This is actually real. Story of the Killdozer
June 4, 2004
When Marvin Heemeyer of Granby, Colorado, reached a dead-end in his fight with the local zoning commission, the logical response would have been to petition them once again and await a future reply from them. After all, Marvin Heemeyer was known to have been a logical man, so it was expected that he would have taken a logical approach.
Instead, Marvin Heemeyer went home, outfitted his Komatsu D355A bulldozer with armored plates, a layer of concrete, and bulletproof plastic, and drove it through the town in a rampage, knocking down 13 buildings and causing $7 million worth of damage with his makeshift “killdozer.”
They probably could have stopped him a bit sooner by taking a grenade to the radiator…
…that would involve the police tossing grenades in clear view of the public. Even they don’t want that liability.
Climb on top the thing and drop just one grenade right behind the bucket, in front of the radiator.
That would also block like ~90% of the shrapnel, and with any luck, take out not only the radiator but the engine too.
No reason to go willy nilly tossing grenades at it, I mean hell, they did climb on top of it while he was still driving it to look for an entrance…
You sound like someone who believes they’d win in a fight with a bear.
If I had a grenade … yeah, probably …
Pretty sure he welded himself inside it.
Something like that yeah. He built the ~22 ton outer bulletproof shell with 22 tons of thick steel plate metal and concrete. He built it on some sort of hanging hoist over the bulldozer, only to be lowered once he was ready to go cause the destruction he did. He designed it without an entrance nor exit, it was a suicide mission and he knew it.
What finally brought his rampage of destruction to an early end was when the bulldozer ran over some of the debris of his carnage, that some chunk of debris managed to bust the radiator, which ultimately took out the engine. So, clearly the radiator was a weak point all along…
My thought regarding a grenade wasn’t about trying to take the dude out directly, but rather to disable the bulldozer and go from there.
If you haven’t seen the documentary movie about it, you really should…
Tread - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZK9XthMZ1w
did you know that he not only had cameras on the outside to see a full 360° view, but had gunner slots where he had enough ammunition inside to hold off the police for at least a day?
Yes, yes I did. But even with 360° view, he still had somewhat limited shooting angles through the gunner slots…
But you make a mighty fine point. What’s the best defense against a homemade bulldozer tank with nothing but cameras to see from and drive with? Spray paint the cameras…
The thing had more than one weak point they could have used to their advantage…
Grenades aren’t exactly standard issue police equipment.
Okay, let’s pretend we don’t live in 2026… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Militarization_of_police
But this was in 2004 right? Regardless, you got a homemade tank tearing down your town, what do?
I bet they had some grenades around, but were half busy pissing their pants while making the situation more complicated than necessary.
Fuck, they coulda just dumped 20 gallons of paint on it via helicopter to blind his cameras…
Most police departments also don’t generally have helicopters and paint bombs.
The real world isn’t GTA where you get a 5-star rating and suddenly all the cops can instantly appear with missile launchers and shit.
I work for a small city in the same building as the police department. And yeah, they have AR-15s and body armor now, but grenades and helicopters are a different story. They’d have to get the closest major city, or more likely the National Guard to deliver that kind of firepower.
And it’s not that the police didn’t try whatbthey could in this case. They jumped on top of the machine, and even dropped a flashbang (which SWAT teams do have) into the stovepipe to try and disable it.
The governor reportedly considered sending in the national guard with an attack chopper, but a hellfire missile does a lot of damage and theocal decision to try and block his escape from the hardware store with a different dozer worked. He wasn’t able to back out after ramming the shop, and was forced to try and drive through, getting stuck in the process.