I've seen the calculations, and I still don't have the foggiest idea how they managed to get that cannonball out of the bomb range. Neither did the bomb techs from the police dept. that were advising them. Its not like they shot the thing through a backyard fence, it skipped up and over a "hill" several hundred feet in elevation above the bomb range and traveled thousands of feet laterally. Check out the map of the incident here. Seriously, zoom in and look at the elevation changes.
https://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&oe=UTF8&msa=0&msid=213310551789468933331.0004b3832bb33e4b22e2f
Not excusing it, but sometimes accidents happen, even when you've done the math and consulted the experts like they did in this case. The cast of the show went out and apologized to that neighborhood in person, took questions and were grilled by the residents. I doubt you'd see that from many shows. And of course, all the involved residents were well compensated by the shows insurance. Worse things happen to people everyday, and most of the time no one even hears about it.
As far as the car destruction, I've only seen Mythbusters trash a couple of cars that were interesting in any way. And lets face it, 4 door Imperials and Fury's don't exactly have a big following. I'd be willing to bet the show had less than a couple thousand dollars in both of those cars COMBINED. They probably even sourced them from a yard, as they do most of their cars. Did you see the episode with the JATO rocket powered Impala? Don't hear anyone complaining about that one. And that was a 2 door hardtop.
The stupid Dukes totaled 300+ Chargers, and everyone still loves that retarded show. Heck, I've seen dozens of cars parted out on this very forum that were in better shape and in higher demand than either of those cars.
Sorry for the rant. The science on Mythbusters can be a little suspect sometimes, but you have to figure that this is after all a TV show produced for entertainment. And every now and then they do re-visits on experiments that viewers call them out on for scientific mistakes. I'd take Mythbusters over most of the schlock on television any day.
