as evidence, along with the cannonball.

"Crazy, crazy, crazy, crazy," said Sgt. J.D. Nelson, a spokesman for the Alameda County Sheriff's Department. "You wouldn't think it was possible."

He said the television crew was incredibly unlucky that the cannonball flew through Dublin, but "tremendously lucky that it didn't seriously injure or kill somebody."

Nelson said "Mythbusters," a show on the Discovery Channel, had used the bomb disposal range without incident while shooting portions of more than 50 episodes over the past seven or eight years. The show does not pay a set fee but has donated to the department and given it exposure.

One of the terms of the deal, Nelson said, was that the show take out insurance in case of a mishap.

The show is based in San Francisco. Hosts Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman use science experiments to confirm or debunk rumors or myths. Reached Tuesday evening, Savage said, "I can't talk right now," before hanging up.

This isn't the first time projectiles in the area have hit homes. In 2007, a stray .223-caliber submachine gun bullet, apparently fired during a training exercise at Camp Parks Army base in Dublin, shattered the bedroom window of a San Ramon home.

even their fuck ups are epic.

video
http://media.sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/C...3203AA.mp4

[Twitchin Kitten]

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That is absolutely beautiful. it!

[LKTraz]

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Nobody hurt, insurance will pay for property damage/repairs, Alameda County apparently not pissed at Adam and Jamie so.........it's all good and will make for great footage if they air them going "OH S*%T"!

Considering all the shit they have done and to have only one really MAJOR fuckup is a pretty good track record in my mind!

[Aurora Moon]

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Nobody hurt, insurance will pay for property damage/repairs, Alameda County apparently not pissed at Adam and Jamie so.........it's all good and will make for great footage if they air them going "OH S*%T"!

Considering all the shit they have done and to have only one really MAJOR fuckup is a pretty good track record in my mind!

I agree.... they've always been very meticulous about safety and the like when doing dangerous things like this, and the fact that they only had this happen kind of speaks well for them.

still, It must had freaked them out hardcore to see this happen. I mean, they were just out in the range and there was nobody around but them for miles. I'm sure they didn't even think this could happen.

[ralgith]

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Nobody hurt, insurance will pay for property damage/repairs, Alameda County apparently not pissed at Adam and Jamie so.........it's all good and will make for great footage if they air them going "OH S*%T"!

Considering all the shit they have done and to have only one really MAJOR fuckup is a pretty good track record in my mind!

I agree.... they've always been very meticulous about safety and the like when doing dangerous things like this, and the fact that they only had this happen kind of speaks well for them.

still, It must had freaked them out hardcore to see this happen. I mean, they were just out in the range and there was nobody around but them for miles. I'm sure they didn't even think this could happen.

It wasn't for miles
The cannon ball only went 700 yards. Which is about the maximum range for civil war era cannons IIRC...

The odd thing was the way it bounced over the protective berm (large earthen embankment), as with a properly built and designed berm this shouldn't be possible :/

[Aurora Moon]

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yeah it seems to be a freak accident.

[LKTraz]

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The article said it "skipped" off the berm. Could it be that they had their elevation on the cannon wrong? Skipped (if the article is using the correct term) would indicate a glancing contact as opposed to it blowing through or bouncing.

Guess we'll find out when and if they air it on the show.

[ralgith]

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The article said it "skipped" off the berm. Could it be that they had their elevation on the cannon wrong? Skipped (if the article is using the correct term) would indicate a glancing contact as opposed to it blowing through or bouncing.

Guess we'll find out when and if they air it on the show.

Right, but a proper berm wouldn't let anything except very high rounds skip over it. They would've had to have their cannon at like a 45 degree angle or something.

[Twitchin Kitten]

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That's why they call it a freak accident. I wonder if there are any YouTube vids out yet showing the shot from the range?

[Gunnen4u]

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When I saw the title, I thought Dublin, Ireland.