MythBusters Bust House 631
ewhac writes "The San Francisco Chronicle is reporting that the MythBusters accidentally sent a cannon ball hurtling through Dublin this afternoon, punching through a home, bouncing across a six-lane road, and ultimately coming to a rest inside a now-demolished Toyota minivan. Amazingly, there were no injuries. The ball was fired from a home-made cannon at the Alameda County Sheriff's Department bomb range, and was intended to strike a water target. Instead the ball missed the water, punched through a cinder-block wall, and skipped off the hill behind. Prior to today, the MythBusters had been shooting episodes at the bomb range for over seven years without major incident. It is not clear whether Savage/Hyneman or Belleci/Imahara/Byron were conducting the experiment."
Funny Stuff (Score:4, Interesting)
So why are they sleeping in the middle of the afternoon?
Just curious.
Re:Up stairs and through walls (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Adam was quoted as (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm pretty sure Discovery will cover it, and probably give them a substantial bonus and invite them to participate in the episode to boot.
Re:Intercontinental! (Score:5, Interesting)
What's the shortest distance between any two continents, anywhere in the world?
If you exclude continents that are actually touching, then the Europe and Africa across the Straits of Gibralter. The gap is only 14.3km at it's narrowest, so transcontinental artillery is easily achievable (105mm howitzers have a range well in excess of 15km, and larger artillery can go much, much further). Of course, a traditional cannonball maxes out at a few hundred yards so setting up the Mythbusters experiment in Morocco would have merely been a hazard to shipping, not buildings.
Re:Funny Stuff (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Not to be too pedantic (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't remember which battle it was (still nursing my morning coffee), but I recall the British navy shelling an American fort in a similar situation. There was a large hill in the way and they couldn't fire directly on the fort, so they tried "skipping" cannonballs off of a hill. It worked - the cannonballs bounced off of the hill and went up and over.
I remember at least the "cannon = hill = sky high flying cannonball" part and I learned this in high school (at the latest). It kinda surprises me that no one on the entire crew (the performers or the technical folks) made this logical leap and thought "Hey, that hill there... you don't think it could...?"
Re:Footage (Score:5, Interesting)
Probably not as they expected it to just impact with the water containers. Still, the path it took was quite impressive. From the article:
Out of the cannon, through the cinder-block wall, off the hillside, flies 700 yards, bursts through a front door, races up the stairs, through a bedroom, exiting the house, across a six lane highway, off a roof and slams into a Toyota Sienna. Wow.
Nobody hurt, good (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Not to be too pedantic (Score:2, Interesting)
No, obviously they didn't.
That isn't "obvious" at all, unless you have some insider information. Sometimes, even if you take all precautions that seem necessary, shit happens. The fact that something went wrong is not in itself evidence of carelessness.
Here's some "inside information". The Mythbusters is all about blowing shit up now. It has been for at least 3 years.
They exhibit a fundamental lack of understanding of basic physics in about 90% of the "myths" they test. And about 60% of the time I'd argue that they know they're doing something stupid and pointless, yet they pursue the obviously flawed course of action for ratings.
Even when they do something right, the last segment is always "OK, so that's busted/plausible/confirmed, but what if we use 10 times the explosives?".
The show has devolved into complete asshattery. Smashlab, in it's brief run, was far better because there were actual engineers involved doing actual thinking. But they weren't clowns so people didn't watch.
Anyone who watches Mythbusters and actually understood their high school physics class knows that the show puts zany antics first, safety second, and science fourth. Third is shitty promos for Obama and Seth Rogen's shitty movies.
Re:Not to be too pedantic (Score:4, Interesting)
What people get arrested for is negligence. Accidents, not so much.
If you're driving drunk and you get in a wreck, you were not involved in an accident because you were not exercising a standard of care that the law requires; namely, not driving whilst intoxicated. If you're texting and run over a class full of kindergartners crossing the street to the park, same thing. If you're excessively speeding and wreck, ditto. None of these are accidents, because accidents are by definition unforeseen, and most often, unpreventable.
Hitting a deer might be an accident. Colliding with a motorcycle rider who was stupidly riding in your blind spot might be an accident. A truck driver having a heart attack, dying at the wheel and dumping the toxic contents of his truck into a pristine mountain river is an accident.
Accidents usually involve some amount of civil liability, even if people are maimed or killed. Negligence involves criminal liability. Two different things. Y'all need to stop using 'accident' incorrectly. I once again propose a new word: neglident.
Re:Not to be too pedantic (Score:4, Interesting)
You seem awfully angry.
The show has evolved into 5 people getting paid to blow crap up. If someone walked up to you and offered you a mind-boggling amount of money, plus side income from speaking engagement fees, etc, to set fire to things, blow stuff up, and to build and play with large and dangerous equipment, are you saying you wouldn't jump at the chance?
For 90% of the myths that they test to demonstrate a lack of understanding of basic physics, at least 90% of the myths they test would have to require such an understanding. I would submit that many of the myths they test require no such understanding, and so your statistics are called into question.
I have yet to see promos for Obama (care to link to that?), and of course they put zany antics high up on the list. It's a TV show. People skip physics class to watch TV because most people find TV more entertaining than physics class. If TV just broadcasts a physics class, people are going to change the channel. After all, the show is called Mythbusters, not Science Hour. Without ratings, the show goes away and gets replaced with another iteration of Ice Road Truckers. Which would you rather have on the air? Even Ed Murrow had to do stupid entertainment celebwatch pieces in between his good journalistic pieces in order to keep his show on the air.
As for the comment you replied to, yes shit sometimes does happen despite all best efforts to prevent shit from happening. As others have noted, this scene was undoubtedly signed off on by the fire department, the cops, the insurance underwriters, and probably ordnance/explosive experts. It isn't as though these guys wandered out and began blindly firing canons toward houses without thinking the situation through, which is what you're implying in your eagerness to crap all over the show.