Police in China’s Hubei province said Monday they confiscated a hand grenade kept by a 90-year-old villager for 20 years as a hammer for his daily use.
The Baokang County Public Security Bureau released a video of the grenade recovery. He said the unnamed villager discovered it in a field decades ago and, believing it to be a piece of iron, used it to crack nuts, hammer nails and pound pepper.
The grenade was only discovered Sunday during the demolition of an old building owned by the woman in the city of Huangbao, according to the post on Weibo, the Chinese version of X.
He added that police had deployed “professional bomb disposal personnel” to his home.
The footage shows two men dressed in red T-shirts, long pants and helmets placing the explosive into a bubble wrap sleeve. A uniformed officer helped them while the villagers looked on.
One of the men then appears to secure the ends of the sleeve with tape or adhesive tape.
“Fortunately, this safety risk was eliminated and did not cause any damage or injury,” wrote the Baokang Public Security Bureau.
The police announcement went viral on Weibo, with the topic being viewed 75 million times in the 24 hours after the video was posted, according to data seen by Business Insider.
The public security bureaus in Baokang and Xiangyang, which are the large urban area, did not immediately respond to requests for comment sent by BI.
Some Weibo users took the reported incident as a testament to the quality of the grenade, as it had not exploded after 20 years.
“It’s obviously a grenade, and no one recognized it. The young people didn’t recognize it. The old people didn’t recognize it. Have they never seen war?” wrote one of the best commentators.
In recent years, China has stepped up efforts to publicly encourage its citizens to be vigilant against potential threats as Chinese leader Xi Jinping attempts to toughen his population, economy and military against the possibility of war. .
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