Metryq
Cave Painter
- Joined
- Mar 30, 2011
- Messages
- 935
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.
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.
