"MythBusters" Misfire: Cannonball crashes through house in TV show mishap

By: Barry Leibowitz
Topics: Daily Blotter

(CBS SAN FRANCISCO) DUBLIN, Calif. - It wasn't what the crew from the TV show "MythBusters" set out to do, but they did demonstrate that a cannonball can miss its target completely, pass through the front door of a house and out an upstairs bedroom wall, and still have enough force to damage a car.

That's what happened when a test-firing by the team from the Discovery Channel show went dangerously awry in Dublin, Calif., according to CBS San Francisco.

A crew was filming for the program Tuesday at the Alameda County bomb range about 25 miles north of San Jose, sheriff's Sgt. J.D. Nelson said. The experiment involved a cannon built for the program about two years ago, and which the show says it has used at least three times before, Nelson said.

This time, the cannonball was supposed to go through several barrels of water and a cinder block wall before striking the hills of the bomb range.

Uh oh!

The munition missed the water, which was intended to slow the projectile's progress, went through the cinder block wall and struck the hill.

"It did not bury itself in the hill as you might think it would have," Nelson said, according to CBS San Francisco.

No it did not. Instead, it careened off the hill and into a neighborhood in Dublin.

The station reported the cannonball passed completely through a house, creating a softball-sized hole in the front door. After tearing through the home, and out an upstairs bedroom wall (how did that happen?), it careened through a window of a parked minivan at another home a few hundred feet away.

Three people were at the blasted home at the time, including at least one child, Nelson said. He told the Contra Costa Times that no one was injured and the residents didn't even wake up until the dust was settled, literally on top of them.

By the way, did we happen to mention that Sheriff Nelson is a consultant for "MythBusters"?

He said the show has used the county's bomb range more than 50 times for experiments and filming.

"We never even had any kind of an incident let alone anything this terrible," Nelson said.

Nelson said the TV crew responded by sending a senior producer to the home and to the home of the car owner. The producer arranged to meet with their insurance carriers, he told CBS San Francisco.

"They (the 'MythBusters' crew) are insured for these kinds of things," he said.

Ready, aim, fire.

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by catwoman1952 December 14, 2011 12:55 PM EST: Idiots, the Mythbuster boys need to grow up; Reply to this comment


by parisdakar December 8, 2011 3:35 PM EST: Sounds like they need to get a new "safety officer".; Reply to this comment


by Forty-Four December 8, 2011 11:07 AM EST: Darn it honey, I knew we shouldn't have moved here until the war was over...I forget, are we in the area held by the North or South?; Reply to this comment


by CapinWinky December 8, 2011 9:50 AM EST: Their house is by a bomb range and is made of paper-mache. I guess it's the only way to own in Cali for less than a million dollars.

A proper brick house and solid front door (theirs looks like a metal wrapped hollow door) would have stopped that ball in it's tracks or at least failed a little more spectacularly. Then again, they don't make houses like that next to bomb ranges.; Reply to this comment


by riptide10x December 8, 2011 8:56 AM EST: Location, location, location. Who buys a house next to a bomb range anyway?
Did the realtor leave that little detail out when they were looking at the house?; Reply to this comment