Oops: Mythbusters Launch Cannonball Through House in California [Video]

Before every episode of Mythbusters Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman warn viewers not to try what they’re about to do at home. After all, they’re experts. But even the Mythbusters can have an experiment go wrong. Last night the myth busting team accidentally launched a cannonball through the wall of a California home.

Savage and Hyneman were supposed to hit a stack of trash cans filled with water with their cannonball. But they missed the target and sent the cannonball into the town of Dublin where it ripped through the walls and crashed into a minivan.

CNET reports that it wasn’t exactly a direct hit. The cannonball tore through a cinder-block well, rolled down a hill, traveled more than 700 yards through the neighborhood, broke through a door, traveled up stairs, then broke through another door to where a man, woman, and child were sleeping.

The 6-inch projectile then exited the back wall, crossed a 6-lane highway, landed on the roof of a Bellevue Circle home, then hit a Toyota minivan before finally coming to rest.

Here’s a news report about the incident.

Sgt. J.D. Nelson, a spokesman for the Alameda County Sheriff’s Department, told the SF Gate:

“Crazy, crazy, crazy, crazy. You wouldn’t think it was possible.” The Mythbusters are “tremendously lucky that it didn’t seriously injure or kill somebody.”

The Mythbusters were conducting the experiment at the same firing range in California that they have used to stage multiple explosions. According to CNET, the cannonball just took an unfortunate bounce.

No word on what myth the MythBusters were testing, but I’m guessing it wasn’t the classic myth of “can a cannonball hit a Toyota Minivan more than 1000 yards away after crashing through cinder blocks, wood doors, and bedroom walls.” But in case that was the myth, consider it busted.