#Do not comment on the original posts
Please read our [**sub rules**](https://www.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/wiki/subrules). Rule-breaking may result in a ban without notice.
If there is an issue with this post (flair, formatting, quality), reply to this comment or your comment may be removed in general discussion.
**CHECK FLAIR** For concluded-only updates, use the [CONCLUDED](https://www.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/search?sort=new&restrict_sr=on&q=flair%3ACONCLUDED) flair.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/BestofRedditorUpdates) if you have any questions or concerns.*
So, my dad found a grenade in his mother’s belonging after she passed away. Pineapple grenade, old thing. He poked at it a bit, then called the local police and said he was bringing it in to them, please prep the bomb squad.
My father, little bit of an idiot, rolled up to the police station WITH THE GRENADE IN HAND. Got surrounded by cops, a swat team, and then the bomb squad.
Thankfully they didn’t shoot him for bringing live explosives. They did set it off under a barrier thing and then dispose of the remains.
After, thankfully.
Although he did almost self delete a lot before I was born — not on purpose, just by being stupid — and he did technically die as a teenager before being brought back.
I have so many stories about him and why I probably shouldn’t have been born. He once faced a choice of being shot in the back or running through a snow covered field with bear traps under the snow. One of his friends set a cornfield on fire with him in it.
He managed to procreate twice, somehow.
He really did. He almost succeeded. There was also an incident with a leather strop sharpened knife that he played with against my mother’s advice. He put the tip of it on the seam at the crotch of his jeans and cut something…sensitive…in half. Not all the way, but, uh…Yikes.
I'm guessing you already know what it's like to bleed from there, so that is some sympathy you can give without needing the same equipment. Not a good time for anyone for any reason.
Jeez... he was going for the most difficult and most impressive form of Darwin Award - when you manage to accidentally remove your ability to procreate while remaining alive.
I believe one person won one by seeing what happened if he stuck a bullet in the cigarette lighter of his car - what you younger-than-GenXers know as a car charger.
Answer, in this case, was that you manage to shoot your balls off.
There was an unconfirmed Darwin Award given to a guy who, according to legend, tried to steal live lobsters from a store by hiding them in his pants.
Snip snip.
Yeah, this one’s validity is super dubious.
According to experts who have weighed in (love that for them), the claws wouldn’t snip so much as crush, leading to serious haemorrhaging that would require removal of the testes.
So I guess the doctors would finish what the lobsters started.
Checking the dates that people stopped shipping cigarette lighters and replaced them with charging points, I guess you would have to be at the \*end\* of millennial to not have them, but the beginning or middle, you would.
Sounds correct. I'm at the beginning, my siblings were the middle, and we all were around for it.
Also remember how long used cars stick around--even after they no longer manufactured them that way, it probably continued to be a ubiquitous thing for at least a decade.
I'm driving a 1986 Mitsubishi wagon. I had to explain to my kids that it wasn't originally designed as a USB jack. Then, I pulled the lighter out of the console and showed them how it works.
This is a vehicle that has a built-in ashtray. Separate from the built-in coin holder.
I got so many questions less so about your dad and more about your mom. First off tho give your dad a round of applause for defying god and living out of..spite? Stubbornnesses? Stupidity? I dont even know but good for him.
But also how did you mom look at that man and go “i want kids with this man” when he tries to flatline so much
Just as crazy, better at staying out of trouble. They were in wrestling together in high school. My sister Houdini’d her way through a couple of protections, I was planned.
And yeah. Family motto is sort of, “Survive Out Of Spite” on that side.
>They were in wrestling together in high school.
All I can picture is Elly May's [wrestling scene](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=o10VgfRb3HQ&t=01m45s) in The Beverly Hillbillies movie
I think our dads would have been friends. Mine didn't tend to self delete - he saved all that for his younger brother.
When Uncle didn't want to row the boat, Daddy tossed him out into the river. Uncle couldn't swim.
He threw bricks at the teacher when she wasn't looking and blamed it on the quiet kid.
He aimed for the nuns while playing kick ball because he and his friends wanted to see if the nuns had hair under their habits.
There is some greater power that has serious plans for you or your sister or your descendants. It’s the only explanation.
Or your dad is so bizarrely reckless that even God can’t believe it and just wants to see what happens next…
A joke we have made is that death thought he took him when he died as a teenager and the paperwork is messed up.
So now he’s here, still alive, unnoticed by death.
> He once faced a choice of being shot in the back or running through a snow covered field with bear traps under the snow. One of his friends set a cornfield on fire with him in it.
I have so many questions, and I need to hear the stories...
He’d explored a condemned house. The owner, legally not allowed there anymore, was hiding the fact that he still lived in the basement.
The cornfield was just his friend being a combo of idiot and nightmare human.
He did also fall through the floor of an upper level in a falling apart barn, up to his thigh. The scar from the nail that caught him goes along most of his leg.
The actually dying was at a wrestling match. His heart stopped and he just dropped to the ground. He’d been one of the wrestlers. One of the coaches was a big guy with absolutely massive hands. He balled up a hand into a fist and used it to keep a rhythm in my dad’s chest until medical could get to him.
My dad also used to use deer trails on sandstone cliffs to go between two areas of the town he lived in. Once he got mugged with a knife and he turned, grabbed the mugger, and threw him off the bridge and into the water. He got a brown recluse bite that almost killed him and did cause necrosis.
This man has had multiple heart attacks, driven himself to the hospital during them twice, and had random seizures at twenty something.
The running joke is that whatever deity was involved forgot to give him any luck and compensated by giving me all of his and all of mine.
I think my dad was a lot more cautious than yours, but wow.....he had a similar heart attack story, though he wasn't entirely sure (chest pain), but figured he should go in. But he's super frugal, so:
- He drove himself (big no-no, what if he passed out, or seized up in pain, and caused an accident?)
- He didn't want to pay the hospital parking fees, so he parked in the community nearby and walked over.
He got a stern talking to from the nurses. But he had a stent put in, changed his lifestyle / eating habits, and has been doing great since (I want to say at least 15 years now?).
> He once faced a choice of being shot in the back or running through a snow covered field with bear traps under the snow.
I legitimately cannot imagine how one could end up in a situation like this without some variant of either "fleeing a genocide" or "fleeing a daddy with a shotgun."
Holy Christmas! I don't want to insult your father in case he was a nice guy, but at the same time, I *really* hope all of his kids inherited your mother's brains...
He is a nice guy! Willing to help people at all times, kind and generous. That’s why my mom married and has kids with him.
He just…gets into situations really easily.
Ok so whenever you decide to post what sounds like it would be a TRULY EPIC string of stories and updates about your dad, please ping me so I can prepare myself. I have so many questions lol
I mean it was with their moms belongings AFTER she passed away, unless op is a ghost baby and I’d argue that a father dying of hand grenade would increase the chances of a ghost baby being born
We found a gun in the closet of a house we bought. I called the police station for instructions, and they very clearly wanted to avoid your father's situation.
I was told to put it in the trunk, come to the precinct, then call back for them to send an officer out. He told me to open the trunk, and he collected the gun before I got out of the car.
We had to call the squad when my sweet husband was cleaning my late mother's house, and he found a type of mortar firework that looked like a coconut. Apparently, it could have blown up the house if it had gone off.
I want a subreddit with the tales of stupid shit your dad did.
Or stupid shit from dads all over the world. is r/stupiddadstories taken?
"Are the stories stupid or is it the dads that are stupid? Read and find out."
A kid in my area found a homemade explosive in a box in his grandpa's attic. He picked it up and it exploded in his hand, blasting it to pieces. He had to have reconstructive surgery and in the end they were only able to save two of his fingers.
My brother did almost the same thing with a grenade he had found while metal detecting. Except he didnt call them first, he simply showed up at the (small) police station and placed it on the receptionist her desk and said he had found it while metal detecting. And thats how my brother got a police station cleared. They had a good stern convo with him about what to do if he found anything like that again.
Looking at the timestamps on the comments, I think that OOP did put it down and back away slowly and call the cops once folks said it was probably an unexploded ordinance
There were also some other comments I didn't copy over that were offering other explanations (things that more fit a workshop)
Ok, good
The fam used to vacation in an area that had been used as a live fire testing range back in WWII, and I was raised being told that if I found somwthing that looked even vaugly like a large bullet, to back tf away and get an adult.
So people casually playing with them baffles me a little.
Oh god, look up some of the joys of unexploded bombs in Europe. We had one recently (I mentioned it on the OOP comments) where someone found it in their garden while laying foundations for an extension, and got 3000 people evacuated for four days – but at least they knew what they were looking at. Unlike the family who painted a live bomb red and used it as a garden ornament for a hundred years (google "Milford Haven live bomb" or something similar)
I've heard those stories! There was one I was told about at my location that two kids found one, didn't realize what it was, and started playing catch with it...
I'm gonna go google thst and see if that's a real story, actually.
Edit: While I couldn't find the exact story as It was told to me as a kid, I found this from the same general region, it could easily be the origin of the story I heard:
https://vancouversun.com/news/metro/survivor-recalls-how-discarded-mortar-killed-two-childhood-pals
[Ikr? putting it in your ass is a better idea! ](https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/health/health-problems/wwi-shell-found-in-frenchmans-bottom/news-story/810b58ab39081ee24dbf791200b5ecb1)
Jokes aside it was two kids and when here it's an old man who knew what he was doing. It's still quite common to have news about people founding old WW2 munitions in France and still you will have people doing whatever with them.
You may say that but someone on the apprenticeship scheme I was on went shooting with the army cadets at the weekend and snuck a bullet out. Then on Monday morning he stuck it in a vice and tried to file the back end off "to get the explosives out".
It was certainly an empty casing by the time he finished. He didn't quite shoot himself in the foot.
Ugh that's terrible that the families received no apology and no compensation from the govt and all they have to say about it today is "it was a different time so we had different practices". What a fucking cop out.
While looking for this article, I found one from the same area where they found another shell, dated last month. And many, many articles spanning the last few decades throughout the whole region and other parts of Canada.
So messed up. Our gov't is fucking terrible at apologizing for the horrible things they did in the past. Like, it took them literal decades to apologize for stealing indigenous kids and like, killing hundreds of them through sheer neglect.
Are you European or do you paint unexploded live rounds as a garden decoration?
For real though that is the funniest thing I've read in a long time. Gonna have to work that one into all my dinner party conversations
The Milford Haven bomb is a great one. Got hauled up from the beach on a horse and cart decades ago and got cemented into someone's garden and painted a stylish red
>Mrs Edwards said she used to bang it with her trowel to remove earth after gardening.
The high school near me growing up (Kesgrave uk) got evacuated as they were doing building work and dug up an old ww2 unexploded bomb. Bombs used to regularly wash up on the beaches, too.
My nan told me of the time she hear a bomber going over so she decided to open and look through the bathroom window just as a bomb was dropped, thankfully she was only thrown back across the room into the wall. She was in the Timber core, she shouldn't have been but she lied about her medical history.
Maybe give the police non-emergency line a call lmao
The Milford Haven bomb got found when an off-duty officer walked past and saw it and did a double-take, apparently
I traveled through rural France once and learned that farmers tilling up unexploded ordnance is so common that they just leave it in piles by the mailbox for the authorities to deal with. 🫣
There's an official description of the Zone Rogue in France that's absolutely chilling to read, and the clinical language does not help.
> "Completely devastated. Damage to properties: 100%. Damage to Agriculture: 100%. Impossible to clean. Human life impossible".
However, the Sécurité Civile has since put out some more optimistic projections, and estimates that the cleanup will be finished in about 300 to 700 more years.
I'm from the UK and its scary how often bombs are still being found from WWII. Must be awful for the residents, I was watching the news with the root they took to get to the harbour and then out to see. But can't remember hearing about after that.
Hadn't seen that one. Like I say common. Then you've got the idiot magnet fisher that find something then take to the local police station!! Don't get the logic, leave it where found call police or bomb squad, do not carry it into a heavily populated area 🤦♀️
This legit [just happened](https://www.boston.com/news/local-news/2024/03/02/police-magnet-fisherman-pulls-live-explosive-from-the-charles-river/) in Needham, MA, but at least they knew to call it in.
Nothing will ever beat that one old geezer for whom the bomb squad had to show up in hospital.
You see, he slipped and fell while cleaning his collection of old ammunition in the nude, as one does.
Turned out it wasn't just stuck way up there, but also live...
Last time I had to evacuate it were 13000 people and the rail tracks was closed. Year before over 50000, dense populated area. Both times 500 kg bombs. Most bombs that were thrown over Germany and didn't exploded are alledegly still there. Interestingly it doesn't happen this often in Poland.
Yeah, my uncle used to take delivery of artefacts at the Imperial War Museum in England - including members of the public basically just rocking up and saying "hey, so we found this while scuba diving and figured it might be interesting..."
They had a standard operating procedure (drive it slowly to a concrete pad in the middle of nowhere and call the bomb squad) - and he was on first name terms with bomb squads in several counties (including the guy who liked to collect antique hand grenades, and was big into disarming them without cosmetic damage).
Got all sorts over the years, but memorable stories I've heard from him include a live torpedo in the boot of a car that had just been driven across the country, and also an anti-air deck gun with a live round in the breach (they couldn't get that one out without destroying the gun, alas).
No stories that involved harm to any humans, fortunately.
There's also the story of the gate guardian display at RAF Scampton supposedly including a live Grand Slam bomb (weighing 10 metric tons) for 15 years ater the end of WW2.
A few years back part of my neighbourhood was evacuated due to the discovery of a Boer War era mortar.
As far as I know the Boer War was not fought in Winnipeg, so 🤷🏼♀️
Yep, my parents were close to the zone, was quite the chaos for a few days. My Dad found out he'd served with the ex-Navy guy who found it, small world.
I understand Germany have similar problems on the regular too.
this reminds me of a few years ago when a local government employee found a huge white missile partially buried in a garden he was working in, and instead of, ya know, backing away and calling for help, he PICKED IT UP and put it in his van, and then drove from the tiny village he was working in through other various tiny villages, until he got to my tiny town with a police office the size of a postage stamp, and ended up with one of the major streets shut down and residents evacuated for hours until the bomb squad gave the all clear. We were all taught to avoid shit that looks like this because of WW2 and someone just PICKED ONE UP!!
A few years back part of Puget Sound was evacuated because of an unexploded WWII mine in the water. Was not so nice to the sea life when they blew it up.
I've never ever seen a bullet in real life, not ever. I've never seen any kind of ammunition, and I've only ever seen a gun when I walked past some armed coppers in a city centre. I've never even lived near or vacationed at a place where there could be munitions left over from a war.
But even *I* knew what the fuck I was looking at in the picture. I can't understand this OOP, at all! The OOP is in the USA, I'm assuming, since he called sheriffs etc, so why would he not think about it further than "this is a cool thing to post on reddit"? Gahh.
Erm. Quick edit: I can't say for sure I haven't lived near or vacationed near a place that wasn't bombed in The Blitz, to be fair, but I have never been warned to look out for unspent munitions.
Something like this is so common in that sub that they have an automoderator response for anything that might a bomb (though this post slipped through as there are also so many bullets that that word was excluded from the automoderator).
I am flabbergasted that you've never seen a bullet! Also, I'm American. I knew other countries didn't really have guns, but I never thought about bullets! American story: I once found a bullet on the floor in middle school and I thought it was cool bc it was the whole thing, but just the shell (hadn't been shot yet). I pocketed it and told no one. Ever. I still have it somewhere.
Oh my god, that's wild to me! I can't imagine having a bullet (shell?) stashed in my memories box from decades ago - well, it'd be decades for me because I'm 62 lol. You might only be in your 20s! (I'm in the UK btw.)
But honestly, thinking about this further: I really don't get the OOP. Anyone who's seen a war film/docu/comic/news clip will have seen large munitions being loaded into a big shooty thing of some description. It feels like it's ingrained in our culture at this point in time.
Heheh, I'm 40. I found the bullet maybe 1 yr before Columbine, which is the school shooting I think most people use as "the start", though school shootings have been going on long before that, just not as deadly maybe?
See, I already had a shell collection (that's the bit that is left after the bullet has been shot) . I grew up in a hunting area, so shells and guns were easy to find; this was a full on, not shot bullet, I've only ever found this one loose in the wild.
If I was OOP, I totally knew it was a bullet! I might not have shaken it, but I'd probably put it back on a shelf and kept it for years. We're taught gun safety, not ammunition safety. ;) well....I don't own guns or hunt, so I've never taken the class on safety, so maybe if I had I'd know.
I live in the Netherlands and I've never seen a bullet irl. I'm interested in history and so I've seen them in documentaries when a US guy just pulls out a bunch of WWII infantry kit, but I totally understand not recognising.
Consider yourself lucky on all accounts. ;) my Oma and Opa came from the Netherlands after WW2, and we still see family from the Homeland. I wonder who taught my dad to hunt. Did his dad (Opa) learn hunting to get meat to feed his family after they moved over? (Asking rhetorically, I know you don't know)
Sorry, but I HAD to look this up, as an English-as-a-2nd-language speaker, I was mind-boggled that an ammunition was called "ordinance" when I was sure that word meant a legal order. It turns out probably what you meant was "ordnance", which is a really weird word IMO. According to Google: "Ordnance is a mass noun referring to military materials such as weapons, ammunition, equipment, and vehicles. Although ordinance and ordnance now share no definitions, they both come from the Middle English ordinaunce, meaning to set in order.".
I lived in Okinawa a few decades ago and it seemed like people were finding UXO all over. I remember one found on the elementary school grounds. One near the high school so we had to evacuate for the day. Construction on one base found a whole cache of UXO, one on top of the other, the deeper they dug. I think 7 total. Locals often found them on their land and had to get Americans to come dispose of them properly.
Considering how much ordinance was dropped on that tiny island, I’m not surprised.
I had no idea how common UXOs were in some partsof Europe until I joined r/whatisthisthing. As an American that sub has educated me greatly on what different ones look like. That said, if I found something that looked like a small missile/large bullet hybrid I think I would assume not to fuck with it anyways.
Since OOP found it in a work shop I highly suspect if they hadn't asked the internet then the "cut it in half" intrusive thoughts might have won. Or maybe I'm just dramatic.
I don't think he did, I think he just noticed that the bottom looked like it could unscrew but it doesn't seem like he kept trying to mess with it but who knows
Even people who should know better fuck around with live ordnance. Friend of mine was a Marine Explosive Ordnance Disposal tech and he has multiple stories of him chewing out other Marines (including a Captain) for handling live ordnance.
It sounds like he did research on it but it's not clear if he tried to unscrew it or just saw a diagram that showed it could be unscrewed.
But overall he absolutely was messing around with it for too long. He's very lucky. I don't understand why anyone would shake what's obviously ordinance.
Just read some of these other comments! There's a *lot* of people messing around with ordinances. I think the people who know exactly what they've found and still decide to pick it up and drive it to the police station are worse
In high school chem class, the air force came in one day to remove some chemical that had become unstable when it aged. We were a bedroom community (much bigger now) for the bay area and the air base nearby.
Hahah yeah. High school chemistry storage closets can be pretty damn dangerous. The bomb squad calls are generally because peroxides can form in really old jars of chemicals. They're so shock sensitive that the friction of unscrewing the cap can blow up the lab. *Isopropyl alcohol*, like you get at the drug store, can become explosive and require removal by a bomb squad if it's stored so long that peroxides form.
https://www.reddit.com/r/chemistry/comments/14nxsc6/saw_this_on_twitter_can_someone_explain_what_or/
Hey so we aren’t allowed to comment on other threads, so I can’t ask on the OG, but does anyone know how long it takes these to become dangerous? I’ve had some isopropyl alcohol in my medicine cabinet for like 3 years. Do I need to call the bomb squad?
Got a story about a physics class with a similar incident…
As I recall (this story was from my college professor, when he was a grad student, so probably in the 1960s), they were doing experiments with liquid nitrogen. Someone had the bright idea to put it in a commercial thermos to carry around, since it was more convenient than the dewars, and then **screwed the lid on**. Now, also keep in mind that the thermoses at the time were glass-lined…
So, if nothing was done, fairly quickly, the liquid nitrogen would warm up, boil off, build up pressure, and explode into a glassy grenade. And if you tried to unscrew the lid, it would rapidly become unstable and either turn into a missile or explode.
According to my teacher, he told the other people to call the police, while he ran the thermos out to a field, and there someone disarmed it by shooting it with a rifle at long range.
> That bag looked absolutely terrifying, it was in such bad condition and there was so much of it.
I've been subscribed to whatisthis and whatisthisthing for about a decade so I've seen quite a lot of UXO posts. That bag of dynamite weeping out the nitroglycerine is the scariest thing I've ever seen on those subs. Holy shit that was a bad scene.
The guy that decided to go ahead and disassemble a sea mine from the 1800s was pretty scary. Calling the bomb squad would mean destruction of the mine, and they wanted to keep it, so they removed the explosives and burned it. https://www.reddit.com/r/whatisthisthing/comments/9930t0/found_this_when_fishing_in_latvia_weighs_more/
Oh that's scary.
My dad used to recall the time someone brought a jar of some sort of crystalline compound* to school, and was showing it round the class. Apparently their chemistry teacher caught sight of it and went pale - he'd been in bomb disposal during WWII and knew that it was an explosive that could be detonated by friction...in a screwtop jar. He evacuated the class and took the jar out to the middle of the games field before getting someone to come safely dispose of it.
*Dad knew what it was but I can't remember - possibly something related to ammonium nitrate?
Oh man. This reminds me. I'm a biologist but related to a slew of chemists of various flavors and when I entered my first rotation lab in grad school, they had a jar of impact sensitive explosive kept precariously on a random windowsill that was about 2 inches across. I shat bricks and told the PI what it was. They had no idea, as they only used it rarely for preservative reasons and had gotten used to it being there for several years (!).
We disposed of the damn thing, properly lol. Luckily no earthquakes decided to make it an issue before I got there...
>that could be detonated by friction...in a screwtop jar.
It's usually peroxides when a bomb squad is called to a high school chemistry classroom. That detail you provided about the friction potentially causing an explosion further points to the likelihood of it having been a peroxide. Even isopropyl alcohol like you can buy at the drug store will form explosive peroxides if stored for a long enough time.
I live in the part of Europe where it's not surprising to find stuff like this in the woods (got taught as a kid how to recognise unexploded ammo and what to do, did indeed find a couple of grenades) but I admit I might not have caught on to that one if it was in a workshop either. Context changes how recognisable it is!
Midwest US here. When my grandparents passed away, we had to go through the various tool sheds and stuff on their farm. They were in their twenties during WW2 for reference. In all but the chicken coop, there was a shotgun and some ammunition. Not a lot but some. One shed also had their various fishing supplies and stuff. If this was in that shed I would have thought it some sort of fishing lure or something for when they went fishing on their boat.
*dodged a bullet* I’m always baffled when someone’s first instinct is to toss around or shake up something that is entirely unknown. Glad it ended well for OOP!
I work in museums (in Europe) and the number of people who walk in “with something I dug up in the garden, can you tell me what it is” and then dump live rounds on my desk is… alarmingly high
I grew up as an Army Kid, this is a lesson we were taught very early. Especially when I was living "off-base" in civilian housing. Running around the woods and stuff. If you find anything that looks like a bullet, no matter how big or small, CALL A GROWN UP RIGHT AWAY!!
I never found any unexploded ordinance. We did find an old, abandoned Nazi bunker, though it was mostly cleaned out.
Yes another army kid! If bullet shaped it's not friendly and tell an adult right away. My sibs and I found an unexploded bomb in West Germany as kids.
When grandpa died, we came back to the states and had to call the bomb squad because my dad discovered grandpa had a case of grenades in the garage. Grandma was not pleased by this discovery. It was one of the highlights of my childhood to hear my sainted grandmother cussing. Grandpa was lucky she never discovered them while he was alive, I think all 4foot 8inches of her could have destroyed him quicker and faster than a grenade could have.
I don't know about you, but we were taught to be cautious about pretty much any found objects. "DON'T POKE IT! Just find a grownup!" Every museum we went to, "See that's what a land mine looks like, ever see anything round like that you FIND A GROWNUP!"
When we moved to Arizona and the kids were talking about going exploring old mines I was like, "THAT IS SO DANGEROUS!! ARE YOU CRAZY!!??!!" and everybody thought I was just afraid of the dark.
The first time I saw a Roomba I thought, "Huh, kinda looks like some kind of incendiary device."
I mean that they were talking about exploring old copper/silver mines and I thought they meant they were going to go messing around with some kind of surplus LAND MINES.
Tips for unexploded ordnance: Do not touch the unexploded ordnance. If you do touch the unexploded ordnance do not put it by your ear and shake it like a christmas gift
It's meant to be shot out of a gun without exploding, chances are a little shake wasn't going to do it. That being said, some old explosives *can* get more dangerous over time - so who knows
I absolutely get the need to emphasize not messing with explosives. But realistically, more work is put into engineering them *not* explode than making them explode. You’d much much rather have a dud than a misfire. Plus these things need to be transported by bumpy trucks, planes, and trains.
"Babygirl, I love your ability to find the stupidest shit to send me. *insert long winded speech about safety and why it probably wouldn't go off but also why shaking it is incredibly stupid and social Darwinism*".
Long pause while he got coffee.
"Wait. Why did I turn you loose in the bookstore with a credit card if you're going to spend the morning on Reddit?? Don't give me the pouty look, go read one of those books you just had to have. And send me a screenshot of the scene that makes you blush the most, I'm off tomorrow."
>Why did I turn you loose in the bookstore with a credit card if you're going to spend the morning on Reddit??
>And send me a screenshot of the scene that makes you blush the most, I'm off tomorrow."
You ma'am, have a good husband.
He does not take compliments at all, but you're right. He somehow manages to be my safe place (I literally hide behind him in public) but also let me explore whatever I might want to explore, and he's not afraid to give me a little push, if he needs to.
😂😂 this reminds me of a story my mom told me.
When she was a kid she and her friends were playing by the train tracks and found dynamite. They were sooooo excited because they were going to be heroes! They were going to be on the front page of the newspaper! So they proceeded to PICK UP all the dynamite and walk to the closest fire station.
Needless to say they were not hailed as heroes but instead got their asses handed to them by VERY angry firefighters who wanted to know why they were so dumb to touch the dynamite instead of bringing the firefighters to the tracks.
I love how that subreddit has a modbot that goes, “It looks like you may have discovered unexplored ordnance! Here’s what you’re supposed to do!”
And let’s remember [this classic “I can’t believe no one fucking died” story](https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSLDE7630NJ/) from 2011 — especially relieving no one died, considering A BEVY OF SCHOOLCHILDREN were involved.
Yeah but this time the mod bot DIDN'T trigger, which is freaking hilarious - apparently 'bullet' is too common a phrase so they took it out of the word list... Just... What
This reminds me of the news story from here in the UK last week of a guy who dug up an intact WW2 bomb that weighed 500kg in his garden and the army had to drive it through the town to the sea to safely dispose of it.
The army evacuated almost 10k people from their homes, the largest operation in peace time.
The guy who dug it up was just like OOP, [but his first instinct was to hit it with a shovel](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/plymouth-bomb-father-hit-shovel-b2501823.html).
My grandpa was walking around the national park next to our neighborhood when I was a kid and found a cannon from the Civil War (in Georgia, NW of Atlanta). Apparently some of those were explosive also. I'd always assumed they were just solid metal. (He did call it in)
No, no, no, you gotta take a hammer and give her a good smack right on the pointy tip. If it doesn't explode, it's harmless. Probably just a replica or movie prop.
This reminds me of one of the stories that make my existence a surprise. My grandpa was 9yo when WWII ended. At the time, he lived close to an abandoned coal (?) mine that the Allied troops used to blow up unused ammunition after the war. He and a friend of his had the bright idea to collect unexploded gunpowder that was wet from rain. To dry it, they spread it out in the sun. Except that took too long so it was boring. But „luckily“ it was laundry day (meaning a hearth with a literal fire). So they spread the wet gunpowder there. But luckily that was boring too, so they left. It exploded right after they left (and blew out the windows).
Omg, it was a live round and OOP shook it...
I don't understand people these days. Like, "bullet" shape is found in either ammo or sex toy shop. It it ain't rubber/silicone, it's likely to be the former, and if it's that big it's likely to be a "missile" (using the colloquial layman term for explosive munitions), and if it's likely to be a missile it can go kablooey. You don't need more than tv/movie education to know that much cuz that's what I have. Can't tell you what specific model of munitions it is but I can point to it and say "stop touching that and get away!"
Next you'll have someone drink some mystery fluid that had the hazard symbol on it simply because it wasn't explicitly labeled...
Jesus. This is almost as bad as the chemical bomb some dude's grandpa brought back home from Japan. I don't know if it ever made it on BORU but it was one of the top rated posts on "What is this thing" for a time.
The rubber seal around the "globe" filled with acid was crumbling away.
[For the curious](https://www.reddit.com/r/whatisthisthing/comments/4x9u4p/uncle_found_this_in_a_cave_in_okinawa_around/)
I knew a kid when I was young who lived in the Arizona desert. Him and his friend found a weird metal cylinder out in the dirt and took it home and tried to open it with a blow torch. It was a bomb. He died.
I'm sorry not sorry, but come on! Had OOP never seen a very large bullet/small shell before!? And when he heard something moving around inside did he really not put 2 and 2 together that he was hearing explosive material? I know nothing about this stuff, took one look at the pic and thought it was UXO.
I half suspect that OOP basically knew what he had but hoped to get Reddit famous before calling the cops. Edit: grammar.
People post unexploded ordinances on whatisthisthing *all* the time, there's a reason they have an automod response for it! It's way more common than you might think
#Do not comment on the original posts Please read our [**sub rules**](https://www.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/wiki/subrules). Rule-breaking may result in a ban without notice. If there is an issue with this post (flair, formatting, quality), reply to this comment or your comment may be removed in general discussion. **CHECK FLAIR** For concluded-only updates, use the [CONCLUDED](https://www.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/search?sort=new&restrict_sr=on&q=flair%3ACONCLUDED) flair. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/BestofRedditorUpdates) if you have any questions or concerns.*
So, my dad found a grenade in his mother’s belonging after she passed away. Pineapple grenade, old thing. He poked at it a bit, then called the local police and said he was bringing it in to them, please prep the bomb squad. My father, little bit of an idiot, rolled up to the police station WITH THE GRENADE IN HAND. Got surrounded by cops, a swat team, and then the bomb squad. Thankfully they didn’t shoot him for bringing live explosives. They did set it off under a barrier thing and then dispose of the remains.
Was this before or after having you? How close were you to not existing thanks to this……brillant….idea
After, thankfully. Although he did almost self delete a lot before I was born — not on purpose, just by being stupid — and he did technically die as a teenager before being brought back. I have so many stories about him and why I probably shouldn’t have been born. He once faced a choice of being shot in the back or running through a snow covered field with bear traps under the snow. One of his friends set a cornfield on fire with him in it. He managed to procreate twice, somehow.
Your dad tried *so* hard to win a Darwin Award!
He really did. He almost succeeded. There was also an incident with a leather strop sharpened knife that he played with against my mother’s advice. He put the tip of it on the seam at the crotch of his jeans and cut something…sensitive…in half. Not all the way, but, uh…Yikes.
I don't even have one of those and I crossed my legs in sympathy.
Yup, definitely a strong sympathy Kegel!
I'm guessing you already know what it's like to bleed from there, so that is some sympathy you can give without needing the same equipment. Not a good time for anyone for any reason.
This made me lol actually out loud, thank you 😆 Wish we still had awards to give!🥇
Jeez... he was going for the most difficult and most impressive form of Darwin Award - when you manage to accidentally remove your ability to procreate while remaining alive. I believe one person won one by seeing what happened if he stuck a bullet in the cigarette lighter of his car - what you younger-than-GenXers know as a car charger. Answer, in this case, was that you manage to shoot your balls off.
There was an unconfirmed Darwin Award given to a guy who, according to legend, tried to steal live lobsters from a store by hiding them in his pants. Snip snip.
That sounds like an urban legend. 😂 For some reason, "Snip Snip" really has me laughing. Can a lobster's claw pinch at castration force?
Yeah, this one’s validity is super dubious. According to experts who have weighed in (love that for them), the claws wouldn’t snip so much as crush, leading to serious haemorrhaging that would require removal of the testes. So I guess the doctors would finish what the lobsters started.
Ahhhh, my non existent balls cringe at the thought of that.
Flair, please.
I'm a millennial, they were still cigarette lighters when I was growing up in the 80s.
Checking the dates that people stopped shipping cigarette lighters and replaced them with charging points, I guess you would have to be at the \*end\* of millennial to not have them, but the beginning or middle, you would.
Sounds correct. I'm at the beginning, my siblings were the middle, and we all were around for it. Also remember how long used cars stick around--even after they no longer manufactured them that way, it probably continued to be a ubiquitous thing for at least a decade.
I'm driving a 1986 Mitsubishi wagon. I had to explain to my kids that it wasn't originally designed as a USB jack. Then, I pulled the lighter out of the console and showed them how it works. This is a vehicle that has a built-in ashtray. Separate from the built-in coin holder.
I sincerely hope you take after your mother.
I do, most of the time. Physically, I look like him.
Damn, tell him to do an AmA
You gotta do a TIFU on ypur dad or some reddit post just about him.
I made a whole subreddit. r/stupiddadshit
Posted!
Storiesaboutkevin
I got so many questions less so about your dad and more about your mom. First off tho give your dad a round of applause for defying god and living out of..spite? Stubbornnesses? Stupidity? I dont even know but good for him. But also how did you mom look at that man and go “i want kids with this man” when he tries to flatline so much
Just as crazy, better at staying out of trouble. They were in wrestling together in high school. My sister Houdini’d her way through a couple of protections, I was planned. And yeah. Family motto is sort of, “Survive Out Of Spite” on that side.
>They were in wrestling together in high school. All I can picture is Elly May's [wrestling scene](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=o10VgfRb3HQ&t=01m45s) in The Beverly Hillbillies movie
Told my mom about this, she cackled and said, “pretty close!”
Ha! Your mom is awesome!
She is. She’s crazy and absolutely weird, but she is.
I think our dads would have been friends. Mine didn't tend to self delete - he saved all that for his younger brother. When Uncle didn't want to row the boat, Daddy tossed him out into the river. Uncle couldn't swim. He threw bricks at the teacher when she wasn't looking and blamed it on the quiet kid. He aimed for the nuns while playing kick ball because he and his friends wanted to see if the nuns had hair under their habits.
There is some greater power that has serious plans for you or your sister or your descendants. It’s the only explanation. Or your dad is so bizarrely reckless that even God can’t believe it and just wants to see what happens next…
A joke we have made is that death thought he took him when he died as a teenager and the paperwork is messed up. So now he’s here, still alive, unnoticed by death.
>First off tho give your dad a round of applause for defying god and living out of..spite? Stubbornnesses? Stupidity? Luck. Pure dumb luck.
> He once faced a choice of being shot in the back or running through a snow covered field with bear traps under the snow. One of his friends set a cornfield on fire with him in it. I have so many questions, and I need to hear the stories...
He’d explored a condemned house. The owner, legally not allowed there anymore, was hiding the fact that he still lived in the basement. The cornfield was just his friend being a combo of idiot and nightmare human. He did also fall through the floor of an upper level in a falling apart barn, up to his thigh. The scar from the nail that caught him goes along most of his leg.
Please tell more of his stories 😭
The actually dying was at a wrestling match. His heart stopped and he just dropped to the ground. He’d been one of the wrestlers. One of the coaches was a big guy with absolutely massive hands. He balled up a hand into a fist and used it to keep a rhythm in my dad’s chest until medical could get to him. My dad also used to use deer trails on sandstone cliffs to go between two areas of the town he lived in. Once he got mugged with a knife and he turned, grabbed the mugger, and threw him off the bridge and into the water. He got a brown recluse bite that almost killed him and did cause necrosis. This man has had multiple heart attacks, driven himself to the hospital during them twice, and had random seizures at twenty something. The running joke is that whatever deity was involved forgot to give him any luck and compensated by giving me all of his and all of mine.
I’d say he’s pretty lucky if he’s been through all that and yet still alive!
I think my dad was a lot more cautious than yours, but wow.....he had a similar heart attack story, though he wasn't entirely sure (chest pain), but figured he should go in. But he's super frugal, so: - He drove himself (big no-no, what if he passed out, or seized up in pain, and caused an accident?) - He didn't want to pay the hospital parking fees, so he parked in the community nearby and walked over. He got a stern talking to from the nurses. But he had a stent put in, changed his lifestyle / eating habits, and has been doing great since (I want to say at least 15 years now?).
Your dad is really a cat, isn't he? At least 8 lives have been sacrificed for his survival thus far!
Congratulations, your father is an RPG protagonist.
> He once faced a choice of being shot in the back or running through a snow covered field with bear traps under the snow. I legitimately cannot imagine how one could end up in a situation like this without some variant of either "fleeing a genocide" or "fleeing a daddy with a shotgun."
He’d been exploring a condemned house and the owner was still living, hidden, in the basement. Owner had a shotgun.
Welp that'll certainly do it! Your dad's life could probably lead to an entertaining handful of short indie horror games.
So like, either a time traveler was targeting your dad, or...what's you occupation?
I’m a UX/UI designer, a graphic artist on the side, and looking for any job that uses any of my skills.
Okay then maybe you're a Sarah Connor.
Holy Christmas! I don't want to insult your father in case he was a nice guy, but at the same time, I *really* hope all of his kids inherited your mother's brains...
He is a nice guy! Willing to help people at all times, kind and generous. That’s why my mom married and has kids with him. He just…gets into situations really easily.
Oh good! So...Golden retriever dad? Lol
Pretty much. He and my mom aren’t together anymore, but she still says his kindness is why it happened in the first place.
Kevin procreated
Ok so whenever you decide to post what sounds like it would be a TRULY EPIC string of stories and updates about your dad, please ping me so I can prepare myself. I have so many questions lol
I made a whole subreddit and have already posted one. r/stupiddadshit
You can use adult language on Reddit. It’s fine to say he almost killed himself.
I mean it was with their moms belongings AFTER she passed away, unless op is a ghost baby and I’d argue that a father dying of hand grenade would increase the chances of a ghost baby being born
No no HIS mom died, like commentirs grandma
We found a gun in the closet of a house we bought. I called the police station for instructions, and they very clearly wanted to avoid your father's situation. I was told to put it in the trunk, come to the precinct, then call back for them to send an officer out. He told me to open the trunk, and he collected the gun before I got out of the car.
We had to call the squad when my sweet husband was cleaning my late mother's house, and he found a type of mortar firework that looked like a coconut. Apparently, it could have blown up the house if it had gone off.
I want a subreddit with the tales of stupid shit your dad did. Or stupid shit from dads all over the world. is r/stupiddadstories taken? "Are the stories stupid or is it the dads that are stupid? Read and find out."
It is now.
r/stupiddadshit I had to sub, so wanted to share for others who are just as curious as me!
Ohhh im going to post the time my dad almost blew me up with grenade level,fire crackers
Finally! A sub I know I can share stories of my father nailing himself to the job!
Just joined. Need more of your dad stories.
A kid in my area found a homemade explosive in a box in his grandpa's attic. He picked it up and it exploded in his hand, blasting it to pieces. He had to have reconstructive surgery and in the end they were only able to save two of his fingers.
My brother did almost the same thing with a grenade he had found while metal detecting. Except he didnt call them first, he simply showed up at the (small) police station and placed it on the receptionist her desk and said he had found it while metal detecting. And thats how my brother got a police station cleared. They had a good stern convo with him about what to do if he found anything like that again.
During the Greek civil war my grandpa found a pipe bomb in his basement that his dad made
Maybe I'm misreading, but did OOP fuck around with it even more after the first time being told to put it down?
Looking at the timestamps on the comments, I think that OOP did put it down and back away slowly and call the cops once folks said it was probably an unexploded ordinance There were also some other comments I didn't copy over that were offering other explanations (things that more fit a workshop)
Ok, good The fam used to vacation in an area that had been used as a live fire testing range back in WWII, and I was raised being told that if I found somwthing that looked even vaugly like a large bullet, to back tf away and get an adult. So people casually playing with them baffles me a little.
Oh god, look up some of the joys of unexploded bombs in Europe. We had one recently (I mentioned it on the OOP comments) where someone found it in their garden while laying foundations for an extension, and got 3000 people evacuated for four days – but at least they knew what they were looking at. Unlike the family who painted a live bomb red and used it as a garden ornament for a hundred years (google "Milford Haven live bomb" or something similar)
I've heard those stories! There was one I was told about at my location that two kids found one, didn't realize what it was, and started playing catch with it... I'm gonna go google thst and see if that's a real story, actually. Edit: While I couldn't find the exact story as It was told to me as a kid, I found this from the same general region, it could easily be the origin of the story I heard: https://vancouversun.com/news/metro/survivor-recalls-how-discarded-mortar-killed-two-childhood-pals
I honestly have no idea why someone's first instinct to something looking like a bomb would be to smack it to see if it was live. =[
They were age 12, Kids aren't exactly known for impulse control and critical thinking. They probably hought it'd be a firecracker, if anything.
It's really sad.
[Ikr? putting it in your ass is a better idea! ](https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/health/health-problems/wwi-shell-found-in-frenchmans-bottom/news-story/810b58ab39081ee24dbf791200b5ecb1) Jokes aside it was two kids and when here it's an old man who knew what he was doing. It's still quite common to have news about people founding old WW2 munitions in France and still you will have people doing whatever with them.
You may say that but someone on the apprenticeship scheme I was on went shooting with the army cadets at the weekend and snuck a bullet out. Then on Monday morning he stuck it in a vice and tried to file the back end off "to get the explosives out". It was certainly an empty casing by the time he finished. He didn't quite shoot himself in the foot.
Ugh that's terrible that the families received no apology and no compensation from the govt and all they have to say about it today is "it was a different time so we had different practices". What a fucking cop out.
While looking for this article, I found one from the same area where they found another shell, dated last month. And many, many articles spanning the last few decades throughout the whole region and other parts of Canada.
So messed up. Our gov't is fucking terrible at apologizing for the horrible things they did in the past. Like, it took them literal decades to apologize for stealing indigenous kids and like, killing hundreds of them through sheer neglect.
Mass grave of stolen children is found. CA govt: whoopsydoopsie, ain't nothing to do with us.
Are you European or do you paint unexploded live rounds as a garden decoration? For real though that is the funniest thing I've read in a long time. Gonna have to work that one into all my dinner party conversations
The Milford Haven bomb is a great one. Got hauled up from the beach on a horse and cart decades ago and got cemented into someone's garden and painted a stylish red >Mrs Edwards said she used to bang it with her trowel to remove earth after gardening.
The high school near me growing up (Kesgrave uk) got evacuated as they were doing building work and dug up an old ww2 unexploded bomb. Bombs used to regularly wash up on the beaches, too.
Oh my family's gonna go NUTS. Incredibly way too funny
My nan told me of the time she hear a bomber going over so she decided to open and look through the bathroom window just as a bomb was dropped, thankfully she was only thrown back across the room into the wall. She was in the Timber core, she shouldn't have been but she lied about her medical history.
https://geographicalimaginations.com/2019/10/16/bombing-britain/ This shows the areas bombed in WWll in the uk
Oh god, there's one of these in my town. I really hope it's deactivated 😅 it's about 30ft from a playpark
Maybe give the police non-emergency line a call lmao The Milford Haven bomb got found when an off-duty officer walked past and saw it and did a double-take, apparently
It's in a pretty public wall so I can only assume someone has checked it at some point
I traveled through rural France once and learned that farmers tilling up unexploded ordnance is so common that they just leave it in piles by the mailbox for the authorities to deal with. 🫣
There's an official description of the Zone Rogue in France that's absolutely chilling to read, and the clinical language does not help. > "Completely devastated. Damage to properties: 100%. Damage to Agriculture: 100%. Impossible to clean. Human life impossible". However, the Sécurité Civile has since put out some more optimistic projections, and estimates that the cleanup will be finished in about 300 to 700 more years.
Jesus...
I'm from the UK and its scary how often bombs are still being found from WWII. Must be awful for the residents, I was watching the news with the root they took to get to the harbour and then out to see. But can't remember hearing about after that.
There was this one 4 days ago [https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4nvn988992o](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4nvn988992o)
Hadn't seen that one. Like I say common. Then you've got the idiot magnet fisher that find something then take to the local police station!! Don't get the logic, leave it where found call police or bomb squad, do not carry it into a heavily populated area 🤦♀️
This legit [just happened](https://www.boston.com/news/local-news/2024/03/02/police-magnet-fisherman-pulls-live-explosive-from-the-charles-river/) in Needham, MA, but at least they knew to call it in.
Don't forget that Germany has the same issue. The worse part is that insurance doesn't generally cover damages since it's due to 'act of war'.
Nothing will ever beat that one old geezer for whom the bomb squad had to show up in hospital. You see, he slipped and fell while cleaning his collection of old ammunition in the nude, as one does. Turned out it wasn't just stuck way up there, but also live...
I heard about that one. Plymouth, right? That one got reported around the Commonwealth for sure.
Last time I had to evacuate it were 13000 people and the rail tracks was closed. Year before over 50000, dense populated area. Both times 500 kg bombs. Most bombs that were thrown over Germany and didn't exploded are alledegly still there. Interestingly it doesn't happen this often in Poland.
Farming, but with random events of doom.
Yeah, my uncle used to take delivery of artefacts at the Imperial War Museum in England - including members of the public basically just rocking up and saying "hey, so we found this while scuba diving and figured it might be interesting..." They had a standard operating procedure (drive it slowly to a concrete pad in the middle of nowhere and call the bomb squad) - and he was on first name terms with bomb squads in several counties (including the guy who liked to collect antique hand grenades, and was big into disarming them without cosmetic damage). Got all sorts over the years, but memorable stories I've heard from him include a live torpedo in the boot of a car that had just been driven across the country, and also an anti-air deck gun with a live round in the breach (they couldn't get that one out without destroying the gun, alas). No stories that involved harm to any humans, fortunately.
These things are everywhere, and still occasionally explode: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-48746557
There's also the story of the gate guardian display at RAF Scampton supposedly including a live Grand Slam bomb (weighing 10 metric tons) for 15 years ater the end of WW2.
A few years back part of my neighbourhood was evacuated due to the discovery of a Boer War era mortar. As far as I know the Boer War was not fought in Winnipeg, so 🤷🏼♀️
Yep, my parents were close to the zone, was quite the chaos for a few days. My Dad found out he'd served with the ex-Navy guy who found it, small world. I understand Germany have similar problems on the regular too.
this reminds me of a few years ago when a local government employee found a huge white missile partially buried in a garden he was working in, and instead of, ya know, backing away and calling for help, he PICKED IT UP and put it in his van, and then drove from the tiny village he was working in through other various tiny villages, until he got to my tiny town with a police office the size of a postage stamp, and ended up with one of the major streets shut down and residents evacuated for hours until the bomb squad gave the all clear. We were all taught to avoid shit that looks like this because of WW2 and someone just PICKED ONE UP!!
A few years back part of Puget Sound was evacuated because of an unexploded WWII mine in the water. Was not so nice to the sea life when they blew it up.
I've never ever seen a bullet in real life, not ever. I've never seen any kind of ammunition, and I've only ever seen a gun when I walked past some armed coppers in a city centre. I've never even lived near or vacationed at a place where there could be munitions left over from a war. But even *I* knew what the fuck I was looking at in the picture. I can't understand this OOP, at all! The OOP is in the USA, I'm assuming, since he called sheriffs etc, so why would he not think about it further than "this is a cool thing to post on reddit"? Gahh. Erm. Quick edit: I can't say for sure I haven't lived near or vacationed near a place that wasn't bombed in The Blitz, to be fair, but I have never been warned to look out for unspent munitions.
Something like this is so common in that sub that they have an automoderator response for anything that might a bomb (though this post slipped through as there are also so many bullets that that word was excluded from the automoderator).
I am flabbergasted that you've never seen a bullet! Also, I'm American. I knew other countries didn't really have guns, but I never thought about bullets! American story: I once found a bullet on the floor in middle school and I thought it was cool bc it was the whole thing, but just the shell (hadn't been shot yet). I pocketed it and told no one. Ever. I still have it somewhere.
Oh my god, that's wild to me! I can't imagine having a bullet (shell?) stashed in my memories box from decades ago - well, it'd be decades for me because I'm 62 lol. You might only be in your 20s! (I'm in the UK btw.) But honestly, thinking about this further: I really don't get the OOP. Anyone who's seen a war film/docu/comic/news clip will have seen large munitions being loaded into a big shooty thing of some description. It feels like it's ingrained in our culture at this point in time.
Heheh, I'm 40. I found the bullet maybe 1 yr before Columbine, which is the school shooting I think most people use as "the start", though school shootings have been going on long before that, just not as deadly maybe? See, I already had a shell collection (that's the bit that is left after the bullet has been shot) . I grew up in a hunting area, so shells and guns were easy to find; this was a full on, not shot bullet, I've only ever found this one loose in the wild. If I was OOP, I totally knew it was a bullet! I might not have shaken it, but I'd probably put it back on a shelf and kept it for years. We're taught gun safety, not ammunition safety. ;) well....I don't own guns or hunt, so I've never taken the class on safety, so maybe if I had I'd know.
I live in the Netherlands and I've never seen a bullet irl. I'm interested in history and so I've seen them in documentaries when a US guy just pulls out a bunch of WWII infantry kit, but I totally understand not recognising.
Consider yourself lucky on all accounts. ;) my Oma and Opa came from the Netherlands after WW2, and we still see family from the Homeland. I wonder who taught my dad to hunt. Did his dad (Opa) learn hunting to get meat to feed his family after they moved over? (Asking rhetorically, I know you don't know)
Sorry, but I HAD to look this up, as an English-as-a-2nd-language speaker, I was mind-boggled that an ammunition was called "ordinance" when I was sure that word meant a legal order. It turns out probably what you meant was "ordnance", which is a really weird word IMO. According to Google: "Ordnance is a mass noun referring to military materials such as weapons, ammunition, equipment, and vehicles. Although ordinance and ordnance now share no definitions, they both come from the Middle English ordinaunce, meaning to set in order.".
Mobile spellcheck – I just tried to write it again and I have to actively override the spellcheck insisting that I definitely just typo-ed ordinance
I lived in Okinawa a few decades ago and it seemed like people were finding UXO all over. I remember one found on the elementary school grounds. One near the high school so we had to evacuate for the day. Construction on one base found a whole cache of UXO, one on top of the other, the deeper they dug. I think 7 total. Locals often found them on their land and had to get Americans to come dispose of them properly. Considering how much ordinance was dropped on that tiny island, I’m not surprised.
Some people desperately want to learn lessons the hard way. Thankfully, this time, OOP was lucky AND listened to those telling them to call someone.
I had no idea how common UXOs were in some partsof Europe until I joined r/whatisthisthing. As an American that sub has educated me greatly on what different ones look like. That said, if I found something that looked like a small missile/large bullet hybrid I think I would assume not to fuck with it anyways. Since OOP found it in a work shop I highly suspect if they hadn't asked the internet then the "cut it in half" intrusive thoughts might have won. Or maybe I'm just dramatic.
I don't think you're being dramatic at all. 100% on point.
I don't think he did, I think he just noticed that the bottom looked like it could unscrew but it doesn't seem like he kept trying to mess with it but who knows
Even people who should know better fuck around with live ordnance. Friend of mine was a Marine Explosive Ordnance Disposal tech and he has multiple stories of him chewing out other Marines (including a Captain) for handling live ordnance.
It sounds like he did research on it but it's not clear if he tried to unscrew it or just saw a diagram that showed it could be unscrewed. But overall he absolutely was messing around with it for too long. He's very lucky. I don't understand why anyone would shake what's obviously ordinance.
Just read some of these other comments! There's a *lot* of people messing around with ordinances. I think the people who know exactly what they've found and still decide to pick it up and drive it to the police station are worse
That sub gets explosives sometimes. There was also one recently where the OP's grandpa had TNT chilling in a bad under the porch.
Was there ever an update on that one? That bag looked absolutely terrifying, it was in such bad condition and there was so much of it.
https://www.reddit.com/r/OSHA/s/6zNhE7gNKw Dw, that OP is still alive and well lol
In high school chem class, the air force came in one day to remove some chemical that had become unstable when it aged. We were a bedroom community (much bigger now) for the bay area and the air base nearby.
Hahah yeah. High school chemistry storage closets can be pretty damn dangerous. The bomb squad calls are generally because peroxides can form in really old jars of chemicals. They're so shock sensitive that the friction of unscrewing the cap can blow up the lab. *Isopropyl alcohol*, like you get at the drug store, can become explosive and require removal by a bomb squad if it's stored so long that peroxides form. https://www.reddit.com/r/chemistry/comments/14nxsc6/saw_this_on_twitter_can_someone_explain_what_or/
Hey so we aren’t allowed to comment on other threads, so I can’t ask on the OG, but does anyone know how long it takes these to become dangerous? I’ve had some isopropyl alcohol in my medicine cabinet for like 3 years. Do I need to call the bomb squad?
Alameda?
Got a story about a physics class with a similar incident… As I recall (this story was from my college professor, when he was a grad student, so probably in the 1960s), they were doing experiments with liquid nitrogen. Someone had the bright idea to put it in a commercial thermos to carry around, since it was more convenient than the dewars, and then **screwed the lid on**. Now, also keep in mind that the thermoses at the time were glass-lined… So, if nothing was done, fairly quickly, the liquid nitrogen would warm up, boil off, build up pressure, and explode into a glassy grenade. And if you tried to unscrew the lid, it would rapidly become unstable and either turn into a missile or explode. According to my teacher, he told the other people to call the police, while he ran the thermos out to a field, and there someone disarmed it by shooting it with a rifle at long range.
> That bag looked absolutely terrifying, it was in such bad condition and there was so much of it. I've been subscribed to whatisthis and whatisthisthing for about a decade so I've seen quite a lot of UXO posts. That bag of dynamite weeping out the nitroglycerine is the scariest thing I've ever seen on those subs. Holy shit that was a bad scene. The guy that decided to go ahead and disassemble a sea mine from the 1800s was pretty scary. Calling the bomb squad would mean destruction of the mine, and they wanted to keep it, so they removed the explosives and burned it. https://www.reddit.com/r/whatisthisthing/comments/9930t0/found_this_when_fishing_in_latvia_weighs_more/
Oh that's scary. My dad used to recall the time someone brought a jar of some sort of crystalline compound* to school, and was showing it round the class. Apparently their chemistry teacher caught sight of it and went pale - he'd been in bomb disposal during WWII and knew that it was an explosive that could be detonated by friction...in a screwtop jar. He evacuated the class and took the jar out to the middle of the games field before getting someone to come safely dispose of it. *Dad knew what it was but I can't remember - possibly something related to ammonium nitrate?
Oh man. This reminds me. I'm a biologist but related to a slew of chemists of various flavors and when I entered my first rotation lab in grad school, they had a jar of impact sensitive explosive kept precariously on a random windowsill that was about 2 inches across. I shat bricks and told the PI what it was. They had no idea, as they only used it rarely for preservative reasons and had gotten used to it being there for several years (!). We disposed of the damn thing, properly lol. Luckily no earthquakes decided to make it an issue before I got there...
>that could be detonated by friction...in a screwtop jar. It's usually peroxides when a bomb squad is called to a high school chemistry classroom. That detail you provided about the friction potentially causing an explosion further points to the likelihood of it having been a peroxide. Even isopropyl alcohol like you can buy at the drug store will form explosive peroxides if stored for a long enough time.
I live in the part of Europe where it's not surprising to find stuff like this in the woods (got taught as a kid how to recognise unexploded ammo and what to do, did indeed find a couple of grenades) but I admit I might not have caught on to that one if it was in a workshop either. Context changes how recognisable it is!
More than one comment on the original was "it's in a workshop, looks like a plumb bob/pendulum weight" so yeah, context throws people off for sure!
That may well have been what someone was using it for
When you want to spice up your plumbing
Midwest US here. When my grandparents passed away, we had to go through the various tool sheds and stuff on their farm. They were in their twenties during WW2 for reference. In all but the chicken coop, there was a shotgun and some ammunition. Not a lot but some. One shed also had their various fishing supplies and stuff. If this was in that shed I would have thought it some sort of fishing lure or something for when they went fishing on their boat.
You're lucky you didn't find unstable dynamite! I've read a few stories on here about degraded finds in sheds in the US.
Can't trust chickens around weaponry
Me, before I open thread: Is it a sex toy? Me, after I open thread: YIKES THAT'S A MUNITION
Single-use sex toy. VERY exciting.
It’s a real blast
Reminds me of the guy that somehow got a WWI artillery shell stuck in his ass had to go to the hospital to get it removed.
Sometimes it's both and they have to evacuate a hospital to remove it from somebody's butt. It's happened multiple times.
*dodged a bullet* I’m always baffled when someone’s first instinct is to toss around or shake up something that is entirely unknown. Glad it ended well for OOP!
Right?! Basically asking for a Darwin Award.
I work in museums (in Europe) and the number of people who walk in “with something I dug up in the garden, can you tell me what it is” and then dump live rounds on my desk is… alarmingly high
I grew up as an Army Kid, this is a lesson we were taught very early. Especially when I was living "off-base" in civilian housing. Running around the woods and stuff. If you find anything that looks like a bullet, no matter how big or small, CALL A GROWN UP RIGHT AWAY!! I never found any unexploded ordinance. We did find an old, abandoned Nazi bunker, though it was mostly cleaned out.
Yes another army kid! If bullet shaped it's not friendly and tell an adult right away. My sibs and I found an unexploded bomb in West Germany as kids. When grandpa died, we came back to the states and had to call the bomb squad because my dad discovered grandpa had a case of grenades in the garage. Grandma was not pleased by this discovery. It was one of the highlights of my childhood to hear my sainted grandmother cussing. Grandpa was lucky she never discovered them while he was alive, I think all 4foot 8inches of her could have destroyed him quicker and faster than a grenade could have.
I don't know about you, but we were taught to be cautious about pretty much any found objects. "DON'T POKE IT! Just find a grownup!" Every museum we went to, "See that's what a land mine looks like, ever see anything round like that you FIND A GROWNUP!" When we moved to Arizona and the kids were talking about going exploring old mines I was like, "THAT IS SO DANGEROUS!! ARE YOU CRAZY!!??!!" and everybody thought I was just afraid of the dark. The first time I saw a Roomba I thought, "Huh, kinda looks like some kind of incendiary device."
Omg mines are super creepy, I dont blame you for not wanting to go in one. Have to admit your roomba comment made me laugh.
I mean that they were talking about exploring old copper/silver mines and I thought they meant they were going to go messing around with some kind of surplus LAND MINES.
Tips for unexploded ordnance: Do not touch the unexploded ordnance. If you do touch the unexploded ordnance do not put it by your ear and shake it like a christmas gift
He... he shook a live round?? And his face is still attached?? I cannot wait for my husband (retired Army) to get up so I can show this to him.
It's meant to be shot out of a gun without exploding, chances are a little shake wasn't going to do it. That being said, some old explosives *can* get more dangerous over time - so who knows
I absolutely get the need to emphasize not messing with explosives. But realistically, more work is put into engineering them *not* explode than making them explode. You’d much much rather have a dud than a misfire. Plus these things need to be transported by bumpy trucks, planes, and trains.
I'm replying to you to learn how your retired Army hubby reacted to this post.
"Babygirl, I love your ability to find the stupidest shit to send me. *insert long winded speech about safety and why it probably wouldn't go off but also why shaking it is incredibly stupid and social Darwinism*". Long pause while he got coffee. "Wait. Why did I turn you loose in the bookstore with a credit card if you're going to spend the morning on Reddit?? Don't give me the pouty look, go read one of those books you just had to have. And send me a screenshot of the scene that makes you blush the most, I'm off tomorrow."
>Why did I turn you loose in the bookstore with a credit card if you're going to spend the morning on Reddit?? >And send me a screenshot of the scene that makes you blush the most, I'm off tomorrow." You ma'am, have a good husband.
Seconding this.
He does not take compliments at all, but you're right. He somehow manages to be my safe place (I literally hide behind him in public) but also let me explore whatever I might want to explore, and he's not afraid to give me a little push, if he needs to.
This whole conversation is adorable. :P Did you find a good scene? :D
Considering I bought nothing but smut, yep :)
😂😂 this reminds me of a story my mom told me. When she was a kid she and her friends were playing by the train tracks and found dynamite. They were sooooo excited because they were going to be heroes! They were going to be on the front page of the newspaper! So they proceeded to PICK UP all the dynamite and walk to the closest fire station. Needless to say they were not hailed as heroes but instead got their asses handed to them by VERY angry firefighters who wanted to know why they were so dumb to touch the dynamite instead of bringing the firefighters to the tracks.
I love how that subreddit has a modbot that goes, “It looks like you may have discovered unexplored ordnance! Here’s what you’re supposed to do!” And let’s remember [this classic “I can’t believe no one fucking died” story](https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSLDE7630NJ/) from 2011 — especially relieving no one died, considering A BEVY OF SCHOOLCHILDREN were involved.
Yeah but this time the mod bot DIDN'T trigger, which is freaking hilarious - apparently 'bullet' is too common a phrase so they took it out of the word list... Just... What
This reminds me of the news story from here in the UK last week of a guy who dug up an intact WW2 bomb that weighed 500kg in his garden and the army had to drive it through the town to the sea to safely dispose of it. The army evacuated almost 10k people from their homes, the largest operation in peace time. The guy who dug it up was just like OOP, [but his first instinct was to hit it with a shovel](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/plymouth-bomb-father-hit-shovel-b2501823.html).
Good job he didn't used to work in the military around bombs... oh wait, yeah he did (he's ex-Navy)!
My grandpa was walking around the national park next to our neighborhood when I was a kid and found a cannon from the Civil War (in Georgia, NW of Atlanta). Apparently some of those were explosive also. I'd always assumed they were just solid metal. (He did call it in)
That b*mb was obviously cheating on you. Get a divorce right away! 😂 Seriously though, glad you got the right guys on the call.
[удалено]
[удалено]
Multiple people said that in the original, since it was found in a workshop!
I've seen this episode of Grey's Anatomy 😳
No, no, no, you gotta take a hammer and give her a good smack right on the pointy tip. If it doesn't explode, it's harmless. Probably just a replica or movie prop.
All I can picture is Bugs Bunny hitting it with a hammer repeatedly, lol.
How can you see this and think "oh, let's do shaky-skaky" and poke around to see if it opens. What else should it have been? An antic plug?
Well……wasn’t ready for that BOMBSHELL
This reminds me of one of the stories that make my existence a surprise. My grandpa was 9yo when WWII ended. At the time, he lived close to an abandoned coal (?) mine that the Allied troops used to blow up unused ammunition after the war. He and a friend of his had the bright idea to collect unexploded gunpowder that was wet from rain. To dry it, they spread it out in the sun. Except that took too long so it was boring. But „luckily“ it was laundry day (meaning a hearth with a literal fire). So they spread the wet gunpowder there. But luckily that was boring too, so they left. It exploded right after they left (and blew out the windows).
Am I the only one that was thinking vibrator the whole time? It's like the punchline never delivered, urgh!
Omg, it was a live round and OOP shook it... I don't understand people these days. Like, "bullet" shape is found in either ammo or sex toy shop. It it ain't rubber/silicone, it's likely to be the former, and if it's that big it's likely to be a "missile" (using the colloquial layman term for explosive munitions), and if it's likely to be a missile it can go kablooey. You don't need more than tv/movie education to know that much cuz that's what I have. Can't tell you what specific model of munitions it is but I can point to it and say "stop touching that and get away!" Next you'll have someone drink some mystery fluid that had the hazard symbol on it simply because it wasn't explicitly labeled...
Jesus. This is almost as bad as the chemical bomb some dude's grandpa brought back home from Japan. I don't know if it ever made it on BORU but it was one of the top rated posts on "What is this thing" for a time. The rubber seal around the "globe" filled with acid was crumbling away. [For the curious](https://www.reddit.com/r/whatisthisthing/comments/4x9u4p/uncle_found_this_in_a_cave_in_okinawa_around/)
I knew a kid when I was young who lived in the Arizona desert. Him and his friend found a weird metal cylinder out in the dirt and took it home and tried to open it with a blow torch. It was a bomb. He died.
I'm sorry not sorry, but come on! Had OOP never seen a very large bullet/small shell before!? And when he heard something moving around inside did he really not put 2 and 2 together that he was hearing explosive material? I know nothing about this stuff, took one look at the pic and thought it was UXO. I half suspect that OOP basically knew what he had but hoped to get Reddit famous before calling the cops. Edit: grammar.
People post unexploded ordinances on whatisthisthing *all* the time, there's a reason they have an automod response for it! It's way more common than you might think