DA: Wrong and Wronger

Wrong and Wronger
2002 Darwin Award Nominee

(29 July 2002, Ukraine) Late one night, the inhabitants of Yuvieyna village, a suburb of Lugansk, awoke to a loud explosion. Not long before the explosion, a 40-year-old deputy of the local administration board had taken his dog out for a walk. He encountered a Police Academy cadet who was escorting two women to their homes.
The cadet pointed out that the deputy's dog was not allowed on a public street without a lead and muzzle. The men began to argue, and the deputy pulled out a military RGD-5 hand grenade and threw it to the cadet's feet. His well-trained dog immediately ran for the object and fetched it for his master... and man and dog met the same messy fate.

Police are investigating how the deputy came to have a grenade, in a country where civilians are forbidden to carry arms, let alone military ordnance.

New information or confirmation links and quotes are welcome below.

Assuming the hand grenade was live would it not have exploded, when it landed at the feet of the cadet, and therefore before the dog picked it up

Why would it, Glenn? Many grenades are on a timer rather than an impact switch, so to get it to explode on contact you have to count and time your throw. The deputy probably would have thrown it as soon as he armed it, meaning it had a few seconds before it exploded, impact or not. This is an anti-tank grenade so its probably pretty heavy duty. I don't know if there is truth to this story, but I don't think your objection would rule it out.

Not even to comment on the hand grenade but more on facts of life for that part of the world:
Someone on the city/village administration would likely be recognized and only an exceedingly stupid (or higher ranking) person would presume to tell a city/village administrator what he could or could not do.

i doubt the veracity or non bystanders-hurt-acity of this one. i have never heard of a grenade other than on a four second timer. try getting a dog to travel a distance far enough to put the man out of the blast radius in four seconds. this is either a lie or not true based on what i know

CimV The range of fuse time for handgrenades range from 4 to about 10 seconds depending on the type and make. Plus don't forget that the fly off lever will also add about 1 second to the complete time.

So if the dog saw his master start to throw a "stick" for him and started running as soon as his arm moved (most dogs do this, i know mine does) then the dog would have been quite close to the landing point of the grenade, considering how far the guy probably threw it, a quick pick up and sprint back the dog would easily get within the 20-40 metre danger zone in the 5-6 seconds before it went boom.

Did it happen? No idea. Could it happen? Oh yes!

info on the grenade


In this site they say that the delay is anywhere from 3.2-4.2 seconds. the trowing range is up to 30 meters, this means a dog would have to travel a up to fifty meters in all plus take time to pick up this akward shaped grenade in about 4 seconds maybe five if your comment on the lever adding a second is true. and i dont think it would ad that much to be honest.

The grenades that I am familiar with typically have a 3-5 second fuze.

Thestory describes the two men as 'arguing' rather than 'yelling' at each other, which to me indicates that they were most likely in very close proximity to each other, say 5-10 feet. For the dog to cover such a short distance and return in that time frame would be reasonable.

If they were that close, it only adds to the depth of the stupidiy of our former deupty, who would most likely been in the blast radius of the grenade even if his faithful hound had not retrieved the grenade...

This seems more like an UL.

I doubt that this could have happened and if it did then I highly doubt that bystanders weren't hurt. Grenades unlike what they show in movies are very destructive(you can't throw one and hide behind a couch to escape the blast). They have a large radius of damage. That is what they were designed for. Grenades can have between a 4 second and 10 second fuse(know the grenade before you "cook it off"). If this person was out of the blast radius, it would be difficult to have an argument. Assuming this grenade had the 10 sec fuse. He would have to have a killer throwing arm(worthy of a baseball all star) to get it to the intended target in time for the dog to have retrieved it and brought it back far enough to get the intended target out of range and back in range of the throwing person.
Might want to ask Gandalf about it. He's probably more likely to know better about grenades than I am(only used a few of them and only in training)

Story rewritten somewhat based on this discussion:

(29 July 2002, Ukraine) Late one night, the inhabitants of Yuvieyna village, a suburb of Lugansk, awoke to a loud explosion.  Not long before the explosion, a 40-year-old deputy of the local administration board had taken his dog out for a walk.  He encountered a Police Academy cadet who was escorting two women to their homes.

The cadet pointed out that the deputy's dog was not allowed on a public street without a lead and muzzle.  Now, only an exceedingly bold cadet would be presumptuous enough to tell a village deputy what to do, so the two men began to argue.  Unable to resolve the matter by verbal means, the deputy finally pulled out a military RGD-5 hand grenade and threw it to the cadet's feet.  His well-trained dog immediately ran for the object and fetched it for his master...  and man and dog met the same messy fate.

Police are investigating how the deputy came to have a grenade in a country where citizens are forbidden to carry arms, let alone military ordnance.

ok, i have no idea whether this story is true or not, but i'm going to give you a bit of info on grenades that you have overlooked that makes this extremely possible. grenades do usually have only about a 3 second timer, but that timer is only going when the little handle on the side of the grenade is free, not pressed down, that's why even after you pull the pin, you can hold the grenade in your hand, as long as the lever is pressed, and it won't explode, so when the dog is carrying the grenade, the lever will be depressed, therefore all that would have to happen is the dog picking it up within 3 seconds of it being thrown, then the lever would be depressed again, and when he drops it at his masters feet, the 3 second time period would start again, then boom, grenades detonates itself, and the shrapnel decimates everything within 15 ft. i'm not saying it happened, just that it could. i read on here someone said some grenades have a 10 second fuse...HA, do you realize how long 10 seconds is!, the grenade could easily be thrown back and forth multiple times by two combatants before it went off!

I don't buy this story, there is simply no reason the Deputy would be carrying a grenade. You don't carry a grenade for protection; it's strictly an offensive weapon. Without a source for this, it really makes no sense; I am suprised discussion has already proceded this far.

The only cross reference to this story is the 'Only in Russia' humor site giving another Russian humor site as the source. There's also the claim the story was carried on a Ukrainian television station.

'Only in Russia' does add a few details not in the DA, the cadet was injured and the Deputy had a friend with him. There's also a mention of the story being worthy of a Darwin Award.

This story is dubious at best. According to a source given earlier in the thread the grenade has a blast radius of 45 to 60 feet. There were five people there, according to 'Only in Russia', with only one death and one injury. Something doesn't add up.

There should be a certain leeriness about stories coming out of the former Soviet Union. A Russian wag may have picked up a Deputy being murdered while dog walking and embellished for net consumption into a 'fetch, Rover' story.

READER Larry McClellan says,

Two points: 1) in all my years of being around dog lovers and their tricks, I have never seen a dog retrieve 5-lb rocks, which is about what a grenade would be like; 2) this seems to me to be a rewrite of the "The Dog and the Jeep" story, which I consider a version of one of Brunvand's "Animal's Revenge" stories.  Having a dog retrieve dynamite is believable, but having one retrieve a grenade is a stretch.