Instead of arming our drones with multimillion dollar missiles, why not just arm them with cheap old-time cannonballs?
TV STUNT GOES AWRY, SENDS CANNONBALL ROCKETING THROUGH HOMES
CBS Los Angeles
December 6, 2011
DUBLIN, CALIF. — A cast iron cannonball rocketed through two homes and landed inside a minivan Tuesday when a “Mythbusters” TV experiment went wrong.
Jamie Hyneman and Adam Savage are hosts of the scientific experimentation show, which airs on The Discovery Channel. The pair was reportedly trying to figure out how fast a cannonball would travel, when it misfired and shot hundreds of feet in the air.
“This cannonball was supposed to go through several barrels of water and through a cinder block, and then ultimately into the side of the hill,” said J.D. Nelson of the Alameda County Sheriff’s Department.
Instead the cannonball flew over the foothills surrounding Camp Parks Military Firing Reservation, before spiraling back toward Dublin like a cruise missile.
It flew straight though the front door of a home on Cassata Place, and bounced around like a pinball, flying up to the second floor before blasting through a back bedroom wall.
The wayward cannonball then blasted across a busy road and through a second home some 50 yards away, demolishing roof tiles.
The homeowner’s mother was frightened.
“”It was a very loud boom; she thought a tree fell, maybe a meteor,” said Ming Jiang. “It wasn’t clear that it was a cannonball landing on the roof.”
The out of control cannonball finally came to a stop inside Jasper Gill’s minivan.
“It hit the dash, through the passenger window,” said Gill, who had gotten out of the vehicle just 10 minutes before the ball struck. “I’m lucky I’m alive.”
Incredibly, no one was injured in the mishap.
Officials said Mythbusters had been using the firing reservation for the last eight years for similar experiments, but none had gone awry.
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