Was Bush in danger from the grenade attack?

[StewieGriffin420]

In the news today there was a story about a guy who got sentenced for throwing a grenade at the president. The grenade came within 50 meters of him but was a dud. If the grenade went off would he have been hurt? What is the effective range of grenades?

[Diceman]

I don't know the effective range of a grenade, but 50 meters is about 164 feet, or about 55 yards.

[Larry Mudd]

Wasn't that a dummy?

[Raguleader]

According to the America's Army computer game (which the Army claims is reasonably realistic), the hand grenade used by US troops has, IIRC a 15 meter blast radius, with half of that being the "Kill Zone" where nobody standing in the open is expected to survive. That said, I don't know what sort of grenade this fellow was throwing, and they do probably come in all sorts of sizes and shapes, with different effects.

[Larry Mudd]

Pardon me. Soviet "engineering grenade," in "inactive" mode. (http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/05/11/politics/main694389_page2.shtml)

Bezhuashvili said the grenade was found in "inactive mode." He described it as an "engineering grenade" — one that is used for demolition or to simulate the effect of an artillery shell. Such grenades' blast-effect can be fatal at close range, but unlike offensive grenades, they are not designed to spread shrapnel.Dangerous enough but not at a distance.

Nobody really knows how close he got to it. It was found in the crowd. Likely the blast would have been absorbed by onlookers, if it went off.

[Larry Mudd]

Nobody really knows how close he got to it.I'm making a poor showing (http://edition.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/europe/01/11/georgia.grenade/) today. The would-be assassin threw a grenade into a crowd about 20 meters (65 feet) from the stage where Bush had just begun speaking...So quite a distance . (Although certainly closer than I would care to be to the concussion -- and I suppose there's a chance that someone's car-keys or bones or whatnot could have been propelled into his face.)