@cb0f4660 @b5f5fee8 Our story begins in the 1990s. During the 1990s, a man named Marvin Heemeyer of Granby, Colorado, owned a small welding shop in town, where he made his living repairing mufflers. He’d purchased the land on which his shop was built in 1992.  
In 2001, the city approved the construction of a concrete plant, zoning the land next to Heemeyer’s for use. Heemeyer was furious, as he’d used the land for the past nine years as a shortcut between his home and his shop.

He petitioned the city to have the property rezoned to prevent the construction of the plant, but he was rejected on multiple occasions.

So, in early 2003, Marvin Heemeyer decided he had had enough. A few years earlier, he had purchased a bulldozer . Now, however, it would serve a new purpose as his weapon of destruction: the killdozer. Marvin Heemeyer customized his Komatsu D355A bulldozer for his rampage. He added armored plates, covering most of the cabin, engine, and parts of the tracks. He’d created the armor himself, using a concrete mix poured between sheets of steel. According to authorities, once he’d sealed himself inside the cockpit, it would have been impossible for him to have gotten out — and authorities don't believe he even wanted to. 

 He drove the machine out of his shop through the wall, then plowed through the concrete plant, the town hall, a newspaper office, a former judge’s widow’s home, a hardware store, and other homes. Authorities later realized that every building that had been bulldozed had some connection to Heemeyer and his lengthy battle against the zoning committee.

Though authorities tried to destroy the vehicle multiple times, the killdozer proved resistant to small arms fire and resistant to explosives. Indeed, the rounds fired at the tractor during the rampage had no ill effect.

For two hours and seven minutes, Marvin Heemeyer and his killdozer pummeled through the town, damaging 13 buildings and knocking out gas services to city hall. Such a panic ensued that the governor considered authorizing the National Guard to attack with Apache helicopters and an anti-tank missile. The attacks were in place and, had Heemeyer not wedged himself in the basement of a store, they would have been carried out.

As Marvin Heemeyer attempted to bulldoze Gambles hardware store, he accidentally got the killdozer stuck in the foundation. With the end clearly in sight, Heemeyer killed himself with a gunshot to the head,  determined to  leave the world on his own terms.  In the years after the rampage, Heemeyer became a controversial folk hero in certain circles, with some believing that he was a victim of a town government that didn’t think twice about hurting a local business. As Heemeyer said in a note,  “I was always willing to be reasonable until I had to be unreasonable. Sometimes reasonable men must do unreasonable things.”