# Mythbusters - Bullets fired up



## Metryq (Dec 18, 2011)

I had heard about the _Mythbusters_ "Bullets Fired Up" episode, but did not see it until just recently. The "myth" was that bullets fired into the air will return to Earth with lethal velocity. Several people told me that the myth had been busted. I guess they weren't paying attention to the full episode.

Jamie and Adam built a small, vertical wind tunnel in their workshop to determine the "terminal velocity" of a falling bullet. This is the speed at which an object reaches its top speed against wind resistance. In the case of the model, it is the speed where the bullet "hovered" on the rising column of air, about 45 m/s (150 f/s)—far below the muzzle velocity of any bullet. Test targets impacted at this speed would not break human skin, so myth busted, right?

More tests in the desert with 9mm and 30.06 bullets fired straight up seemed to prove the lab results.

Then the Mythbusters talked to a doctor with X-rays from two cases: a non-lethal case where a woman caught a bullet in her thigh, and one fatality where an old man was hit in the head while standing under a corrugated roof. The conclusion was that bullet fired perfectly straight up would dissipate its rifled-spin ballistic energy before falling back harmlessly at terminal velocity. _However_, shots fired into the air at an angle—the way a human might do it—could bring the bullet down in a lethal, ballistic arc. The doctor's info matches mine.

Late December 1995 the small company I worked for was moving its main offices from Massachusetts down to Miami, Florida. Five of us were making the move. I waited behind to fly down, while four others drove the two moving vans with all our personal and office stuff. We had been advised not to drive into Miami on New Year's day because of the football game crowd, so the drivers stayed two days in Georgia.

While unpacking on January 2nd, we noticed a neat, round hole in the fiberglas roof of one van because the stuff below the hole was wet from rain the day before. I also noticed a similar hole in a videotape carrier, but I did not connect the two holes until later. The videotape carrier was a particle board box with a laminate to make it look like finer wood, and a plastic drawer for holding tapes.

It was several days later, while setting up my new apartment, that I opened the drawer and discovered one of my tapes was making a very unhealthy rattling sound. Then I noticed something coppery roll past the tape window. Opening the shell produced the tape killer, a 9x19 FMJ with a tiny crease in the point:





Between the drivers and myself, we figured out what must have happened: while overnight in Georgia, someone celebrating New Year's fired a bullet into the air, which came down in a ballistic into the van and killing the videotape. The Mythbusters demonstrated that a bullet tumbling through the air at terminal velocity wouldn't do the job. And if some redneck had been, say, standing on a highway overpass shooting down at trucks, everyone would have heard it.

The moral of the story: if you're going to celebrate this New Year's, go out to the range and shoot at some targets instead of the sky.


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## Metryq (Dec 21, 2011)

And then just a few days later, this story turns up:

*Ohio man cleaning gun killed Amish girl*



> FREDERICKSBURG, Ohio (AP) -- A man cleaning his muzzle-loading rifle shot the gun into the air, accidentally killing a 15-year-old Amish girl driving a horse-drawn buggy more than a mile away, a sheriff said Tuesday.



And from the NRA's gun safety rules:



> 1. ALWAYS keep the gun pointed in a safe direction.
> This is the primary rule of gun safety. A safe direction means that the gun is pointed so that even if it were to go off it would not cause injury or damage. The key to this rule is to control where the muzzle or front end of the barrel is pointed at all times. Common sense dictates the safest direction, depending on different circumstances.



TV and movies break rules number 1 and 2 so much it makes me cringe. It was drilled into me in class that rule number 1 must be followed _all_ the time, even when the gun is "unloaded." (Always treat a gun as though it were loaded. It's amazing how often people are shot by unloaded guns.) Rule number 2 is keep your finger off the trigger until ready to shoot. I saw one _X-Files_ wannabe where the two agents are creeping through a dark place with guns drawn, fingers inside the trigger guards. Something harmless tumbles, and the guy in front jumps aside. His partner grabs him to keep him from falling, one hand against his back, the other against his chest—gun pointed partly into his chest and up towards his face, finger inside the trigger guard. ("Sorry about that, chief"?)

I haven't handled any muzzle-loaders, and I realize the AP story was about an accident, but way down the list of rules is:



> Before cleaning your gun, make _absolutely_ sure that it is unloaded.



This gun must have been stored loaded, another no-no. Still, four times as many people are killed by cars than by guns every year in the US, yet it is gun stories that are sensational.


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## Rommel (Dec 22, 2011)

Killing someone more than a mile away should indicate to you that he did not shoot straight up. It would seem he shot more sideways than up.
 I have to say i'm abit sceptical of your bullet in the photo. That does not look like a bullet going though a fibreglass sheet, box and video tape.


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## Starbeast (Dec 23, 2011)

February of 1942 in Los Angeles, over 1400 anti-aircraft rounds were fired *upward* at an object seen in the sky which was illuminated by spotlights for over an hour above the city. The projectiles fell to Earth damaging buildings and killed three people.

Anyone else hear about Mythbusters "Cannonball Mishap"?


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## Metryq (Dec 23, 2011)

Rommel said:


> Killing someone more than a mile away should indicate to you that he did not shoot straight up.



I never said the Ohio gun cleaner shot straight up. It was yet another example of a bullet "from the sky" that landed with damaging force, despite the MYTHBUSTERS' treatment. And you're free to be as skeptical as you want of the recovered bullet. I'm surprised it was not more deformed, too, but I have to conclude that the fiberglas roof, particle board box, and then the layers of wound plastic on the videotape reel were enough to dissipate the energy effectively. Maybe it indicates the way to a new type of bulletproof vest—if one doesn't mind looking like the Michelin Man.



> *Starbeast wrote:* Anyone else hear about Mythbusters "Cannonball Mishap"?



This is the sort of incident that probably gives the show's producers ulcers. They're lucky no one was injured. Oh yes, cannonballs can bounce.


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