# What's the most property damage you've caused? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [November 2, 2007, 2:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-most-property-damage-youve-caused/425011 "2007-11-02T14:23:58Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Omega\_Glory](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/7c8e57/32.png) [@Omega\_Glory](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Omega_Glory)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2007, 2:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-most-property-damage-youve-caused/425011/1 "2007-11-02T14:23:58Z")
I hope none of us can top the boy who started the fire, but: What have you done? I’ve got nothing, besides putting a hole in the wall while my cousin and I were trying out martial arts moves from a movie. I was probably eight or nine. Oh, as an adult, I dropped a [gel electrophoresis](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gel_electrophoresis) box, which promptly broke into several pieces. I still feel bad about that one. ---
**Author:** ![Santo\_Rugger](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e95f7d/32.png) [@Santo\_Rugger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Santo_Rugger)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2007, 2:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-most-property-damage-youve-caused/425011/2 "2007-11-02T14:52:14Z")
I wrecked my car two nights ago, I’m estimating $4,000 in body damage. ☹ ---
**Author:** ![delphica](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e9a140/32.png) [@delphica](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/delphica)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2007, 3:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-most-property-damage-youve-caused/425011/3 "2007-11-02T15:22:21Z")
I got a company car stuck in a stone gate. It was a very narrow gate! I think the total combined damage (car + gate) came out to something like $700, or in that neighborhood. ---
**Author:** ![Sofaspud](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/8491ac/32.png) [@Sofaspud](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sofaspud)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2007, 3:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-most-property-damage-youve-caused/425011/4 "2007-11-02T15:48:04Z")
It’s probably stretching your definition a bit, in that I didn’t actually set the charges myself, but I got to twist the crank once to set off demolition charges on a building. (My gramps was a construction foreman for a time. I got to do lots of stuff I probably shouldn’t have. :)) It was an old grain silo, probably not worth all that much really, but I’m betting it was at least $100k. I was too young to appreciate how much damage I was causing in monetary terms; I was too busy going pop-eyed over the fact that _I just blew up a building!_ Heh. ---
**Author:** ![lieu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/c2a13f/32.png) [@lieu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lieu)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2007, 3:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-most-property-damage-youve-caused/425011/5 "2007-11-02T15:55:08Z")
There were a couple of fender benders when I was a young Mario but never anything serious. Man, I can’t wait 'till Shagnasty’s dad gets here. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Paul\_in\_Qatar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ccd318/32.png) [@Paul\_in\_Qatar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Paul_in_Qatar)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2007, 4:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-most-property-damage-youve-caused/425011/6 "2007-11-02T16:03:26Z")
We have done this before (but then again, we have done a lot of threads before). My answer is the same. A large portion of downtown Panama City, Panama. ---
**Author:** ![Mosier](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/7ea924/32.png) [@Mosier](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mosier)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2007, 4:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-most-property-damage-youve-caused/425011/7 "2007-11-02T16:18:51Z")
I ran over a mailbox, which happened to belong to the hottest girl I’ve ever seen, and she happened to be in the car with me. ---
**Author:** ![Paul\_in\_Qatar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ccd318/32.png) [@Paul\_in\_Qatar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Paul_in_Qatar)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2007, 4:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-most-property-damage-youve-caused/425011/8 "2007-11-02T16:21:02Z")
At least she wasn’t in the mailbox. ---
**Author:** ![Snarky\_Kong](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a183cd/32.png) [@Snarky\_Kong](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snarky_Kong)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2007, 4:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-most-property-damage-youve-caused/425011/9 "2007-11-02T16:33:02Z")
[QUOTE=Mosier] I ran over a mailbox, which happened to belong to the hottest girl I’ve ever seen, and she happened to be in the car with me. [/QUOTE] Was she distracting you? ---
**Author:** ![Mosier](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/7ea924/32.png) [@Mosier](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mosier)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2007, 4:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-most-property-damage-youve-caused/425011/10 "2007-11-02T16:37:52Z")
[QUOTE=Snarky\_Kong] Was she distracting you? [/QUOTE] Yeah, it was hard to concentrate with her screaming “WATCH OUT FOR THE MAILBOX!” in my ear. ---
**Author:** ![lieu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/c2a13f/32.png) [@lieu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lieu)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2007, 4:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-most-property-damage-youve-caused/425011/11 "2007-11-02T16:38:31Z")
[QUOTE=Mosier] I ran over a mailbox, which happened to belong to the hottest girl I’ve ever seen, and she happened to be in the car with me. [/QUOTE] Who are you who are so wise in the ways of dating? ---
**Author:** ![OneCentStamp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/13edae/32.png) [@OneCentStamp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OneCentStamp)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2007, 4:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-most-property-damage-youve-caused/425011/12 "2007-11-02T16:38:45Z")
When I was 17 I fell asleep at the wheel driving through my own neighborhood (I had just dropped a friend home after we were up all night). I jumped a curb into someone’s lawn, taking out a lamppost and one of those green power boxes, which promptly killed the lights at about 20 homes. I knocked the power box completely free of its little concrete base, leaving a nest of sparking wires behind. I have no idea what the repair costs for the lamppost and box were (I would imagine “very very high”), but the damage to the car was around $2000. ---
**Author:** ![Kilvert\_s\_Pagan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/c37758/32.png) [@Kilvert\_s\_Pagan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kilvert_s_Pagan)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2007, 4:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-most-property-damage-youve-caused/425011/13 "2007-11-02T16:56:27Z")
I accidentally burnd down part of my parents’ house when I was home from college. In today’s money, I’d guess it was about $125,000 in damages. They put me on a bus and sent me back to school. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Miss\_Woodhouse](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/838e76/32.png) [@Miss\_Woodhouse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miss_Woodhouse)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2007, 4:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-most-property-damage-youve-caused/425011/14 "2007-11-02T16:59:58Z")
I totalled a car about eight years ago. ---
**Author:** ![AuntiePam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/f19dbf/32.png) [@AuntiePam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AuntiePam)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2007, 5:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-most-property-damage-youve-caused/425011/15 "2007-11-02T17:18:41Z")
I live a charmed life. The last time I said “I broke it” was about 30 years ago. I was at work, using a Selectric typewriter. I was changing the little ball and dropped it. One of the teeth broke. Those balls were about $60 at the time – a lot of money in 1975. I had thought the little balls were made of metal, because of the silvery color. Suckers are plastic! ---
**Author:** ![pbbth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/f9ae1b/32.png) [@pbbth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pbbth)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2007, 5:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-most-property-damage-youve-caused/425011/16 "2007-11-02T17:33:05Z")
I once accidentally lit the movie theater I worked at on fire. I pretty much burnt out an entire popcorn popper machine. I don’t know what their value is but that is probably the most damage I have ever caused. ---
**Author:** ![Hint\_Kt\_x\_P](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/6de8d8/32.png) [@Hint\_Kt\_x\_P](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hint_Kt_x_P)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2007, 6:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-most-property-damage-youve-caused/425011/17 "2007-11-02T18:57:32Z")
At college I injected some chemicals into a gas chromatigraph that I didn’t know how to work. Apparently I didn’t even switch it completely on. Anyway, I slunk out whistling abd sweating when it just sat there. It stayed busted for a couple of weeks and then they installed a different one. I never learned just how big the bill was. ---
**Author:** ![THespos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/8c91f0/32.png) [@THespos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/THespos)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2007, 7:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-most-property-damage-youve-caused/425011/18 "2007-11-02T19:03:57Z")
Driving home from band practice with my guitarist on a rainy night back in high school, I slid off the road and over a wedge-shaped piece of rock on the edge of a guy’s lawn. Dukes of Hazzard ensued. The car came down nose first in the middle of this guy’s front lawn. Totaled Chrysler New Yorker (belonged to my parents), several thousand dollars worth of damage to the guy’s lawn and plantings. ---
**Author:** ![ShibbOleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/848f3c/32.png) [@ShibbOleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ShibbOleth)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2007, 7:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-most-property-damage-youve-caused/425011/19 "2007-11-02T19:10:31Z")
When I was a kid, maybe fifth or sixth grade, some friends and I were playing in the woods near our house. It was wintertime and relatively cold out. After running around the woods doing who knows what for a while, we spotted a tree fort that was normally obscured by foliage, and soon found ourselves up atop it. It was essentially a group of two by fours, nailed in the intersection of three trees, with plywood nailed atop and below the bracers. Someone decided that we could hang out up there longer if we made a little fire. Leaves, twigs, sticks, etc. were soon gathered, matches came from somewhere, and soon we had a nice little blaze going atop the platform. I’m not sure who noticed first, but the fire was hot enough to burn through the supporting floor of the platform. And it took up residence in the space between the top board and bottom. It occured to us knuckleheads that this was A BAD THING and that we were apt to soon lose control of the conflagration. We all whipped out our snakes and tried peeing the fire out, but to no avail. So we formed a sort of bucket brigade, using our wool caps to attempt to bring water up from a nearby creek that ran along the edge of the wood, separating it from the neighboring subdivision. We did that, and got the fire somewhat contained, although there was still a good deal of smoke now issuing forth into the clear winter air. It was then that we heard some sirens. Now, it was never clear what the sirens were for, since we did not stick around to find out. But we were sure that someone had spotted the smoke and called the fire department. In hindsight, probably not, but we were very worried for a time that we might have burned down the woods (we did not). It’s easy to see how a kid, or group of kids, doing something they view as relatively harmless, could easily cause a large deal of damage. ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2007, 7:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-most-property-damage-youve-caused/425011/20 "2007-11-02T19:14:46Z")
[QUOTE=lieu] Who are you who are so wise in the ways of dating? [/QUOTE] And what’s he doing _here_??? 😉 [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-most-property-damage-youve-caused/425011.md?page=2)