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Mythbusters cannonball hits Dublin home and minivan

Yeah, surprised that they didn't test it in their normal testing areas, like the desert where there's room for things to go wrong like that.
 
The Alameda County Sheriff's bomb range is one of their normal testing areas. They blow a ton of stuff up there, and in their recent "Location, Location, Location" clip episode, I believe they named it as their #1 favorite location for the show.
 
Yeah, sorry, I should have said one of their other wider open areas. Sounds like it didn't have enough clearance for the type of experiment they were doing.
 
Considering the nature of this accident (and its clearly and accident), I don't see how anyone could possibly sue the Mythbusters/Discovery and win.

They've tested in this area a million times before without incident. They obviously take as many safety precautions as possible, and they'd even tested this canon several times successfully that day. It was a fluke. A malfunction which obviously couldn't have been predicted by anyone, even the county sheriff who's job it is to check these things.

Yes, it was incredibly dangerous, but thankfully no one was hurt and there was only property damage.

I'm more worried about them not showing it on TV :p
 
davejames said:
Something tells me we won't be seeing anymore cannonball myths on the show for a while...
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I doubt it. Other myths they've done in the past have gone wildly out of control causing some level of disturbance or damage to nearby areas and the Mythbusters and Discovery just made nice and took care of things. I suspect the same will happen here as it seemed to be more of a fluke than it did to be out of any kind of negligence or lack of precaution on the part of the Mythbusters or the bomb-range/wherever they were.

I doubt we'll see any of this in the show, however, much like we didn't find out why they were banned from an area due to a similar incident until a recent compilation show.
 
Dac said:
Considering the nature of this accident (and its clearly and accident), I don't see how anyone could possibly sue the Mythbusters/Discovery and win.

They've tested in this area a million times before without incident. They obviously take as many safety precautions as possible, and they'd even tested this canon several times successfully that day. It was a fluke. A malfunction which obviously couldn't have been predicted by anyone, even the county sheriff who's job it is to check these things.
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Right. From the article:
"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."
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Of course J.D. Nelson is a familiar name to Mythbusters fans. He's one of the stalwarts who've enabled the Mythbusters to experiment safely with explosives for many years. He's an expert at this, so if he says it was insanely improbable, that means nobody could've predicted it. It was a freak mishap that occurred despite all reasonable precautions.


By the way, here's an update on the event:

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2011/12/mythbusters-cannonball-discovery-channel.html

Highlights:
The science experiment gone wrong started with a theory: Could an object fired from a cannon carry the same speed and impact as a cannonball?
...
When the homemade cannon was lit, the steel ball “hit an odd trajectory off the hill and sent the cannon[ball] skyward,” said Sgt. J.D. Nelson.
...
The network has apparently agreed to pay the property owners for the damage.
...
The Alameda County Sheriff’s Department has suspended all activity at the bomb range except for routine operations.
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Also it seems this was a Kari/Grant/Tory experiment, which means I might've been right about what cannon they were using. And it looks like the water barrels were being used to measure impact, and that the cannonball that went awry was a control that other objects would be compared against.
 
Dac said:
Considering the nature of this accident (and its clearly and accident), I don't see how anyone could possibly sue the Mythbusters/Discovery and win.
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A *win* isn't guaranteed of course, but as we all know - with a good lawyer, one can sue anybody, at any time, for anything, for any reason.

As for why the family would want to sue? Don't know. If...IF...Mythbusters does the honorable thing and pays for all the damage so the family doesn't have to dip into their own insurance, I guess there would be no need to sue.

Trekker, you say this has happened before? And in those cases, Mythbusters has always paid for it? If that's true, I suppose they can be counted on to do it here as well. But just how certain is this? Can they be trusted not to welch on their responsibility?
 
The report I heard was they were testing something about whether other items shot from a cannon are more effective than a cannonball. Presumably the firing of an actual cannonball was a control test. Some control.

The thing that puzzles me - so there was a couple sleeping in the bedroom the cannonball passed through? When were they firing off this cannon? I can't imagine they'd have even considered doing this at night or early in the morning for noise bylaw reasons if nothing else. Weird.

I hope the show doesn't get cancelled or some silly stuff like that due to an accident. I don't think it will because no one was hurt. The fact no one was hurt means we're free to laugh at what honestly sounds like a scenario from a Laurel & Hardy film or a Road Runner cartoon made real. If someone had been hurt, then that would be a different story and I'd bet Discovery would probably right now be ordering up extra episodes of Dirty Jobs.

Alex
 
Mr. Laser Beam said:
A *win* isn't guaranteed of course, but as we all know - with a good lawyer, one can sue anybody, at any time, for anything, for any reason.
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The phrase Fed. R. Civ. P. 11 comes to mind. As well as MPRE 3.1. I suspect that Mythbusters will pay making this all moot, but your statement in the abstract is unequivocally wrong.
 
According to the article I linked to just five posts ago, the Discovery Channel has apparently agreed to pay for the damage.
 
Apparently?

I did see that they were "settling" over it. But what's to settle? Either they pay or they don't. What is there to haggle over?
 
You know, this proves what my father always said: "Context is everything." If the cannonball had done the same thing, but in such a way that it hadn't done any damage to private property or potentially endangered life and limb, we and the Mythbusters alike would surely agree that it was downright awesome.

And apparently the incident happened during a calibration of the cannon to test its power before taking it to a more remote location for the real experiment. So it would be easy enough to leave that part out of the episode but still show the experiment. They may wait a while, though, to allow things to cool down.
 
Well if it wasn't for hitting the house, it's doubtful they even would have FOUND the cannonball after the crazy trajectory it took.


Another little thing I just noticed: Grant, Tory and Kari were showing pics of themselves next to the cannon and cracking jokes about it yesterday on Twitter (yeah, I admit, I follow them), and now those pics have all been removed. I'm guessing all the dumb "ball" jokes aren't looking so good now in retrospect. lol
 
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