[ARCHIVED THREAD] - Falling bullets kill, right? (Page 1 of 2)
Posted: 3/20/2011 4:50:57 PM EDT
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I'm watching FOX News and watching the local Libyans firing their AK's in the air in celebration. It's at least a couple hundred rounds (likely more). I wonder how many locals get nailed in by those celebratory bullets as they make their way back to Earth?
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There are lots of variables involved here. One is how much the bullet tumbles, if any. If it tumbles, it will be moving slower than one that comes base down.
It is not a safe practice. A falling bullet could easily put out an eye, for example. Also, some people's skulls are harder than others. Just because a falling bullet won't usually cause any injuries is no reason to take a chance. Fire those celebratory AKs into a nearby berm. |
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Every time I see them wasting ammo I facepalm. Me too, and I wonder if politicians would be more receptive towards helping them if they acted like professionals and not like a mob. It would look better to point to calm, controlled people and say "this is who we're helping" than to point to a bunch of nuts shooting into the air wildly. |
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Mythbusters did this already. A bullet that goes straight up and falls straight down will likely result in no more than a bruise and a headache. A bullet that is still following an arc of trajectory will may kill when it hits someone. fixed. There are *way* too many variables to make that kind of a generalization. |
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Quoted: I take anything they do with a grain of salt.Quoted: Unless they are fired at an angle the most one would get is a bruise on the head. A bullet fired straight up will come to earth at terminal velocity base down on its side. It would be like being hit with a hail stone of the same weight. fxt |
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Mythbusters didn't properly spin the bullets before their little "tests".
177,000 RPM tends to stabilize bullets somewhat, resulting in them coming down nose first, unless fired perfectly striaght up. IIRC, their actual tests, not random bullets in a blower, showed that they penetrated far beyond what their lab experiments predicted. They also learned that there is rarely anything as "straight up", and any bullet fired up will tend to stay nose first in its ballistic arc, until it comes down and punches holes in things. (AK-47: 710meters/sec, 1 in 240mm twist rate = 177,500 RPM) |
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I worked at a car dealership and saw the day after New Years a hole entirely through the sheet metal on a car hood.... it was from people shooting up in the air.... both 9mm and .45... (found the spent rounds) J they were shot at an angle I'd bet ..unless you saw the dents from the feet of the shooter standing on the hood of the car |
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Quoted: Quoted: I take anything they do with a grain of salt.Quoted: Unless they are fired at an angle the most one would get is a bruise on the head. A bullet fired straight up will come to earth at terminal velocity base down on its side. It would be like being hit with a hail stone of the same weight. fxt They suspended bullets in an air column, and then the actual fired 9mm bullets and balloon-dropped .30-06 bullets punched sideways holes in the ground and were found in the holes that way. If a bullet is fired straight up, it will lose spin and fall sideways at roughly 160fps. No seasoning needed. |
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Quoted: Mythbusters didn't properly spin the bullets before their little "tests". 177,000 RPM tends to stabilize bullets somewhat, resulting in them coming down nose first, unless fired perfectly striaght up. IIRC, their actual tests, not random bullets in a blower, showed that they penetrated far beyond what their lab experiments predicted. They also learned that there is rarely anything as "straight up", and any bullet fired up will tend to stay nose first in its ballistic arc, until it comes down and punches holes in things. (AK-47: 710meters/sec, 1 in 240mm twist rate = 177,500 RPM) They fired 9mm bullets straight up and the ground penetration was consistent with their expectations. |
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Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: I take anything they do with a grain of salt.Quoted: Unless they are fired at an angle the most one would get is a bruise on the head. A bullet fired straight up will come to earth at terminal velocity base down on its side. It would be like being hit with a hail stone of the same weight. fxt They suspended bullets in an air column, and then the actual fired 9mm bullets and balloon-dropped .30-06 bullets punched sideways holes in the ground and were found in the holes that way. If a bullet is fired straight up, it will lose spin and fall sideways at roughly 160fps. No seasoning needed. Col. Hatcher, who actually performed this experiment with a Browning MG, firing M1 ball, would disagree . . . |
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Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: I take anything they do with a grain of salt.Quoted: Unless they are fired at an angle the most one would get is a bruise on the head. A bullet fired straight up will come to earth at terminal velocity base down on its side. It would be like being hit with a hail stone of the same weight. fxt They suspended bullets in an air column, and then the actual fired 9mm bullets and balloon-dropped .30-06 bullets punched sideways holes in the ground and were found in the holes that way. If a bullet is fired straight up, it will lose spin and fall sideways at roughly 160fps. No seasoning needed. Col. Hatcher, who actually performed this experiment with a Browning MG, firing M1 ball, would disagree . . . Spin decays A LOT slower than velocity. |
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Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: I take anything they do with a grain of salt.Quoted: Unless they are fired at an angle the most one would get is a bruise on the head. A bullet fired straight up will come to earth at terminal velocity base down on its side. It would be like being hit with a hail stone of the same weight. fxt They suspended bullets in an air column, and then the actual fired 9mm bullets and balloon-dropped .30-06 bullets punched sideways holes in the ground and were found in the holes that way. If a bullet is fired straight up, it will lose spin and fall sideways at roughly 160fps. No seasoning needed. Col. Hatcher, who actually performed this experiment with a Browning MG, firing M1 ball, would disagree . . . Spin decays A LOT slower than velocity. |
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Quoted: Quoted: Yep, no different than a bow and arrow fired straight up....won't do nothing. Might want to re-think that theory....... http://www.above-timberline.com/images/08razortrick.jpg Ow. |
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Quoted: The obvious flaw in their test is that a 9mm bullet has it's weight spread pretty even across the entire bullet. Whereas a rifle bullet as designated by the OP has 90% of it's weight at the base. The bullet will fall the direction of it's heaviest part. You are wrong.Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: I take anything they do with a grain of salt.Quoted: Unless they are fired at an angle the most one would get is a bruise on the head. A bullet fired straight up will come to earth at terminal velocity base down on its side. It would be like being hit with a hail stone of the same weight. fxt They suspended bullets in an air column, and then the actual fired 9mm bullets and balloon-dropped .30-06 bullets punched sideways holes in the ground and were found in the holes that way. If a bullet is fired straight up, it will lose spin and fall sideways at roughly 160fps. No seasoning needed. Col. Hatcher, who actually performed this experiment with a Browning MG, firing M1 ball, would disagree . . . Spin decays A LOT slower than velocity. |
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There are certain things that gun guys insist on.
1. Shooting into the air, because if you do it just perfect, they'll just whack you skull at 300 mph instead of 1000 mph 2. Leaving guns within easy access of children, because their kids are superhuman and never, ever get out of line or do anything foolish. 3. Drinking and shooting, because what could go wrong? It's no big deal. I've basically given up arguing these points, the people that are fucking stupid enough to think they are a good idea are too fucking stupid to be convinced otherwise. No amount of tragic examples will convince them. Pride goeth before the fall. |
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I take anything they do with a grain of salt.
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Unless they are fired at an angle the most one would get is a bruise on the head. A bullet fired straight up will come to earth at terminal velocity base down on its side. It would be like being hit with a hail stone of the same weight. fxt They suspended bullets in an air column, and then the actual fired 9mm bullets and balloon-dropped .30-06 bullets punched sideways holes in the ground and were found in the holes that way. If a bullet is fired straight up, it will lose spin and fall sideways at roughly 160fps. No seasoning needed. Col. Hatcher, who actually performed this experiment with a Browning MG, firing M1 ball, would disagree . . . Spin decays A LOT slower than velocity. Guys, I am an expert in both math and physics. One time just for the heck of it I wrote a BASIC computer program that exactly replicates the bullet trajectory tables in the back of the Speer reloading manual. Nobody on this website understands this problem better than I do. Here's the final conclusion to be drawn from the entire controversy: anybody who fires a bullet into the air should have the gun taken away from him and shoved up his ass. You don't need to use quartic runge cutta to figure that one out. |
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Quoted: Your mathematic prowess aside, your conclusion is totally irrelevant to the question. Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: I take anything they do with a grain of salt.Quoted: Unless they are fired at an angle the most one would get is a bruise on the head. A bullet fired straight up will come to earth at terminal velocity base down on its side. It would be like being hit with a hail stone of the same weight. fxt They suspended bullets in an air column, and then the actual fired 9mm bullets and balloon-dropped .30-06 bullets punched sideways holes in the ground and were found in the holes that way. If a bullet is fired straight up, it will lose spin and fall sideways at roughly 160fps. No seasoning needed. Col. Hatcher, who actually performed this experiment with a Browning MG, firing M1 ball, would disagree . . . Spin decays A LOT slower than velocity. Guys, I am an expert in both math and physics. One time just for the heck of it I wrote a BASIC computer program that exactly replicates the bullet trajectory tables in the back of the Speer reloading manual. Nobody on this website understands this problem better than I do. Here's the final conclusion to be drawn from the entire controversy: anybody who fires a bullet into the air should have the gun taken away from him and shoved up his ass. You don't need to use quartic runge cutta to figure that one out. |
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Here is my humble contribution to the subject matter contained in this thread. I do commerical a/c work, and I find fired projectiles on rooftops all the time. Some are just laying there, others are embedded in the roofing material. Looking at the pictures, if you are familiar with the materials used in roofing, you'll notice what it is. It takes real effort to drive a screwdriver into it, and I pull slugs from these roofs all the time, with channel locks because I can't do it with my fingers. I have dozens of them to remind me, that what goes up, must come down. Seems to me, if they can embed in these roofs, they can do the same with skulls.
Recent finds include 3 (what appear to be .308) rounds 
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Clearly a bunch of third world neanderthals, they must need a strong dictatorship to keep them in line.
..We can bomb them all day long, but sooner or later, we have to install a friendly puppet government, and send our war machine on to the next oppressed population capable of petroleum exports. |
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Well...we had a guy get a celebratory round stuck in his shoulder armor in Iraq. (whenever they won some soccer game in the '06/07 timeframe) And we had a kid in our AO that had one lodged behind his...left?...eye. The x-ray showed that bullet had come down at a pretty steep angle. So...kill? Can. I know I wouldn't want to have a bullet lodged in my head, either. |