Re: Colt .45 - viewed as a 'horror weapon'?

I was wounded in Vietnam when an NVA rifleman, possibly using a
captured M-14, shot me through the right thigh about 10 cm above my
right knee. The bullet punched through my outer thigh, shattered my
femur, and blew out several cc of muscle on the inner thigh. I have a
cavity on my inner thigh about 15cm long, 6 cm wide and perhaps 4 cm
deep. You guys can argue all you want about how a bullet can't knock
someone down, but it seems to be a matter of perspective. As a result
of a long-ago discussion on this newsgroup, I received the following
e-mail from someone who seems to understand the physics of gunshot
wounds. It's interesting reading.

Bob

The e-mail:

Gunshot wound physics (a.k.a. terminal ballistics) are something that
are oft-debated and little understood, a remarkable fact given the
multitude of people who, like yourself, have been injured in military
action (as well as those shot through crime, ignorance, etc.) The term
"knockdown" in particular has been the subject of heated discussion.

While it is true that "for every action, there is an equal and opposite
reaction", there are a number of factors which differentiate the
experience of the shooter from that of the person being shot. Like most
things in life, "it just ain't that simple."

Cross-section: a bullet delivers all of its force within a circle only
a few milimeters wide, while the "opposite force" is delivered to the
shoulder of the shooter through an often recoil-reducing mechanism that
leads to a shoulder stock that measures many many times larger in
surface area. As transmission of shock is diminished volumetrically as
the area increases, the amount of relative force delivered to the
shooter is much smaller, per surface area, and therefore much easier to
absorb.

Framework: the force of a rifle discharge conveys to the shoulder
where, presuming even a modicom of experience in how to hold a rifle,
the shooter's entire framework is positioned to absorb and further
dilute this force. The shoulder rocks back, the spine shifts slightly,
all working together with a considerable mass of muscle and muscle
elasticity to rapidly dilute the force. (There are many anecdotal
instances of unprepared shooters being "knocked on their ***" by
firing a rifle or shotgun.) The person being shot is afforded none of
these advantages. A bullet striking a thigh in your case, presuming
your weight were spread equally across both feet at the time, would
have "nowhere to go" - there is no articulation between knee and hip
that would even begin to dissipate force. Given the concentration of
force in a small diameter, flesh is pulverized and bone shatters.
Damage is typically instantaneous and catastrophic to the localized
area.

Collateral Forces: perhaps the most salient point is that "knockdown"
is not solely a function of bullet energy. Gravity is attempting to
pull you to the ground every second. It is your stable walking platform
that allows you to resist that pull. The instant you shatter one leg,
that platform disintegrates. While the force of the bullet impact is
driving the leg in the direction of projectile travel, gravity is
immediately pulling the entire body weight down on the shattered limb.
It folds - you fall. In addition, there is a considerable body of work
on the subject of involuntary muscle convulsion triggered by a
ballistic impact. The fundamental belief is that, when struck brutally,
muscles may convulse violently. Since you have the ability to jump,
those same muscles have the ability to launch you, or more likely
contribute to the mix of forces, knocking you off your center of
gravity.

When you consider a fixed acceleration of 32 feet per second per second
for normal gravity, assuming you are a six-foot guy, your body once
unsupported could be on the ground in as little as a quarter second.
Add to that the fact that the average human has about a three-quarter
second recation time (the interval between a stimulus arriving and your
brain recognizing it) and it is no wonder that you were on the ground
before you knew what hit you. High stress, inherent in any battlefield,
can further aggravate the perception issue: stress induces tunnel
vision, auditory exclusion, time compression. That is a ton of stuff
hitting your brain at the same time a bullet slams into your leg. (I
recently had an accident where something got driven through my left
hand and there was a lag of perhaps two or three seconds before I even
noticed it.) Severe wounds are more likely to overload your nervous
system (a minor shock function that is part of the fight or flight
mechanism - the same thing that allows a mortally shot deer to run
hundreds of yards before keeling over dead.) It's the brain's way of
saying "woah, too much. I don't want to deal with this right now."

Your newsgroup members are arguing against "John Woo Physics"-- the
Hollywood fiction that says a 168gr bullet can lift and hurl a human
being over a car, and that sort of nonesense. At that level they are
correct. There is a limit to the degree of force a bullet can exert and
it is, within the relative constraints noted above, at least in
correlation with the force exerted on the rifle-shooter. But that's why
it's called "knockDOWN" and not "knock-away". A bullet just have to
blast you off your balance; gravity will do the rest in a blink.

The finite physics are, in a sense though, rather moot-- your reality
remains unchanged. Whether the bullet alone delivered sufficient
foot-pounds of energy to flatten you, or whether that occurred as a
combination of simultaneous forces (ballistic energy, gravity, muscle
convulsion, et al), the fact is that there are numerous accounts, both
anecdotal and documented on film, of people being slammed around like
rag dolls by the impact of a high-velocity round. (The Zapruder film
demonstrating the whiplash effect on the head of President Kennedy
being perhaps one of the most dramatic and commonly known example that
comes to mind.) You know what happened to you and nothing can change
that. If somebody else was struck in a similar manner and experienced a
different outcome, their experience in no way calls yours into
question. The difference of a few degrees of angle, variation in muscle
mass, bullet weight, remaining energy... any of these could saerve to
produce a dramatically different outcome. My answer would be "If you
weren't there, you don't know."...

Mike "marksman" Marks
--

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