The Wrath of a Russian Zeus

Imagine you are a poor Russian peasant. A shepherd by profession you have few possessions in life. One of your few comforts in life is the traditional bottle of vodka. So one night you drink a little too much of this vodka. That night you feel the call of nature rather strongly and journey a couple dozen meters to your outhouse. You are just relieving yourself in that horrible smelling hole and then WHAM. The ground shakes like a sudden earthquake and you wonder if Zeus just shot a thunderbolt at your porta-potty. Armageddon has come, but somehow you survived in your outhouse, so you open the door to see if the world is still there.

And the world is still there, but so is a ten foot long hunk of metal sitting about 2 feet away from that small outhouse.

Boris Urmatov (now that is a Russian name) has sued the Russian space agency for the above mentioned stressful event. A 3-meter long hunk off a rocket hurtled down and nearly vaporized his outhouse. While falling debris is common is this area, it is usually much smaller and lands in designated areas. Boris's backyard is decidedly not one of these designated areas. He is suing the Russian space agency, who has a launch site not far away, for 1 million rubles, which sounds like a lot, but is only about $50,000, which is still a lot for a shepherd.