[avianmosquito] Headshots: a lesson in Stupidity

[Serafina]

Look, Avianmosquito, for some reason i feel nice, even tough you are a total shithead and don't deserve it.
Back up your claims with sources. Research always involves sources (unless you are conducting experiments on your own - i doubt you shot people in the head for your studies).
If you can actually do that and show that your claims are correct, you would somewhat redeem yourself.

However, i suspect that your "studies" are not studies at all.
Rather, i suspect that you just looked at some random stuff ever since you were 13. But that DOESN'T make you an expert! It doesn't even convey solid knowledge, because most of your sources would be crap.
Look, as a comparision, i was both into volcanoes and warfare since my childhood. I read a lot on both.
My sources on warfare were crap - most things i learned were worse than useless and just plain wrong.
My sources on vulcanology were better - mostly because they consisted soley of good books on the theme (they were my fathers books, who knows at least a bit about them).
However, even that doesn't mean that i am an expert on vulcanology. I would never say "well, i read a lot on it, so i know stuff about it" - it doesn't matter if you do it for a decade if you do not do any actual research.

Realize this:
You have no credentials. Eventually going to college isn't one. Reading stuff as a kid isn't one.
If you want to fix that, that's great - but first you have to know that you know nothing.

[Azazal]

3. Protection: the brain is protected by the skull, a thick, hard bone rounded on all sides. Even rifle rounds tend to ricochet off it they hit at a bad angle, and smaller rounds, such as birdshot and some pistol rounds, will not penetrate it at all regardless of angle.

I couldn't read any more of the OP after I got to this... I.. ahh.. I know I lost brain cells after reading it. I really really want to see what rifle round will bounce of a human skull, seriously I have to see the evidence.

Though it does open a whole new door on the various JFK conspiracy theories, there is no way that a rifle could have done that amount of damage to him, the bullet should have simply bounced off

[Stuart]

There is a tiny element of accuracy in this amazingly incompetent, ignorant, idiotic, imbecilic, inept, ineffectual, inexpert, ill-informed inexperienced, (and that's just the Is) original post. It is indeed possible for a rifle bullet to bounce off a human skull if it impacts at an oblique angle. However, what mosquito-brains misses out is that in doing so, the bullet causes large fragments of bone to detach from the inner surface of the skull and send them spinning around through the brain. The general effect on the brain tissue is a bit akin to somebody puuting their genitals into a blender. Also, the impact of the bullet will rupture the blood vessels in the brain and cause massive bleeding that is lethal within a period of a few seconds to a few hours. It's easy to tell people suffering from that problem. they have blood running out of their nose, their ears, their eyes and they are dead.

As it happens there are good reasons for concentrating on T-zone hits which is why firearms instructors teach that as a primary target. Sadly mosquito-brains missed every one of them.

[Meest]

Jeremy's post is disturbing, seek help and help us all if you're going to be a grandfather at 25. Better things to worry about than gaining internet cred on a forum. (Just got another head shot pin in Bad Company 2 for pistol, who says head shots don't work! /flashes internet cred signs)

[Stuart]

Just got another head shot pin in Bad Company 2 for pistol, who says head shots don't work!

Friend of mine actually shot somebody in the back of the head once. Didn't work too well, a bit of the subject's skull jammed the pistol in question.

[Vehrec]

Wasn't that "we don't use 100% of our brain" myth based on the fact tat not all of our brain is operating at the same time? Since you don't need all of the, shall we say, subsystems all at once. For example, if your taste buds are in an idle state, the part of the brain that handles them won't light up on a brain scan.

As for computational capacity, I think (layman here) that it is more related to tiredness and chemical unbalance (being drunk or drugged, for example) than actual lack of optimization (aside from the obvious lack of optimization present on an evolved system that hasn't been properly rebuilt in millions of years).


*reads Jeremy's post* Woah

I think I can shine some light on why there is this myth about only using 10% of the brain. You see, like any tissue or organ, the brain is not uniform in its cell types. There are neurons in the brain, possesed of axons of varying lengths, or of no axon at all. Neurons communicate by releasing chemicals into the intracellular spaces and by electrical pulses down their axons. Surrounding the neurons, and making up 90% of brain tissue are the glial cells-literally 'glue cells' because that's what early neurologists thought they were, the glue that held the brain together and didn't do any thinking.

Then someone discovered that Einstein had a LOT of a few specific kinds of Glial cells. And then scientists found out that those types of glial cells could react to neurotransmitter chemicals. We now know that fMRIs, used to measure brain activity, are mostly detecting the activities of Glial cells and not neurons. They also provide vital support functions like moderating chemical levels, and providing oxygen to the neurons. So while only 10% of your brain is neurons by volume, it's still 100% parts you need to think.

[Marcus Aurelius]

Hrm, yeah. Simon.

A blow to the chest from, say, a baseball bat would be very painful. Bruise you. Break some ribs maybe. Knock the wind out of you. Maybe immobilize you due to the pain.

But do that blow to the head? The person is knocked out, and the person may die. Or, at least, a blow to the head will be far more disorientating and knock-outing than a blow to the body. Why? Because the head is more vulnerable. Because the head also has a whole lot of vital functions in the brain that can be impaired by injury that other body parts might endure, and impairment of brain stuff will translate to fucking up body stuff easily.

Specifically, in WW1 it was soon discovered that a very large percentage of fatal wounds were caused by head trauma, mostly shrapnel and shell fragments. Partly the re-inventing of helmets was related to the fact that in a trench your head is the most likely part of your body to get hit by fragments from nearby explosions, but also because head wounds really are so dangerous. Bullets did not even enter into it, since in general steel helmets do not protect from rifle bullets at normal infantry combat distances 1. Modern neurosurgery did not exist in WW1 and about the only thing a surgeon could do was to relieve the intracranial pressure caused by bleeding, which might save you if the bleeding was not very bad to start with. The reason why neurosurgery did not really exist was that brains have a lot of small blood vessels and cutting into the brain usually caused deadly bleeding until techniques to seal the blood vessels were invented. This is also very telling: unless treated by modern neurosurgery, even small damage to the brain can be fatal, although I think Shroomy already made it very clear.

1 The exceptions are bullets arriving at very oblique angels. There are also modern composite helmets that protect from rifle bullets, but they are a post-WW2 invention.

[avianmosquito]

To reply to all of your identical dogpile complaints at once, I'll simply cover the basics that you all seem to be missing.

While it is true that an impact from a ricocheting bullet jars the head quite a bit and inflicts a powerful blunt injury, you are all vastly overestimating the power you're dealing with. I shouldn't have to keep reminding people: bullets are small, low-momentum projectiles. If they don't penetrate, they don't kill, end of story.

Having tested this one when I was briefly given free reign over a friend's equipment, I can tell you a 5.56*45mm will transfer ~400j of kinetic energy and less than a newton second of momentum, about the power of a casual back-hand, over an area about the size of a diamond ring. If that constituted a fatal injury, I would of been far more reluctant to piss off my mother when I was a kid. I imagine a battle rifle would be more powerful, but I still can't see these injuries being lethal unless we're dealing with a mighty big gun that probably wouldn't ricochet anyway.

Once again, a thrown rock does more damage than a ricocheting bullet due to sheer momentum.

Further, there is the whole bit about only needing to damage a tiny bit of the brain. This is true, but you only need to damage a tiny bit of the heart of put a tiny hole in the aorta as well, and those will kill you faster than loss of brain function. As for what that means: a minute after getting shot thorugh the heart, you've dead. A minute after the aorta has a hole in it, you're dead. A minute after your brain has a hole in it, you're braindead, but your heart is likely still breating unless the modella oblangata is damaged, you should still be twitching unless the cerabellum or the brainstem is damaged.

As for the reason helmets are more important than body armour: which is more likely to be exposed in a firefight; Your head or your chest?

Finally, upon checking my own data, headshots actually have as much resultant hypoxia (that and destroyed tissue are my definition of real, physical damage) as the shots to the liver, and they both operate through blood loss in this regard, carrying a lot of blood and being very stiff, making it so shockwaves (be they from a punch or a bullet passing through) cause many more ruptures than it would in more flexible tissue. Finally, they also have another equivalency: they both put fluid in a place you really do not want it, with about the same level of destruction. For headshots, this is of course the brain, for liver shots, this is the thoracic cavity. (Not always the case) As such, the only difference is that headshots frequently put people into shock that liver shots would not, despite doing about the same damage, and the shock itself is usually lethal in a matter of hours, even if the actual bullet wound isn't. The liver, on the other hand, is just an unusually painful way to die.

But, keep in mind you still get more hypoxia from a bullet passing through a lung, hence why they tell you to put two bullets in the chest before you put one through the head. This way, the target dies from the holes in their chest, while incapacitated by the headshot while they bleed.

Also, the aorta contains as far more blood than the brain, and since it is all one big blood vessel it's going to leak faster. A single 9mm bullet through it will leave you dead by exsanguination in about a minute, while one through the heart will leave you dead in ~20 seconds.

None the less, when you're shooting somebody from a safe distance with a high-powered rifle death is death, so feel free to aim for the head or the heart, whichever you prefer. Personally I prefer the heart, but I'm pretty sure you figured that out already.

As for where I get my information, I have actually gotten the opinions of firearms instructors, trauma surgeons and soldiers, and their comments on the matter pretty much come down to "never aim for the head." They come down to different reasons, the instructors stating the relative ease of hitting the chest, the surgeon stating the inhumane nature of headshots (which might of just been bias because he couldn't do anything about it) and the soldiers (including a marine) stated more faster kills when hitting the heart than the brain. (That is to say they die faster, not they drop faster, as they're both pretty much instant in that regard)

As far as my age and the age of my children, that is totally irrelevent, but I'll put a little more detail on the subject anyway. I'll tell you right now that your math is screwed up because my elder daugter is younger than that, but considering my son just turned 13, we're still stuck with the same issue. Yes, I had a kid when I was twelve, (although I didn't know it until a year after he was born) and yes, my financial problems are directly related to having 3 kids. (and a divorce, which took my elder kids from me, prompting me to go and adopt my current child, and getting laid off when the economy went to shit, and so on.) It's not like I intended to have a child then, I didn't even think it was possible. The second child wasn't intentional either, but wasn't as much of a suprise.

It was a suprise, however, to find out last year that my middle child was pregnant, especially considering her age at the time, but more suprising was that she did it on purpose.

There, now we should of cleared up the reasoning behind my statements and seriously freaked a few of you out with a completely irrelevent part of my life's story.

[Ryan Thunder]

Hilariously, you failed to note something basic; that cracking a human skull only requires between 14 and 70 joules kinetic energy at impact, depending on the angle (according to the New York Times, apparently). Now, consider this 400 J bullet...

[Serafina]

Okay, i will leave the comments about your apparent anti-knowledge of ballistics to the people who are actual firearms experts and/or soldiers.
Still, your stupidity is so apparent that i can debunk the rest of it.

To reply to all of your identical dogpile complaints at once, I'll simply cover the basics that you all seem to be missing.

That...interesting.
But we will see that you will actually not adress anything and just rephrased your earlier piece of mindcrap.

If they don't penetrate, they don't kill, end of story.

We have told you how even a non-penetrating bullet can kill. While it has less KE, it also applies it to a smaller area
(whoops, i guess i commented on ballistics after all - eh, who cares).

Having tested this one when I was briefly given free reign over a friend's equipment, I can tell you a 5.56*45mm will transfer ~400j of kinetic energy and less than a newton second of momentum, about the power of a casual back-hand, over an area about the size of a diamond ring.

Soo - you base this on shooting some kind of firearm a couple of times?
By that logic, I am a firearms expert, too - after all, i have fired several weapons on my own, too.

If that constituted a fatal injury, I would of been far more reluctant to piss off my mother when I was a kid.

Wait - WHAT?
Honestly - that's just FUCKED UP.

Once again, a thrown rock does more damage than a ricocheting bullet due to sheer momentum.

Well - yes. So-fucking-what. That doesn't mean that the bullet is harmless or less deadly.
I can bash in your skull with a bloody (then, literary) club, too.

This is true, but you only need to damage a tiny bit of the heart of put a tiny hole in the aorta as well, and those will kill you faster than loss of brain function.

No it won't.
We have explained why a brain injury is far more serious in detail. You can't just ignore it.

As for what that means: a minute after getting shot thorugh the heart, you've dead. A minute after the aorta has a hole in it, you're dead. A minute after your brain has a hole in it, you're braindead, but your heart is likely still breating unless the modella oblangata is damaged, you should still be twitching unless the cerabellum or the brainstem is damaged.

Guess what - being braindead is the DEFINITION of dead. You dumbwit.

Finally, upon checking my own data, headshots actually have as much resultant hypoxia (that and destroyed tissue are my definition of real, physical damage) as the shots to the liver, and they both operate through blood loss in this regard, carrying a lot of blood and being very stiff, making it so shockwaves (be they from a punch or a bullet passing through) cause many more ruptures than it would in more flexible tissue.

So WHAT. You can survive without your liver for some time. The liver is also quite good at regenerating.
While you might die from blood loss, it won't immedeately affect your combat performace (shock and blood loss aside, which you state is equal).
However, being hit in the brain has an enormous chance of doing so - because the brain is actually important.

Also, the aorta contains as far more blood than the brain, and since it is all one big blood vessel it's going to leak faster. A single 9mm bullet through it will leave you dead by exsanguination in about a minute, while one through the heart will leave you dead in ~20 seconds.

And a shot trough the head can kill you instantly.

As for where I get my information, I have actually gotten the opinions of firearms instructors, trauma surgeons and soldiers, and their comments on the matter pretty much come down to "never aim for the head."

So you don't actually have evidence.
Tell me - why should a trauma surgeon bother talking to a snot-nose highschooler?
If you get that from actual medical papers - cite them.

They come down to different reasons, the instructors stating the relative ease of hitting the chest, the surgeon stating the inhumane nature of headshots (which might of just been bias because he couldn't do anything about it) and the soldiers (including a marine) stated more faster kills when hitting the heart than the brain. (That is to say they die faster, not they drop faster, as they're both pretty much instant in that regard)

So one of them is bloody fucking irrelevant, the other just states that it is easier to hit and the latter - well, we have actual soldiers here telling us it's otherwise, so i will rather believe them.

In conclusion:
-You have stated NOTHING NEW.
-You have presented NO EVIDENCE except "some anonymous guy told me so"

Go back to school and learn how to do an actual discussion. A fucking 15-year old should be able to do better than you.

As far as my age and the age of my children, that is totally irrelevent

Yes it is. So, why do you post it?

'll tell you right now that your math is screwed up because my elder daugter is younger than that, but considering my son just turned 13, we're still stuck with the same issue. Yes, I had a kid when I was twelve, (although I didn't know it until a year after he was born) and yes, my financial problems are directly related to having 3 kids.

If that's actually true, i am sorry for you.
However, i can not actually believe anything you say right away - your track record is just too bad.

(and a divorce, which took my elder kids from me, prompting me to go and adopt my current child, and getting laid off when the economy went to shit, and so on.)

This, however, is as damn stupid as every other of your decisions.
So you already have to pay for three (2?) children - and while you are struggling financially, you decide to adopt another one?
Tell me - how are you planning to pay for college?

It was a suprise, however, to find out last year that my middle child was pregnant, especially considering her age at the time, but more suprising was that she did it on purpose.

I would not be surprised.
Her father was obviously too stupid for birth controll. The first one is an understandable (given your young age) addicent, but the second time? Blatant idiocy.

And YES, i AM NOT polite.
Why?
Well, for your argument - it's just shit.
For your personal - i call it like i see it. And if it is true, you really, really need to wake up. Because your real life seems to be as messed up as your fantasies.
If that story is true, i hope you manage to get a grip on your life ASAP. Despite my justified insults, i do not wish you any harm - tough you owe me some brain bleach - and especially not your kids.

[avianmosquito]

Hilariously, you failed to note something basic; that cracking a human skull only requires between 14 and 70 joules kinetic energy at impact, depending on the angle (according to the New York Times, apparently). Now, consider this 400 J bullet...

14-70j? Once again, the Times is full of shit. You would need a projectile the size of a brick for that amount of energy to do anything at all, and you'd need a corner to hit in order to crack the skull.

I'm serious about this. Punch yourself in the head.

Okay, unless you're the world's biggest pussy, that was one hell of a lot more than 70j. Are you dead? Are you hurt at all?

If you don't trust me on that one, have a toddler punch you in the forehead. Tell them to make it hard. That'll be a good 100j, and it'll hurt... kind of. That 14-70j measurement is rediculous.

Now for the final test, take a dictionary. Drop it on your head from 1.4 and 7 metres. Note: The second one will hurt hurt like hell. You're still standing, right? Then let's just call bullshit on that number and move on.

[Terralthra]

Hilariously, you failed to note something basic; that cracking a human skull only requires between 14 and 70 joules kinetic energy at impact, depending on the angle (according to the New York Times, apparently). Now, consider this 400 J bullet...

This bullet:

KE = 1/2 m * v^2
KE = 0.5 * 3.95-5.18g * (772-930 m/sec)^2 / 1000 (unit conversion to joule)
KE = 1176 - 1709 J (depending on bullet mass and velocity)

Let's go with the lowest numbers, just to be conservative. 3.95g bullet, 772 m/sec. Now, let's assume, for the sake of argument, that the bullet impacts at 10 degrees from parallel. The velocities would be then be:

v(y) (tangent to point of impact)
v(y)/772 = cos(10)
v(y) = 772 * .98
v(y) = 760 m/sec

v(x) (normal to point of impact)
v(x)/772 = sin(10)
v(x) = 772 * .17
v(x) = 131 m/sec

Now, let's assume for the sake of continuing the argument that the bullet is reflected back off the skull at the exact same angle and velocity (772 m/sec). This means that the v(y) is unchanged, while the v(x) is inverted, going from +131m/sec to -131m/sec. This is a change of 262 m/sec in the bullet, all in the -x direction; the kinetic energy transfer to the head is therefore:

KE = 0.5 * 3.95 g * (262m/sec)^2 / 1000(KJ -> J)
KE = 0.5 * 3.95 g * 68644 m^2/sec / 1000
KE = 135.6 J

Maybe aviangnat has some different definition of oblique.

I could calculate what angle results in a 400J energy transfer, but I really don't care that much. The formula, if you care, is:

400 = 0.5 * 3.95g * (772 * cos(theta) )^2 / 1000


Now, the operative question is, what *pressure* does that exert on the point of impact.

Pressure = force / area
P (n/m^2) = (kg * m / sec^2) / area
P = (0.00395 * accel) / area
P = (0.00395 * 262 m/sec / seconds) / area

So, how fast does the ricochet occur? 1/100th of a second? That's way way too long. A real ricochet will be nearly instantaneous. But what the hell, let's be conservative.

P = (0.00395 * 262 m/sec / 0.01 ) / area
P = (0.00395 * 2620 m/sec^2 ) /area
P = 1034.9 / area

Now, the second estimation point. Area of impact. Again, we're being conservative here, so let's use the full bullet diameter, 5.70 mm as the area of impact. That's 0.0057 m^2*pi area (circular bullet, right?).

P = 1034.9/0.0057^2*pi
P = 1034.9N / 0.0001 m^2
P = 10349000 Pascals.

So, even with the most lenient of assumptions, an oblique (10 degree) ricochet of a 5.56 x 45mm bullet at the lowest mass and lowest speed will still exert 10 mPa of pressure. Huh. That's a lot.

If my math is off, feel free to correct it.

Also, pretty please stop using joules as if they are the be-all determiner of damage. It only makes you look dumber.

EDIT: whoops, forgot to halve diameter for the area the bullet impacts. Oh well. Only makes the final result even bigger.

[Sea Skimmer]

While it is true that an impact from a ricocheting bullet jars the head quite a bit and inflicts a powerful blunt injury, you are all vastly overestimating the power you're dealing with. I shouldn't have to keep reminding people: bullets are small, low-momentum projectiles. If they don't penetrate, they don't kill, end of story.

Good job , open your rebuttal by once more asserting everyone else is dumber then you. Are you really that dense that you think you can awe people like that when literally everyone knows you are being an idiot? Did you even stop to think for even one second that the person missing it all is you? That's what logic would dictate when an argument is totally one sided. But it doesn't look like your logic skills exist even as a beta.

Having tested this one when I was briefly given free reign over a friend's equipment, I can tell you a 5.56*45mm will transfer ~400j of kinetic energy and less than a newton second of momentum, about the power of a casual back-hand, over an area about the size of a diamond ring. If that constituted a fatal injury, I would of been far more reluctant to piss off my mother when I was a kid.

Yeah you know what that sounds like? A bunch of lies. But if its not I'm sure you can give details on the weapon used, cartridge loading and bullet used, firing range used and testing equipment and calibration specs. Also what the fuck did you use as a target that simulates a human skull?
But I'm really more interested in the fact that you have a mother who can deliver a 800ish meter per second backhand. You did know time matters for energy transfer and damage right? I thought not.

I imagine a battle rifle would be more powerful, but I still can't see these injuries being lethal unless we're dealing with a mighty big gun that probably wouldn't ricochet anyway.

Yeah, as was pointed out already a rifle bullet isn't going to ricochet off a head under anything but extreme conditions. At which point bone will fracture anyway because the bullet hit at supersonic speed, not the speed of a swinging hand. Do you understand the basic concept of a shock wave? Its pretty obvious that you don't.

Once again, a thrown rock does more damage than a ricocheting bullet due to sheer momentum.

If the rock was supersonic, sure.

Further, there is the whole bit about only needing to damage a tiny bit of the brain. This is true, but you only need to damage a tiny bit of the heart of put a tiny hole in the aorta as well, and those will kill you faster than loss of brain function.

You are a total dumbass. Brain death is DEATH then and now. Blood loss takes TIME.

As for what that means: a minute after getting shot thorugh the heart, you've dead. A minute after the aorta has a hole in it, you're dead. A minute after your brain has a hole in it, you're braindead, but your heart is likely still breating unless the modella oblangata is damaged, you should still be twitching unless the cerabellum or the brainstem is damaged.

...are you completely insane? When your brain is dead, you die and you aren't going to do jack shit about it. Your heart has NO FUCKING CHANCE OF LIVING and it wouldn't matter if it did because with no brain, you can't fucking shoot back. Meanwhile we can CUT HEARTS OUT OF PEOPLE and replace them and they don't die. When was the last successful brain transplant you heard of?

As for the reason helmets are more important than body armour: which is more likely to be exposed in a firefight; Your head or your chest?

Holy crap, you said somthing that didn't make my eyes roll. This is amazing.

Finally, upon checking my own data, headshots actually have as much resultant hypoxia (that and destroyed tissue are my definition of real, physical damage)

Your pet definitions are irrelevant when they are based on such obvious stupidity. Your data is meaningless when you don't even try to PRESENT IT and documentation on how it was collected.

as the shots to the liver, and they both operate through blood loss in this regard, carrying a lot of blood and being very stiff, making it so shockwaves (be they from a punch or a bullet passing through) cause many more ruptures than it would in more flexible tissue.

Do you have any comprehension at all? The liver is a big filter, people live with huge chunks of it cut out and you can even cut out a chunk and donate it to someone else. And somehow this is worse then being shit through the head in such a manner that death is 100% assured and for which no treatment exists at all even if you got shot in the worlds best hospital?

Finally, they also have another equivalency: they both put fluid in a place you really do not want it, with about the same level of destruction. For headshots, this is of course the brain, for liver shots, this is the thoracic cavity.

You fail again. The liver is in the abdominal cavity not that thoracic cavity. This raises a major question as to if you even know the location of the liver in the human body.

But anyway tell you a little personal story. I was knocked down hard onto a railing in Texas about six years ago. I bled two pints out of my spleen, about a quarter of my entire blood supply, and it all drained into my abdominal cavity. I did not die, and the bleeding stopped and healed without surgery or any kind of chest tube or assisted ventilation whatsoever. And your going to fucking tell me that fluid in the chest is more deadly then a bullet in the brain? What do you think would happen if I bled two pints into my skull without major surgical aid? Assuming that overall my brain is still intact, just bleeding from a nic. As hint... pressure will kill the brain.

[quote[
(Not always the case) As such, the only difference is that headshots frequently put people into shock that liver shots would not, despite doing about the same damage, and the shock itself is usually lethal in a matter of hours, even if the actual bullet wound isn't. The liver, on the other hand, is just an unusually painful way to die.[/quote]

Shock is situation dependent. Shock is also totally irrelevant when your brain is pouring into the pavement. Do you really think someone has to die from shock when they have a brain in several pieces?

But, keep in mind you still get more hypoxia from a bullet passing through a lung, hence why they tell you to put two bullets in the chest before you put one through the head. This way, the target dies from the holes in their chest, while incapacitated by the headshot while they bleed.

That saying exists because its hard to hit the head while someone can still move on two feet. It is totally irrelevant to lethality. If you think a headshot is so much less lethal then a chest shot then why is the saying not just one in the chest, one in the heart? You said that'd kill them in 20 seconds right? So why the blatant contradiction?

Also, the aorta contains as far more blood than the brain, and since it is all one big blood vessel it's going to leak faster. A single 9mm bullet through it will leave you dead by exsanguination in about a minute, while one through the heart will leave you dead in ~20 seconds.

A bullet which disrupts the brainstem is death in zero seconds. What was your bullshit point again?

None the less, when you're shooting somebody from a safe distance with a high-powered rifle death is death, so feel free to aim for the head or the heart, whichever you prefer. Personally I prefer the heart, but I'm pretty sure you figured that out already.

I'd be very surprised if you'd ever actually fired a gun myself. You come across as a internet tough guy wannabie in such an overwhelming manner its yet again leaving me hard pressed to think of words to describe it. We already know you're the wall of ignorance type.

As for where I get my information, I have actually gotten the opinions of firearms instructors, trauma surgeons and soldiers, and their comments on the matter pretty much come down to "never aim for the head." They come down to different reasons, the instructors stating the relative ease of hitting the chest, the surgeon stating the inhumane nature of headshots (which might of just been bias because he couldn't do anything about it) and the soldiers (including a marine) stated more faster kills when hitting the heart than the brain. (That is to say they die faster, not they drop faster, as they're both pretty much instant in that regard)

In other words, more unsourced random bullshit.

There, now we should of cleared up the reasoning behind my statements and seriously freaked a few of you out with a completely irrelevent part of my life's story.

Well it is irrelevant to the topic at hand, but it sure does help us understand why and how you are this persistently stupid and yet still able to apparently function without choking on your own tongue.

[avianmosquito]

Having tested this one when I was briefly given free reign over a friend's equipment, I can tell you a 5.56*45mm will transfer ~400j of kinetic energy and less than a newton second of momentum, about the power of a casual back-hand, over an area about the size of a diamond ring.

Soo - you base this on shooting some kind of firearm a couple of times?
By that logic, I am a firearms expert, too - after all, i have fired several weapons on my own, too.

No, I'm basing this off of the measurements given to me by the equipment I fired the weapon onto. (At an oblique angle, of course.) It recorded 1600n over 25cm and about .6 seconds. Do the math.

If that constituted a fatal injury, I would of been far more reluctant to piss off my mother when I was a kid.

Wait - WHAT?
Honestly - that's just FUCKED UP.

What, that my mother used to backhand me with a ring? I'll be the first one to tell you I deserved it nine times out of ten.

Once again, a thrown rock does more damage than a ricocheting bullet due to sheer momentum.

Well - yes. So-fucking-what. That doesn't mean that the bullet is harmless or less deadly.
I can bash in your skull with a bloody (then, literary) club, too.

I'm not talking about a big rock, either. I'm talking about a small one you can hold with two fingers and a thumb, and would likely throw as such.

This is true, but you only need to damage a tiny bit of the heart of put a tiny hole in the aorta as well, and those will kill you faster than loss of brain function.

No it won't.
We have explained why a brain injury is far more serious in detail. You can't just ignore it.

As for what that means: a minute after getting shot thorugh the heart, you've dead. A minute after the aorta has a hole in it, you're dead. A minute after your brain has a hole in it, you're braindead, but your heart is likely still breating unless the modella oblangata is damaged, you should still be twitching unless the cerabellum or the brainstem is damaged.

Guess what - being braindead is the DEFINITION of dead. You dumbwit.

That's just not true. You aren't officially dead until the heart stops and there is no brain activity.

Finally, upon checking my own data, headshots actually have as much resultant hypoxia (that and destroyed tissue are my definition of real, physical damage) as the shots to the liver, and they both operate through blood loss in this regard, carrying a lot of blood and being very stiff, making it so shockwaves (be they from a punch or a bullet passing through) cause many more ruptures than it would in more flexible tissue.

So WHAT. You can survive without your liver for some time. The liver is also quite good at regenerating.
While you might die from blood loss, it won't immedeately affect your combat performace (shock and blood loss aside, which you state is equal).
However, being hit in the brain has an enormous chance of doing so - because the brain is actually important.

Wrong on all counts. Wounds to the liver are several times as painful as wounds anywhere else, enough so to incapacitate a soldier at least long enough for them to be too weak to stand by the time it fades. Don't believe me? Hit yourself in the liver, hard. Notice how it hurts more than the stomach next to it, and the pain lasts longer? It's the same way for any shock conducting through such a stiff, sensitive organ. (The kidneys are another good example.)

Also, the aorta contains as far more blood than the brain, and since it is all one big blood vessel it's going to leak faster. A single 9mm bullet through it will leave you dead by exsanguination in about a minute, while one through the heart will leave you dead in ~20 seconds.

And a shot trough the head can kill you instantly.

Not true. Again, while you might not be conscious for any more than a second or two, you don't die for some time.

As for where I get my information, I have actually gotten the opinions of firearms instructors, trauma surgeons and soldiers, and their comments on the matter pretty much come down to "never aim for the head."

So you don't actually have evidence.
Tell me - why should a trauma surgeon bother talking to a snot-nose highschooler?
If you get that from actual medical papers - cite them.

I talked to a trauma surgeon in person because I was a friend of his son's.

As far as my age and the age of my children, that is totally irrelevent

Yes it is. So, why do you post it?

I didn't start the fire.

'll tell you right now that your math is screwed up because my elder daugter is younger than that, but considering my son just turned 13, we're still stuck with the same issue. Yes, I had a kid when I was twelve, (although I didn't know it until a year after he was born) and yes, my financial problems are directly related to having 3 kids.

If that's actually true, i am sorry for you.
However, i can not actually believe anything you say right away - your track record is just too bad.

Why would I lie about having financial issues? If anything, I'd pretend everything was all fine and dandy.

(and a divorce, which took my elder kids from me, prompting me to go and adopt my current child, and getting laid off when the economy went to shit, and so on.)

This, however, is as damn stupid as every other of your decisions.
So you already have to pay for three (2?) children - and while you are struggling financially, you decide to adopt another one?
Tell me - how are you planning to pay for college?

I adopted her long before I got laid off. I didn't have financial issues back then. I also have a savings acount with $10,000 in it.

It was a suprise, however, to find out last year that my middle child was pregnant, especially considering her age at the time, but more suprising was that she did it on purpose.

I would not be surprised.
Her father was obviously too stupid for birth controll. The first one is an understandable (given your young age) addicent, but the second time? Blatant idiocy.

Yeah, but having little parenting experience, I thought that trying to pass an ideal onto your child would actually make them more likely to follow them. Turns out it does the exact opposite.

If that story is true, i hope you manage to get a grip on your life ASAP. Despite my justified insults, i do not wish you any harm - tough you owe me some brain bleach - and especially not your kids.

The issues are coming along nicely. My kids are doing fine, especially the two that went with their mother, and my issues are being resolved, slowly but surely. More importantly, I should have enough money to go to college next year, so that'll be fall 2011.

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

To reply to all of your identical dogpile complaints at once, I'll simply cover the basics that you all seem to be missing.

While it is true that an impact from a ricocheting bullet jars the head quite a bit and inflicts a powerful blunt injury, you are all vastly overestimating the power you're dealing with. I shouldn't have to keep reminding people: bullets are small, low-momentum projectiles. If they don't penetrate, they don't kill, end of story.

So after having been schooled by a medical professional, a bona-fide law enforcement officer, and a couple folks who actually know a thing or two about downrange and terminal ballistics; you've chosen to reply with a . . . tangential nitpick that has approximately fuck-all to do with your original assertion. Not only that, a nitpick that has already been dealt with (i.e. oblique impacts cause spalling inside the skull.)

Having tested this one when I was briefly given free reign over a friend's equipment, I can tell you a 5.56*45mm will transfer ~400j of kinetic energy and less than a newton second of momentum, about the power of a casual back-hand, over an area about the size of a diamond ring.

Even Wiki thinks your full of shit. Roughly 1700 to 1800 joules of kinetic energy at the muzzle. Your 400 joules works out to be . . . 294 ft-lbs, which a 63 grain FMJBT leaving the muzzle at 3070 ft/sec doesn't achieve until . . . (runs the numbers through my handy ballistic calculator . . . ) 700 yards (646 meters.)
This is far more energy than a .22 LR achieves at the muzzle. (As well as some standard-pressure .38 Special loads, .380 ACP loads, and .32 ACP loads.) Which is a problem because The .380 will penetrate a human skull through-and-through. The woman in the quoted news story survived due to the freak happenstance of having the bullet's trajectory pass exactly between both hemispheres of her brain. One should not rely on random acts of luck to save their bacon!

Further, there is the whole bit about only needing to damage a tiny bit of the brain. This is true, but you only need to damage a tiny bit of the heart of put a tiny hole in the aorta as well, and those will kill you faster than loss of brain function. As for what that means: a minute after getting shot thorugh the heart, you've dead. A minute after the aorta has a hole in it, you're dead. A minute after your brain has a hole in it, you're braindead, but your heart is likely still breating unless the modella oblangata is damaged, you should still be twitching unless the cerabellum or the brainstem is damaged.

If you're brain-dead, you're . . . you know, dead. Even if we can keep your corpse hooked up to life support, you're not going to get better. Of course, this ignores the small fact that minor brain injuries have a habit of getting worse in a hurry.

You know what happens when you drill a small hole through a person's brain with a bullet? Well, the tissue in the path of the bullet is torn to shreds. The bullet may create a temporary wound cavity which collapses back in on itself. This causes a huge spike in intracranial pressure. Distant parts of the brain suffer tearing injuries as a result, since there's isn't anywhere to expand inside the human skull, so that energy goes to damaging neural tissue. Assuming you survive the CNS disruption of all that diffuse and direct brain injury (which has a habit of interrupting vital functions, resulting in brain-death through hypoxia some four minutes later,) your own body will next try to kill you. What happens to any part of the body that gets injured? Inflammation and swelling. The brain will start to swell. Inside the skull, where there isn't really any room to swell. Diffuse brain injury happens. Unchecked brain swelling will cause such lovely side-effects as strokes and gross injury to brain structures. Death follows. Oh yeah, and traumatized neural tissue doesn't like to be bathed in blood directly. It's toxic and leads to cell death. Which can lead to rapid cascades of cell death.

I type too slow. Sea Skimmer ninja'ed the rest of what I was going to say. Suffice it to say, you're full of shit.

[Sea Skimmer]

Wow. You made this thread on the basis of the brain being a bad place to shoot someone with a gun because its not deadly enough, but now are down to trying to defend it on the basis of brain death not being 'official' death because every last cell has not yet suffered oxygen deprivation. The stupidity and goalpost shifting is getting ludacrist.

[adam_grif]

My favorite part of his post is where he says that most of the brain is useless, wasted space with nothing important.

[Iosef Cross]

Protection: the brain is protected by the skull, a thick, hard bone rounded on all sides. Even rifle rounds tend to ricochet off it they hit at a bad angle, and smaller rounds, such as birdshot and some pistol rounds, will not penetrate it at all regardless of angle.

Now I know that if somebody tries to shoot at me, I will put my head in front of the weapon. Maybe my cranium will block the bullet!

And even if it doesn't, the brain is mostly useless anyway, so it is a win-win situation!

Thanks avianmosquito!!

[loomer]

Avian - I'm throwing down the fucking glove because I am sick of your shit. CITE YOUR SOURCES, BITCH! CITE THEM, OR GTFO! I don't care if it's just people you know - either tell me the names and contact info so I can verify they told you this, or find a real source and present it. Do not hide behind the rain check you used last time.

Cite a fucking source that a bodyshot is more effective than a headshot, bearing in mind that the goal of any shot is immediate incapacitation and not 'what is technically the longer way to achieve technical death if blah blah blah', you stupid cunt. Cite one reliable source.

[OmegaChief]

I like how he completly ignored Terralthra's rough maths.

If you're going to debate Avian, at least have the decence to acknowledge and concede points where you've clearly been prooven wrong.

[Simon_Jester]

Now I know that if somebody tries to shoot at me, I will put my head in front of the weapon. Maybe my cranium will block the bullet!
And even if it doesn't, the brain is mostly useless anyway, so it is a win-win situation!
Thanks avianmosquito!!

Skeet, trust me. When Iosef Cross thinks you're an idiot, it's time to throw in the towel.

The issues are coming along nicely. My kids are doing fine, especially the two that went with their mother, and my issues are being resolved, slowly but surely. More importantly, I should have enough money to go to college next year, so that'll be fall 2011.

I am sincerely glad to hear this, though I fear you may find education more difficult than you expect.

To reply to all of your identical dogpile complaints at once, I'll simply cover the basics that you all seem to be missing...

You remain unable or unwilling to understand the importance of kinetic energy. Go back to 18th century physics and start over.

You also remain unable or unwilling to comprehend published figures for penetration of high velocity bullets, thinking that crossbow bolts can penetrate tank armor while thinking that rifle bullets will fail to penetrate bone. You seem to think of brain damage as a minor inconvenience; I will not speculate as to your reasons. If this counts as "study" of terminal ballistics, I'd hate to think what you believe you know about subjects you haven't studied.

14-70j? Once again, the Times is full of shit. You would need a projectile the size of a brick for that amount of energy to do anything at all, and you'd need a corner to hit in order to crack the skull.

There are these words you might want to look up. "Pressure." "Intensity." "Impact area." Study them carefully; they are part of that 18th century physics you need to learn.

Now for the final test, take a dictionary. Drop it on your head from 1.4 and 7 metres. Note: The second one will hurt hurt like hell. You're still standing, right? Then let's just call bullshit on that number and move on.

Have you ever done this to yourself? Never mind, I don't need to ask.

[Ziggy Stardust]

Yes, I had a kid when I was twelve, (although I didn't know it until a year after he was born)

Sorry, I just have to emphasize this. You have no training of any sort in ballistics OR medicine OR human physiology, and you impregnated a girl when you were 12 (?!), and you expect anyone here to take you seriously when your claims are so easily refuted by the resident experts?

[Modax]

My favorite part of his post is where he says that most of the brain is useless, wasted space with nothing important.

A hemispherectomy (removal of one of the cerebral hemispheres) is a rare procedure done for patients with severe, untreatable epilepsy. That's not to say that the brain has a lot of wasted space--if that were the case, then having two lungs is also terrible waste of valuable tissue--but there is a fair bit of built in redundancy. This doesn't affect the insanity of mosquito's position though; as Shroom pointed out earlier, a bullet wound to the brain != meticulously careful neurosurgery.

[Knife]

To reply to all of your identical dogpile complaints at once, I'll simply cover the basics that you all seem to be missing.

While it is true that an impact from a ricocheting bullet jars the head quite a bit and inflicts a powerful blunt injury, you are all vastly overestimating the power you're dealing with. I shouldn't have to keep reminding people: bullets are small, low-momentum projectiles. If they don't penetrate, they don't kill, end of story.

You're a retard, look up coo/counter coo injuries.

Having tested this one when I was briefly given free reign over a friend's equipment, I can tell you a 5.56*45mm will transfer ~400j of kinetic energy and less than a newton second of momentum, about the power of a casual back-hand, over an area about the size of a diamond ring. If that constituted a fatal injury, I would of been far more reluctant to piss off my mother when I was a kid. I imagine a battle rifle would be more powerful, but I still can't see these injuries being lethal unless we're dealing with a mighty big gun that probably wouldn't ricochet anyway.

You're a retard, different rounds have different characteristics in the trajectories. Even if your bullet doesn't deliever large amounts of momentum itself, it'll sheer off parts of bone and connective tissue that then rams through other tissue inside the body. Organ displacement, especially when it comes to brain tissue, does more damage than poking holes in same tissue.

Once again, a thrown rock does more damage than a ricocheting bullet due to sheer momentum.

Doing internal damage along tissue, assuming your bullet ricochets around the skull, invites an immune response where inflammation occurs, increasing pressure on the organ and causing organ displacement. The mass of the brain will push against itself, crushing parts of it, causing more inflammation and more pressure and more damage. You're a retard.

Further, there is the whole bit about only needing to damage a tiny bit of the brain. This is true, but you only need to damage a tiny bit of the heart of put a tiny hole in the aorta as well, and those will kill you faster than loss of brain function. As for what that means: a minute after getting shot thorugh the heart, you've dead. A minute after the aorta has a hole in it, you're dead. A minute after your brain has a hole in it, you're braindead, but your heart is likely still breating unless the modella oblangata is damaged, you should still be twitching unless the cerabellum or the brainstem is damaged.

You're a retard. Pick up an anatomy book sometime. Causing tissue damage along the skull will produce inflammation which will push down on the skull, the meninges, and the brain; causing displacement of brain matter, increasing pressure upon other brain matter, crushing it and causing more damage. Does it really matter if your brain stem is still running your automatic nervous functions if your cerebrum is all fucked up and nothing but butter milk?

As for the reason helmets are more important than body armour: which is more likely to be exposed in a firefight; Your head or your chest?

You're a retard. Helmets protected the head at a higher level and didn't decrease mobility unlike heavy armor around the chest. It wasn't until recently where affordable chest pieces were available that provided substantial protection against harm. Before hand, a flak jacket provided limited protection and provided survivability for a wounded man.

Finally, upon checking my own data, headshots actually have as much resultant hypoxia (that and destroyed tissue are my definition of real, physical damage) as the shots to the liver, and they both operate through blood loss in this regard, carrying a lot of blood and being very stiff, making it so shockwaves (be they from a punch or a bullet passing through) cause many more ruptures than it would in more flexible tissue

.

Hypoxia? What the fuck are you talking about? Headshots result in tissue death from lack of oxygen as shots to other organs? So fucking what? Being sucked into a vaccum results in a higher chance of hypoxia. So what? Headshots can be more dangerous due to limited but in high demand of routes blood can come to it, and the fact that the brain if very fucking important and very fragile. Fragile enough that it can crush itself if it swells.

Finally, they also have another equivalency: they both put fluid in a place you really do not want it, with about the same level of destruction.

No they don't. Granted, the plural cavity can't take that much change in pressure either, or you're lungs will collapse, but the abdominal cavity has lots of room in it for increased pressure, and if the pressure goes up and squishes your colon, you don't fucking die in five minutes like you do if cranial pressure goes up. You are a retard.

For headshots, this is of course the brain, for liver shots, this is the thoracic cavity.

Hmm, I'll have to check myself, but the liver should be in the abdominal cavity, below the diaphragm. In the plural cavity, you have a point, or at least something comparable to the cranial cavity.

(Not always the case) As such, the only difference is that headshots frequently put people into shock that liver shots would not, despite doing about the same damage, and the shock itself is usually lethal in a matter of hours, even if the actual bullet wound isn't. The liver, on the other hand, is just an unusually painful way to die.

Brain damage isn't shock, while a superficial wound to the head might induce shock. Brain damage is massive organ failure.

But, keep in mind you still get more hypoxia from a bullet passing through a lung, hence why they tell you to put two bullets in the chest before you put one through the head. This way, the target dies from the holes in their chest, while incapacitated by the headshot while they bleed.

You are a retard. Military tactics say two center mass and one to the head. Why? Center mass maximizes the chances to hit the target and also is the place where major organs are. You put two there for maximum chance of hitting the target and doing maximum damage to vital organs. One to the head is a follow up shot to a critical organ that kills the target faster than letting them bleed out. If you shoot someone in the head, it doesn't matter what other wounds he has, especially if you hit the brain stem.

Also, the aorta contains as far more blood than the brain, and since it is all one big blood vessel it's going to leak faster. A single 9mm bullet through it will leave you dead by exsanguination in about a minute, while one through the heart will leave you dead in ~20 seconds.

And a shot through the brain stem will stop all orders from the brain for the heart to pump at all, or the lungs to breath, etc... So fucking what?

None the less, when you're shooting somebody from a safe distance with a high-powered rifle death is death, so feel free to aim for the head or the heart, whichever you prefer. Personally I prefer the heart, but I'm pretty sure you figured that out already.

As for where I get my information, I have actually gotten the opinions of firearms instructors, trauma surgeons and soldiers, and their comments on the matter pretty much come down to "never aim for the head."

Smaller target than the body, more chance to miss. A headshot, however, is a 'instant kill' more so than letting a target bleed out from holes to the chest.

They come down to different reasons, the instructors stating the relative ease of hitting the chest, the surgeon stating the inhumane nature of headshots (which might of just been bias because he couldn't do anything about it) and the soldiers (including a marine) stated more faster kills when hitting the heart than the brain. (That is to say they die faster, not they drop faster, as they're both pretty much instant in that regard)

You're talking to Marines, soldiers, nurses, and such in this thread. Don't insult our intelligence with your bullshit.

[CaptainChewbacca]

Since for some reason people are arguing about what constitutes DEATH...

The Uniform Determination of Death Act (pdf warning)

Its recognized in over 30 states, its a very short law, and article 1 reads as follows:

1. [Determination of Death]. An individual who has sustained either
(1) irreversible cessation of circulatory and respiratory functions, or
(2) irreversible cessation of all functions of the entire brain, including the brain stem,
is dead. A determination of death must be made in accordance with accepted medical standards.

Its circulatory/respiratory OR CESSATION OF BRAIN ACTIVITY, you tit. Once your brain is no longer signalling, you are dead. Which is a lot quicker than someone bleeding out.