5... 4... 3... 2... 1... boom!

[Eight Taiwanese Teenagers]

If someone right at this second handed you a hand grenade, which in 15 seconds time would create an potentially fatal explosion (to a radius of 5 metres), what would you do!?

I don't know why, but I woke up with this question in my head this morning!




Did you know that the word grenade comes from the word pomegranate?

[chand]

Throw it across the room to where that annoying guy who keeps going on and on about how 9/11 was a government conspiracy sits. Just so, if he survived, he'd start hilariously accusing me of working for The Man and trying to supress the truth.

[Lady Beaner]

Gosh, I never thought anyone could be so mean to Pinball!

[ersatz all folks]

Throw it to my neighbour's dog.

[Eight Taiwanese Teenagers]

Personally, I'd put it under a bin, put another bin on top of taht, and get everyone to run away as quickly as possible. Except that would be boring.

So instead, I would put it in someone's box of cereal, so that while picking shrapnel out of myself, I might find a tasty ring of oats, rice or wheat to take the edge off my hunger.

[Murdo]

I'd throw it out my office window. Hopefully it would take out the prick trying to play 'The Changingman'.

[Lookalike Mark Chapman]

Ram it down the throat of the cunt sitting behind me at work.

OR, more boringly, throw it out the window into the half-full skip out the back. There's never any people round there anyway. Then I'd throw the cunt sitting behind me in after it.

Good thread! Made me think, at least. Fingers crossed this bizarre scenario will never occur but it's good to be prepared.

[Milo]

Put it in our flammables cupboard and retire, rapidly, to a safe distance to watch.

[Utter Shit]

Swallow it and see if it makes my body momentarily go bomb-shaped when it explodes, like in the cartoons.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

I'd run around going 'Meep Meep' like road runner and then jump off a cliff.

[chand]

Gosh, I never thought anyone could be so mean to Pinball!

Heh, if I remember rightly the 9/11 conspiracy was a tale too far even for Pinball. This dude's an absolute clown, he goes on about 9/11 every day since he saw Loose Change and then today he came in saying that he found the plot of Ocean's 13 'implausible'. So, he believes that the US Government killed three thousand of its own citizens and Pentagon officials by flying drone planes into the World Trade Centre (which fired missiles just before they hit for some reason), and then blew the whole thing up with a controlled demolition, AND fired missiles into the Pentagon and then paid dozens of witnesses to say it was a plane, and then decided that that wasn't going to stoke up enough anti-Muslim sentiment so they'd better really ramp up the stakes by faking a plane crash in a bit of a field in Pennsylvania (I admit they got me there, I wasn't bothered about the terrorists bringing down the twin towers and destroying part of the Pentagon killing thousands of people, but when I heard that a field in Pennsylvania got hit I was like 'fuck, these terrorists have gone too far! Let's invade Afghanistan!'), BUT he has trouble believing that a few rich crims would get together for 'one last job', in a film.

[Pinball]

Hmmmm, well thank you ;-)

No, the most I can accept about 911 is that a small number of people in the intelligence services and/or government decided to suppress information about the attacks i.e. let it happen. It just seems too sick that they would create it, and let's face it quite implausible in its implementation, given all the evidence we have about the culprits.

As for a grenade, I would run into the garden, throw the grenade as far as I could into the nearby park (the centre of which is unlikely to have any or many people), and then shout "Run! Run for your lives!" into the park. Then, after I'd been arrested, I'd try explaining why that wasn't attempted murder..

[Al Tha Funkee Homosapien]

All you'd have to do was make sure that the safety lever was still down to so that the fuse hadn't been lit. Then I'd calmly take the grenade - whilst firmly holding the safety lever - to my local Hogshead and then check it inside.

[El Unicornio, mang]

Right now I would have enough time to go to the door in my workplace, which is right next to me, open it and throw it into the parking lot, which is always empty apart from lizards and squirrels, and get back into the office to hide under my desk.

[lactating man nips]

I would swallow it and it would harmlessly explode in my belly, comedically making me do a fiery burp.

[Emma Raducanu]

I'd put it in the bath.

[Goldentony]

Attempt to throw it out of the window only to be blocked by a marching band, run into the bar downstairs and tell everyone to run, run down the street with it and get blocked by nuns and a pram, the marching band again, then just piss off down the end of a pier with it like a loon refusing to just chuck it into the sea. Only to finally be thwarted by a couple passing by the pier as i'm about to throw it, and soem ducks.

[Sivead]

Give it back to the person who gave it to me.

[duckorange]

I have actually had this domonstrated to me by some former Royal Marine on a journalists' safety course.

By the time you register you have been given a live grenade and consider what you're going to do with it, it has already gone off.

So the answer, sadly, is "Get killed to death".

Given fifteen seconds, you *might* just get out of range...

[phes]

I'd put it in dog poo and show the yoof how it's really done.

(yes, I see dog poo on the pavement outside my window)

[buttgammon]

I reckon I'd panic so much that I'd just freeze and get blown to tiny shards.

If I could think straight at a moment like that and somebody was to tap me on the shoulder and give me a live hand grenade now, I'd probably throw the grenade down the stairs and jump out of a window into my back garden in the opposite direction, thus breaking my leg and ending up lying on the patio in a pool of blood in agony while sticking my fingers in my ears. Only to find out that it was a dud. Aaaagh!

[hoverdonkey]

I'd run to the toilet and throw it down the loo. No loss of life, unless someone is stinking out Trap One, but it would cause some exciting disruption, hopefully some flooding that would send us home for a couple of days.

If I was anywhere near Westminster right now, I'd chuck it at the green to stop that smug cunt talking

[John Self]

Seeing as no one could hand it to me right now (it's just me in the flat, and yes I've checked all the wardrobes and put on the deadlock), I'd have to go back to the last time I was near another human being, which was walking down a busy street about an hour ago. If someone handed me a grenade then, I'd have placed it on the floor and kicked it really hard. Then (hopefully) it would have accidentally clonked some bloke in the back of the head and sailed up in the air about twenty feet, in a beautiful straight line. Dozens of people would have pissed themselves before the grenade exploded harmlessly above us.

A mate of mine did this at a rock concert, only with a golf ball instead of a grenade, and so without the explosion, but that's not the point, as I think it was perhaps the funniest thing I've ever seen in my life. Well worth trying to replicate.

[SetToStun]

Seeing as no one could hand it to me right now (it's just me in the flat, and yes I've checked all the wardrobes and put on the deadlock), I'd have to go back to the last time I was near another human being, which was walking down a busy street about an hour ago. If someone handed me a grenade then, I'd have placed it on the floor and kicked it really hard. Then (hopefully) it would have accidentally clonked some bloke in the back of the head and sailed up in the air about twenty feet, in a beautiful straight line. Dozens of people would have pissed themselves before the grenade exploded harmlessly above us.

A mate of mine did this at a rock concert, only with a golf ball instead of a grenade, and so without the explosion, but that's not the point, as I think it was perhaps the funniest thing I've ever seen in my life. Well worth trying to replicate.

You'd probably have just about enough time to notice how painful a couple of broken toes are before finding out that being 20 feet in the air does precious little to reduce the efficacy of the hand-grenade.

If I was in the street, I'd probably just say, loudly, "isn't my exclusive, hand-grenade-shaped 'phone (£1,999.99 from Harrods) cool?" That should ensure it vanishes out of my life at about the speed of light.

[Catalogue Trousers]

Goldentony - thanks for reminding us of that little beauty...

All together now...

"Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb!"

[rudi]

I'd smother it with love.

[non capisco]

I'd let it go off in my face and then wrench my beak back round to the forward position, then say something withering.

[John Self]

You'd probably have just about enough time to notice how painful a couple of broken toes are before finding out that being 20 feet in the air does precious little to reduce the efficacy of the hand-grenade.

Not true, that last bit.

It'd hit the guy's head and fly up twenty feet in the air. Even if he was a total short-arse, that's still twenty-five feet above us: high enough to make sure we're all just out of the blast radius. I would probably break my foot, yes, but I think it'd be worth it, for the polite round of applause and murmurs of "oh well done that man" I'd receive for my quick-thinking slapstick heroism.

And anyway, I've just seen a flaw in YOUR plan, smart guy:

If I was in the street, I'd probably just say, loudly, "isn't my exclusive, hand-grenade-shaped 'phone (£1,999.99 from Harrods) cool?" That should ensure it vanishes out of my life at about the speed of light.

How on earth does anybody pronounce a bracket? Not only one but two? And loudly at that? I wouldn't be surprised if you ended up breaking your tongue.

[SetToStun]

I can only excuse myself (on the lethality-range front) by saying I forgot we were talking about a mythical hand-grenade with shrapnel that turns into lark's feathers within 18 feet of detonation. Bah.

And what do you mean "how does one pronounce a bracket"? Were you off school the day they did "English Language: Partially Audible Pronounced Punctuation"? I feel for you, brother.

[kenneth trousers]

Because I have spent 15 years in the military I have been trained in such matters; you simply stand there and wait for someone of a higher rank to tell you what to do.