Ventura teacher's hand severed when paperweight (40mm round) explodes

[Eleven Mike]

It went off when he used it to squash a bug walking across his desk.

Well, that bug is extra-super dead, that's for sure. Old boy doedn't fool around.

The bug was killed by flying SCHRAPNEL.

 

[birddog]

CNN's coverage.

http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/04/04/paperweight.explosion.ap/index.html

 

[XDKingslayer]

that 40mm ammo is setback saftied and spin armed, theoretically takes roughly 18.6 yards (sorry folks I completely reject the metric thing) to do the trick, depending on the specific munition. It has a real high rate of duds though. If someone was going to pick one up and get hurt the 40 would be the guilty party.

He's right, kinda. While it's spin armed it needs to spin at a certain rpm for that distance in order to arm. That way you can't just spin it in your hands and arm it.

They do have a high rate of failure, and the nasty part is, they are touchy little buggers too. I've seen them go through a wall and not go off only to go off hitting a blade of grass. They are very, very unpredicatable.

 

[rero360]

I remember a guy who used to be in my unit telling me how when he was in the marines he was sent to panama, said he was the units armorer was given a M79 and was sent out on patrol with the grunts. from what he said a kid started shooting at them from a second story window with an AK and he shot the M79 at the kid, hitting him in the face, killed the kid and both the body and the round fell into the street. and then he went over and picked up the round, guess he didn't realize it was supposed to go boom. but I take the story with a grain of salt.

 

[Mizzle187]

Either way it sucks for him. We all try to be cute and innovative sometimes. The bad thing is usually when we are we sometimes forget to think clearly!