‘Mythbusters” Cannonball Stunt Hits Home – With People In It

Mythbusters is a must watch for geeks around the world. For years, Adam and Jamie have been taking widely held myths and conventions and kicking their butts all over the TV screen. One of the best parts of the show is when they blow stuff up… and it usually goes well. The other day, however, it did not.

In a recent stunt that involved testing a homemade cannonball at the Alameda County Sheriff’s Department bomb disposal range, a mishap led to the projectile veering off course.

“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.”

The good news is that no one died. Had the Cannonball hit any of the people, they would have been destroyed. We aren’t sure what the myth was or if it will air on TV (we really hope it will), but it must have been a doozy to pack that much punch!

Source: SFGate