‘MythBusters’ Stunt Sends Cannonball Through House
EmailThe popular “MythBusters” show on the Discovery Channel is facing scrutiny after an incident Tuesday in which a cannonball was sent whizzing through a San Francisco-area neighborhood.
Producers for the show, in which hosts Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman test common myths, were reportedly testing a cannon at the Alameda County Sheriff’s Department bomb range in Dublin, Calif., around 4 p.m. Tuesday.
The cannon was supposed to travel through several barrels of water and a cinder block wall within the bomb range but, instead, hit something that caused it to shoot over the hillside and into the residential neighborhood below.
Traveling at a speed of 1,000 feet per second, the cannonball flew 700 yards into a home where a couple was sleeping, bounced across a road, onto a roof and, finally, crashed into the window of a minivan.
While no one was injured in the accident, it startled local residents.
Jasbir Gill, the owner of the minivan, told local ABC affiliate KGO-TV he had exited his van just minutes before the impact.
“I looked inside and there was a big cannonball,” said Gill. “It was a good five to 10 inches. I was scared. I was lucky my kids weren’t in the van.”
The cannon also left a 10-inch hole in the bedroom wall of the home whose residents were sleeping.
“They didn’t actually hear the cannonball come through the house. What woke them up was the settling of the sheet rock,” Sgt. J.D. Nelson from the Alameda Co. Sheriff’s Dept., who was on site as a safety expert when the incident occurred, told KGO-TV.
Nelson told the station the “MythBusters” experiment was intended to “see if other materials could be fired out of a cannon and be as effective as a cannonball.”
Instead, the network and the production team behind the San Francisco-based show were left to explain how the experiment went so wrong.
“During the testing, a cannonball took an unforeseen bounce from a safety berm,” read a statement issued by Discovery and Beyond Productions after the incident. “Sgt. JD Nelson, public information officer and bomb technician for the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office, who is a regular safety explosives expert for ‘MythBusters,’ was on site and all proper safety protocol was observed. Beyond Productions is currently assessing the situation and working with those whose property was affected.”
On Wednesday afternoon, the stars of “MythBusters” toured the scene of the damage, apologized, said the episode would not air and the show would not be shooting cannons at the range in the future, according to KGO.
“This is the worst we can imagine happening,” KGO quoted host Adam Savage saying. “I have kids of my own, I have a house of my own; I can’t imagine how angry I would be to find this happening to it.”
According to Nelson, Discovery has used the sheriff department’s bomb range for more than 50 “MythBusters” episodes since the show first debuted on Discovery in 2003.
“They’re very sorry that this happened. And they have safety measures that are in place,” said Nelson. “They did have a misfire. And they have insurance for these kinds of things.”
The Emmy-nominated show, which has aired 189 episodes, returned for its ninth season this September.
A list of the stunts planned for this season, released earlier this year by the network, included testing whether a methane blast inside a sewer could blow manhole covers tens of feet into the air, whether one could supersize a Newton’s cradle to epic proportions, and if duct tape could be used to fix a plane that has been mauled by a bear.
The Discovery Channel did not respond to requests for additional comment placed today by ABCNews.com.
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Posted by: davidp | December 7, 2011, 5:31 pm 5:31 pm
Viewers of the show knew something like this would happen eventually. It is surprising that they didn’t have something like this in the early seasons when they weren’t as safety conscious. I rember when they ran a car over a berm after running it under a trailer and knocking the top off the car. They only had one mechanism to stop the car, the brakes, and when that failed, the car was free to run wild.
Posted by: Greggw | December 7, 2011, 5:49 pm 5:49 pm
ECHO ECHo ECho Echo echo
Posted by: Trismigestus | December 7, 2011, 6:39 pm 6:39 pm
What I want to know is, what is a bomb range doing that close to a residential area?!?!?! When they build such locations for testing explosive projectiles, or when housing developments encroach, don’t they consider radius of misfires? Geez.
Posted by: Jenn | December 7, 2011, 6:44 pm 6:44 pm
It was just an accident. Was just reading how a lady accidently hit her gas pedal instead of her brake and rammed her car into a place of business. These things happen. They’re called accidents. Proper safety steps were taken, they’re just gonna have to modify them.
Posted by: Scott Jeffs | December 7, 2011, 6:48 pm 6:48 pm
Ugh it’s suspended??? That makes me so mad. One of the few good shows, one of my favorite shows, and it’s suspended. I wish Jersey Shore or 16 and Prego Ragu whatever would be suspended instead adjasofj soejn aesfjanskfjlaskjksj aaaaaaahhhhhhh
Posted by: MBfan | December 7, 2011, 7:29 pm 7:29 pm
darn its suspended?! :( That will put a damper on my Wednesday night of TV for a while. Mythbusters are usually great for safety so this is quite surprising. What I do find shocking is that a bomb range is that close to a residential area. What is even more shocking is people living NEAR this bomb range are shocked that something like this happened … I mean really? You’re neighbors test bombs!! Sheesh!
Posted by: Guin | December 7, 2011, 8:18 pm 8:18 pm
I watched “Mythbusters” from the first show, and I enjoyed it at first; but over time, it seemed to me that the show underwent an evolution toward things that were gross and things that were explosive– preferrably both. At that point I stopped being interested.
I think the show has run its course, and after this little foul-up, I think it’s highly probable that we’ll see production shut down before 2012 is out. There just isn’t much left for them to do.
Posted by: cat whisperer | December 7, 2011, 8:56 pm 8:56 pm
The way I see it is that they have a lot invested in this “safety lesson” so learn from it, make corrections and move on. Think about it…where would the space program be if NASA shut down the program when the “first” rocket blew up??
Posted by: Butch | December 7, 2011, 9:38 pm 9:38 pm
Well I see the two brilliant dipsticks finally really screwed up. just a matter of time. Let me know when their going to be in town I want to be be somewhere else.
Posted by: Billybob Jackinoff | December 7, 2011, 11:33 pm 11:33 pm
If you’ve ever been to a shooting range, you can Imagine this happening. The back of the ranges usually a dirt berm created at a roughly 150 degree angle from the shooter. Bullets and the like do not penetrate the berm, nor do they ricochet off (and over) the berm (even though the berm in Angeled away at 60 degrees to vertical) because the projectile is so small relative to the debris used to create the berm. However, in the case with a 10 inch (round!) cannonball, I could envision the berm becoming useless, with the projectile readily caroming off and over the berm. I doubt the bomb range has ever been used with ten inch cannonballs. Per the points above, living near a shooting range is one thing; living *down range* (ie, in tge dirextion of the parh of projectiles) is quite another. Seems ridiculous.
Posted by: Dipstick | December 7, 2011, 11:59 pm 11:59 pm
I enjoy the show, and would LOVE to get paid to invent the crazy stunts they do. However, there are often times I felt the “safety measures” were a bit on the edge. Like mom always said “Ya’ play with fire and sooner or later you get burned!” Guess mom was right. (Not to mention “You could put an eye out with that canon thing!”)
Posted by: Chaz | December 8, 2011, 12:20 am 12:20 am
Try working for the army where intermixed with phrases such as Down range (people down range are those deployed) you have so many acronyms that it becomes almost impossible to even guess what people are saying. Throw in the fact that they label the parts of the organization with numbers G3, G2, G7…etc and it can be an ‘interesting’ place to work.
Posted by: CB | December 8, 2011, 7:01 am 7:01 am
whoops my last comment was meant for a different article. Had both open at the same time.
Posted by: CB | December 8, 2011, 7:03 am 7:03 am
MBFAN – Did I miss something in the article? I don’t see any mention of the program being suspended. All they said is that this particular stunt won’t be shown (which was expected).
Posted by: Bob | December 8, 2011, 8:06 am 8:06 am
Don’t attempt to do this at home. We’re what you call professionals
Posted by: Bob | December 8, 2011, 8:19 am 8:19 am
I love Mythbusters! It was an accident plain and simple. They had an unexpected mishap after taking the appropriate safety measures, and airing 189 episodes. This is Mythbusters, so you know they have analyzed the result of the stunt over and over. You would probably be safer on a Mythbusters set, than you would driving to and from work everyday, with all of those mindless, uninsured, texting, distracted drivers on the road! I am glad no one was hurt though.
Posted by: Thoughtyouknew | December 8, 2011, 9:54 am 9:54 am
Who was aiming the thing? How could it have missed the target? How far back from the target was the cannon? Sounds like negligence to me.
Posted by: Earl | December 8, 2011, 10:48 am 10:48 am
Failure is always an option
Posted by: daen | December 8, 2011, 10:49 am 10:49 am
In the post by Guin, They are stupidily mistaken, Mythbusters are not going to be “canned” by the time 2012 is out… As Fans are ALWAYS submitting myths, big or small, they are always submitting myths for the mythbusters to Test out. So this Guy or girl’s prediction, is dead wrong by about probably another 10 years.
There will ALWAYS be a video on the internet that makes naive ones think it’s real, so therefore there will always be myths!!!
This is why I don’t read stupid people’s comments, because they tick me off.
Posted by: Heather | December 8, 2011, 10:50 am 10:50 am
Umm…confirmed, I guess.
Posted by: Brian Levine | December 8, 2011, 11:31 am 11:31 am
“…..And they have insurance for these kinds of things.”
Mythbusters, if the show still exists,desperately needs a new publicist. Sgt Nelson should NOT have added that last bit about insurance, in an attempt to trivialize the danger just because the corporation has liability coverage. Obviously, somebody could have been killed. Chalk up one big FAIL for this so-called “public information officer”.
Posted by: norasalias | December 8, 2011, 12:56 pm 12:56 pm
The two hosts of this show are public menaces and a poor example for the children they have as fans! They should be jailed for this as a warning to all young people!
Posted by: Carl Franklin | December 8, 2011, 1:05 pm 1:05 pm
I just have one thing to say to Carl’s message. Get A Grip. These guys show us what safety precautions they take. It’s not like they go off half cock during these myths. No, the way I see it, Adam and Jamie simply failed to properly take into account all of the variables, which is next to impossible to do when you’re doing tasks like they do. The only reason why they should be jailed would be if they did this as purpose or were drunk while doing it.
Posted by: Matthew | December 8, 2011, 10:07 pm 10:07 pm
What I want to know is why anyone would want to live that close to a bomb range!
Posted by: Alex | December 31, 2011, 6:09 pm 6:09 pm
Interesting post but like always I tend to confirm everything I read on the net.
Posted by: April Leisenring | February 20, 2012, 2:57 pm 2:57 pm
No matter if some one searches for his required thing, so he/she wants to be available that in detail, so that thing is maintained over here.
Posted by: Raymundo Linnecke | February 22, 2012, 3:51 pm 3:51 pm