Stray “Mythbusters” Cannonball Terrorizes Calif. Suburb

Mythbusters — or Housebusters?

An out-of-control cannonball shot by "Mythbusters" tore through a wall, a house and a six-lane road in a California suburb Tuesday before lodging itself in a minivan.

The hit TV show's homemade cannon was supposed to have shot the projectile into a container of water — but it went astray, escaped its firing range and wreaked a little havoc on the Bay Area suburb of Dublin, Calif.

Sgt. J.D. Nelson, a spokesman for the Alameda County Sheriff's Office, confirmed that the melon-sized cannonball "took a few unfortunate bounces" during the "Mythbusters" experiment gone awry, NBC Bay Area reports.

No one was injured. However, after knocking through the firing range wall and tumbling down a hill, the cannonball ripped through a home's front door, up its stairs, into a bedroom where three people were sleeping and back outside through a wall, blasting round entry and exit holes in the house.

Then it cleared a six-lane road before knocking some tiles off a roof and winding up lodged in a man's parked minivan.

"Crazy, crazy, crazy, crazy," said Nelson to the San Francisco Chronicle. He added that the "Mythbusters" crew was very lucky the errant cannonball hadn't killed or maimed anybody.

When the accident occurred, he said, the show was doing an experiment using a cannon it had built about two years ago and which it had used at least three times before.

In this particular experiment, the projectile was intended to go through several barrels of water and a cinder block wall before striking the hills of the bomb range, Nelson said. But since the cannonball missed the water, intended to slow its progress, it just bounced on down the hill and went on its merry way.

The "Mythbusters" Twitter account had earlier retweeted a post from one of their own, Grant Imahara, stating the team was to be working with such artillery. Grant's original post, along with a photo, has since been removed.

"Mythbusters" has used the same 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.

Selected Reading: NBC Bay Area, San Francisco Chronicle

Contact Us