A 90-year-old Chinese woman unknowingly used an old hand grenade to crack nuts and hammer nails for two decades after finding the unexploded ordinance in a field one day.

The woman, surnamed Qin, told Chinese reporters that she was working on her farm in Xiangyang, Hubei province when she found this strange “metal lump” with a wooden handle. Convinced it was a makeshift hammer, she took it home and used it to pound all kinds of tough objects, from nuts to metal nails. It was only last week when a team of men working on demolishing her old house noticed the hand grenade that the retired woman learned she had been gambling with her life every time she used it. And she used it a lot, as police reported that the grenade’s wooden handle had become smooth and glossy from years of use, while the metallic head was full of dents.

“I’ve been using it at home to pound red pepper, crack nuts, and hammer in nails,” Qin can be heard saying casually in a video that has been doing the rounds in China since June 23.

After the workers demolishing the woman’s house alerted authorities about the hand grenade, the Huangbao police station quickly dispatched a special unit that confirmed that the suspicious object was indeed a hand grenade, more specifically a Chinese Type 67 that had somehow withstood the abuse the woman had subjected it to for the last 20 years.

Speculating on why the old hand grenade hadn’t exploded, some claimed that it must have been a training grenade, identical to a real one, but not filled with explosives. However, that theory has been debunked by a police statement that the grenade had been properly destroyed to avoid accidental injury. It seems that Qin was just exceptionally lucky.

“Apparently, even hand grenades have principles and won’t explode on kind-hearted elderly people,” one person commented on Weibo.

 

“It’s impressive that Grandma Qin used the hand grenade as a hammer for over 20 years without ever pulling the fuse out of curiosity,” someone else wrote.

Interstingly, Chinese news reports stated that the old hand grenade was so severely damaged that part of the fuse had become exposed. Had the woman been curious enough to pull it, the consequences could have been deadly.