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Comment by noodle | Hacker News Reader

1) they were on a military explosives test ground and firing range. implying that they were in someone's back yard is a bit disingenuous when i'm sure more dangerous things are regularly tested there.

2) i rather suspect that they were pointing it exactly where they were told to point it by the officials and experts, as has been the case with pretty much everything they do on that range.

it sucks that this happened, everyone's lucky that no one was hurt. but i largely suspect they weren't shooting from the hip about it. the firing range must've had officials to oversee it. their insurance company regularly oversees all stunts. and the crew of the show are straight up experienced professionals, regardless of how it comes off on tv.

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>1) they were on a military explosives test ground and firing range. implying that they were in someone's back yard is a bit disingenuous

your point seems to be moot as this military explosives test ground and firing range happens to be located pretty much in the back yard of these homes.

>when i'm sure more dangerous things are regularly tested there.

either dumb luck or much better trained and/or smarter professionals doing the testing. (btw, i lived close to 2 military shooting ranges [ one for guns like AK-47 and another is the tank range ] and there is a world of difference between how military and civilians handle the weapons, i mean skill-wise, though even military do have mishaps )

Then why haven't the more dangerous things wrecked houses too?

I'm stunned at the level of apology going on here ("it sucks that this happened [...] but" -- seriously?). I like the show too, but people: they put a deadly projectile through someone's house. That's just not acceptable under any circumstances, no matter how many rules were followed nor precautions taken.

Someone screwed up badly here. That stunt should never have happened where it did. Does anyone seriously disagree?

"That stunt should never have happened where it did"

yep, they really should have picked a better location, like a military firing range ....

Argument by appeal to authority. If you can hit a residential neighborhood from the firing range, it's not safe. Or it's not being used safely. You seriously disagree?

Appealing to authorities is probably the best thing to do if you are playing with explosives. They did this, and it didn't quite pan out right. Shit happens.

"You seriously disagree?"

Yes, stop asking.

They have. http://www.kcra.com/r/19016582/detail.html

As I mentioned in another post on this page, this isn't the first time that stuff happening on this range has had an effect on the town that surrounds it. This is just the first one to have potentially serious consequences [that has involved the Mythbusters].

Sometimes, in the real world, shit happens.

Yes, a cannonball going through some houses should not happen. No, that does not automatically mean that somebody "screwed up badly".

The ballistics of a cannon are well understood. That makes the potential trajectories of the projectile quite predictable. Someone chose to try to manage the trajectory instead of finding a location where every trajectory would be safe for bystanders.

In the context of filming a television program, that seems like a big mistake.

If the operators of a military firing range got that wrong, then I find it hard to believe that anybody could have realistically been expected to get it right.

"Bystanders" is probably the wrong word. I meant people not participating in the filming.

The failure in the stunt was that the cannon fired at an unexpected angle and the ball did not embed in the berm as they expected. If they had chosen a location where a ball fired at maximum velocity and at the worst case angle could not hit a person, that failure would have any negative consequences. So (I think) it was reckless to try to manage the trajectories at a less safe location.

Someone made a judgement call that was wrong, about a potentially deadly experiment. That's a bad screw up.

Screwing up doesn't mean you did it on purpose, but that you failed in your responsibilities. Like here.

Things not turning out how you expected does not necessarily mean that you have failed in your responsibilities.

Shit happens, and real life has a metric shitton of fuzz factors. The idea that for every accident or mishap there must be somebody responsible is outdated and just plain wrong.

When something not turning out "as you expected" means that there is a high potential for death or injury to /an uninvolved party/, then absolutely you have failed in your responsibilities, especially when it is something that your planning or contingencies could and should have accounted for.

I guess, then, by your logic, if no-one was responsible, there will be no compensation, right? After all, not their fault that a cannonball just happened to rip through someone's house. What an outdated idea, indeed.

(Though of course, in reality, the production company / insurer will probably pay for all damage and some compensation while trying to make the homeowner sign a document stating that they accept no responsibility or liability and that it's a goodwill gesture).

> a high potential for death or injury to /an uninvolved party/,

The fact that an accident occurred is not sufficient evidence that there was a high probability of an accident occurring. I'd even go so far as to state that the Mythbusters' safety record over the history of their show, combined with the inherent danger of some of the experiments they've conducted, is sufficient evidence to say exactly the opposite.

On top of this, even given the incident with the cannonball, there was not a "high probability" of a person being hurt. The population density per cubic meter of your average suburb just isn't that high. You could likely fire a hundred cannonballs randomly into a suburb without injuring a single person.

"They crashed a plane into someone's house. They should never have been flying where they were."

Shit happens. Life is not safe. Get used to it.

That is stunningly terrible risk analysis; I really hope you don't work in IT anywhere near an operations role (or write software with anything but trivial failure costs). Society can weigh the value of air travel against the risk of an accident and make a decision that it's worthwhile. It has, and found it so. People don't simply throw airplanes into the sky and say "shit happens" when they crash.

This was a cannonball stunt. Surely that changes the calculus about "worthwhile" risk a little, no?

(And in any case, even looking objectively at the risk of mishaps of the few thousand Mythbusters vs. uncounted millions of airplane flights, I know which party I'd trust to do better risk analysis.)

Expecting everybody to match the risk/reward ratio of the aviation industry is absurd. There are few things that I am aware of that can do that.

On the contrary, I am an experienced systems operations engineer, and know only too well how badly excessive and/or misdirected risk mitigation costs companies.

I have never been accused of being too reckless, however. Developers I've worked with would be happy to relate what a pain in the ass I was about thorough testing and documentation of behavior and risks.

I don't know how to square those statements with reading about a cannonball going through someone's house for no better reason than making a mildly amusing TV show and telling the owners "shit happens".

I'm telling the owners no such thing. I'm telling you shit happens.

The owners will be compensated, and I'm sure there will be measures taken to avoid future incidents of this sort, but your blanket and aggressive condemnation of the actions of the crew are grossly out of touch with reality. Nothing short of absolute safety would satisfy you, and that is simply not possible in real life.

Wow, strawman much? My uneditted words are above, please read them again. I don't see anything "blanket" about saying someone (not "the crew") screwed up badly. Nor do I remember making demands about "absolute safety" beyond saying that the stunt shouldn't have happened where it did (something that even you don't seem to disagree with).

Honestly, you're the one with the half baked, off-the-cuff remark that needs defending. How do you square "shit happens" with "measure will be taken to avoid future incidents of this sort". The latter sounds a lot like you are backpedaling to me.

Your "unedited words": "That stunt should never have happened where it did."

It happened on a military firing range, in the presence of experts. Demanding more is requiring of them essentially perfect foresight. This is equivalent to requiring them to guarantee accidents are impossible.

I do disagree that it "should never have happened where it did", because I reject the notion that causality can be reversed like that. They performed the experiment in a reasonable location for what they knew at the time.

I don't think I implied they were in someone's backyard. It is self-explanatory that they were at least close enough to the houses to hit them with their cannon (even after a bounce off the ground). I don't think it is extreme to argue that is too close (especially for something like entertainment where it simply isn't necessary to expose other people to risk).

I do think the range screwed up the most, I'm sure they knew the maximum range of the cannon and took steps to limit the possible trajectories of the cannon. But when I say they were reckless, I'm looking at what actually happened, not at their intent.

Reckless is generally seen to be a description of actions, and not consequences.

I already said much the same in another reply to you, but they could have predicted the worst case trajectories of the cannon and chosen a location where that did not include houses. Not doing that was what I see as reckless.

I am taking exception to this line: "when I say they were reckless, I'm looking at what actually happened, not at their intent."

Right. To me it is self-evident that shooting a cannon and (unintentionally) hitting a house is a reckless action.

I said intent because noodle listed all the things they did do to be safe and ignored the part of my comment where I point out that they (apparently) did not choose a particularly isolated location (if the range is near where Google maps shows Camp Parks, it is a few thousand feet from neighborhoods).

Based on my research, the Bomb and Firing range was built in 1996. The homes in question were placed there in 2006. I wonder if you would consider it reckless to build a neighborhood next to a well-established bomb detonation site?

Where would you have suggested they fire the cannon, and why do you feel your choice is better than the choice of 3 layers of experts, especially considering this is about the 10th cannon-based episode they've done at this location?

Is someone at fault? Maybe. They likely won't use this range anymore. But its really hard to look at what they've done and say it was reckless when its what they've been doing for years with layers of experts greenlighting things every step of the way without any dangerous problems.

It is potentially foolish. Possibly quite foolish. But it's also at least possible that whoever built the houses talked to the sheriff first and believed that things would not be coming off the range with large amounts of momentum.

As far as the location, I don't think I have to think I am smarter than the experts in order to take the position that they shouldn't be hitting houses with cannonballs. It may not end up being a consensus in a world where people want to shoot cannons, but it is a defensible position.

When I consider that they have repeatedly shot the cannon at this location, I end up thinking that 1/10 is still a pretty high rate of hitting houses.

It is a high rate, but as of the 9th time they had a 100% cannon safety record. And as I said, I doubt they'll do it again in this location. Its definitely an unfortunate outcome.

I'm just pointing out that its easy to point fingers and say that something was stupid idea after the fact, even with all the experts in the world working on something. Before it went wrong, I'm sure they were certain they were being as safe as they could be.

I'm fairly sure they had a very good idea of the potential range of the cannon. I'm sure they were aware of the advantages of a larger facility. They chose to use a more convenient facility that they thought would be safe enough.

I guess we probably don't need to keep going back and forth on it though.

Nearly every firing range in the world is smaller than the range of the things they fire there. That is simply how they are designed.

Sure. That has little bearing on whether it was appropriate for a TV show to fire a cannon at this particular facility.

After the fact, everybody is an expert.

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