comment: >
  
  Wasn’t there a Canadian guy who helped Saddam Hussein build some ridiculous artillery that would’ve reached way higher, at its apsis?
context: Funniest line / most realistic part from Independence Day: a quick pan across a TV newscast announcing "Police are once again asking residents not to shoot at the alien aircraft." >
  
  if I recall the graphic was a hand gun too. Like that's gonna make it up there. >
  
  A 9mm is probably going to shoot at a maximum of around 4000 feet.  A far cry of the height here.  As well a hand gun's bullets are a bit less stable than a rifle and that roughly 4000 is a perfect system weight / energy calculation.  Probably not over 1500 feet altitude with instability and angle being much less than 90 degrees. >
  
  Hand guns aside. What about hunting rifle type ammo I'm sure that's what someone would more likely use. >
  
  You might get something like 10,000ft give or take out of a .30-06. The balloon is at something like 65,000ft if I remember right. >
  
  So with a 6.5 PRC which is a tiny but wicked fast round will drop out of supersonic speeds at about 5000 feet horizontal. 30-06 is a bigger round that will drop velocity even faster. I really doubt you could come close to 10,000 feet. Especially since you can't actually shoot as far stright up than you can horizontal. I don't think there is any handheld gun that could even get a quarter of the way to it. >
  
  I pulled that number from Wired who pulled it from MythBusters. All I can really guarantee is that unless some shit has really changed with firearms or physics in the last few months I believe you about any handheld guns not getting a quarter of the way there. >
  
  Well first you have to float up next to it with your own balloon and lawn chair… >
  
  You mean a shotgun fired from the ground won't reach a balloon 60,000 feet in the stratosphere? I'm shocked. /S >
  
  18.2 km for those who don't know the length of a given foot. >
  
  How many hogsheads is that? >
  
  "She'll go 300 hectares on a single tank of kerosene." >
  
  What country was this car made in? >
  
  It no longer exists. >
  
  r/unexpectedsimpsons >
  
  "Authorities are asking Los Angelinos to not shoot at the alien space craft" >
  
  “For they may inadvertently start an intergalactic war.” >
  
  We're not hosting an intergalactic keger either. >
  
  . . . Zed >
  
  took me forever to realize, as an American, that his name is "Zed" as in how the letter Z is said in parts of the world. He's agent Z. >
  
  It is actually spelled out as Zed in the movie. I agree with the pronunciation thing, but he is Zed in the movie. >
  
  My memory might be failing me, but arent they also agents Jay and Kay? >
  
  Yep, you are right. So u/dtwhitecp has a point, since, when Jay's designation shows up in the MIB HQ after erasing his identity, it shows up as just the J. >
  
  I'm confused, as far I knew Zed was dead. Baby. >
  
  They’re trying to shoot it? What do they think it is, a hurricane? >
  
  It's eleven (corrected) miles away. You're not going to hit it. 
  Even if you do, it will be months before it actually has a noticeable effect. 
  I was a blimp mechanic. We had to do bullet inspections every so often, when the lift calculations showed that our helium purity was dropping. Because of the very low pressures that kept the blimp inflated (about 1 inch of water pressure), it literally took weeks before enough helium leaked out for us to even notice a pencil-sized hole in a blimp the size of a barn. 
  And that's for a blimp at an altitude of 1000 feet, not 60,000 feet. >
  
  Finally someone who knows what they are talking about.
  We'll need thousands of people shooting at it, with the smaller bullets pushing the bigger bullets, to bring this thing down. >
  
  F-22 unclass service ceiling is 65,000 - We could have dropped this with an AMRAAM days ago if it really mattered.
  Alas, the nation has a slight problem with education and while a small portion of gun owners are VERY knowledgeable about ballistics - most people have no clue.
  Edit: Fox 2. I was close! >
  
  It doesn't help that right wing failed candidates are posting pictures on Twitter suggesting they're going to take out the balloon with a shotgun. Their indoctrinated followers with terminally low critical thinking skills see that and think "well if she's doing it too, it's my time to shine!" >
  
  Mitt Romney was talking shit about the balloon yesterday and he's supposed to be one of the sane ones >
  
  Hate to break it to you but there's no such thing as a "sane one" >
  
  He's a vulture venture capitalist but he doesn't like the whole dictatorship Trump deal. >
  
  He's fine with Republican dictatorship.  He just doesn't want it to be so crass and uncouth. >
  
  You can take away my freedoms, but don't you dare take away my behavioral norms. >
  
  Using this machine designed specifically to kill and destroy things to "celebrate" in a manner far more expensive and dangerous than using  functionally identical firecrackers or other loud annoying bullshit. Hmm.
  Yep, makes sense to me. Clearly those deaths were the will of god. >
  
  I guess full circle from fireworks being a "celebrate" thing to kill and destroy. >
  
  It's days like this that I curse the Chinese for inventing gunpowder! >
  
  It's like 65,000 feet in the air. There are no guns that can shoot that down from the ground. But I imagine there's a few rednecks with Anti air cannons in montana >
  
  There are only a handful of dedicated anti-aircraft weapons that can fire that high from the ground and most if not all of them are missiles. Even what is probably the most famous ant-aircraft gun the German 88 only had a ceiling of about 30-35k feet. So, even the rednecks with anti-air cannons are probably out of luck. >
  
  I mean, the 88 was pretty weak by today's standards for high calibre guns.
  The Rheinmetall 120 mm smoothbore gun for example has about 4-5x the muzzle energy of the 88 flak. The 88 fired a 9.2 kg projectile at 840 m/s muzzle velocity, the DM63 is a bit over 8 kg at about 1750 m/s and a far more aerodynamic arrow-shaped projectile.
  If we really really wanted to shoot at it with a cannon, we could probably reach the altitude. >
  
  Ah yes, I knew it was my time.
  Give me a minute to pull off the covers on my recreational Rh120 L/44 firing military surplus APFSDS and point it straight up.
  What could possibly go wrong.