In Frederick Forsythe’s ‘The Day of the Jackal’, there’s a scene where they describe the use of Mercury filled bullets.
For those that haven’t read it; a hole is drilled in the bullet tip, a drop of mercury enclosed and then re-sealed. The idea being that when the bullet reaches it’s destination, the mercury breaks through the bullet and causes it to ‘explode’.
I’m not hugely into firearms, the concept of something designed solely to kill isn’t that popular with me. I have, however, fired an assault rifle (SA80) in the TA and I admit there is something incredible/horrific about the power in your hands. Or, more specifically, that power in anyone’s hands. So I’m not fanatical, but I’ve got some experience. Enough of that, though.
Would the Mercury bullets work? I’m studying Aerospace Engineering, and my instinct (being tought to thought in kinematics/kinetics) tells me no. I think that the change in momentum from ignition, or subsequent contact with target has got to be larger than that of the mercury hitting the inside tip as it carries on once the bullet strikes. This makes me think that if the bullet isn’t going to fragment from being shot or from hitting someone, the mercury wouldn’t do any good, either!
I’ve searched on the internet, and I can’t find anything that’s really conclusive. All basically Jolly-Rodger style guides, lifted pretty much from the novel!
Is it to make them explode like EXPLODE! or break up when they hit a person and release the toxic mercury into the person’s body?
Reminds me of a story I read abut two of Capone’s hitmen. They would carve "x"s into the tips of the bullets and then grind garlic into them so the bullets broke apart causing more damage and caused an infection should the person survive the hit.
Even if you coated the inside of the bullet, I doubt it would make that much difference, though. The general idea is that loose things inside a bullet that can make it go explodey on impact may very well make it go explodey when it’s being fired.
Now, packing it full of a generally immobile impact explosive, like mercury fulminate (as opposed to elemental mercury) or a primer, that’s a different story. I understand those explode quite nicely on impact.
It was also the subject of an episode of Mythbusters, if memory serves. That and making bullets out of meat or ice that would dissolve or leave no trace. All disproven.
I’ve seen mercury bullets in the books The Kundulini Equation ( to poison a superhuman), and in Obsidian Butterfly as an anti vampire round ( mixed with holy water as well ). In the latter case it was sealed in wax to prevent leaks.
My understanding of the mercury bullet is that it causes blood poisioning so even a minor wound would be fatal.
The X on the bullet is common and they are called Dum-Dums. As stated before, it acts as a poor mans hollow point. Shooting someone, even in self defence, with such an altered round will likely have you up on murder charges as they are clearly designed to kill.
As to the garlic. I always heard it as the hit men in the gang-land wars carried an ice pick with the tip in a clove of garlic. The effect was the same in that a wound would be fatal due to blood poisioning.
No. It is standard issue factory ammunition and can be used to legally defend yourself. If you alter the factory item to make it more lethal/less survivable it is clear to most Judges you intended for the recipient to die, not just be stopped or rendered harmless.
If you shoot and take him down it’s self defence. If you then walk up to him and empty the weapon into his chest…they may view it differently.
Are you being deliberately obtuse due to boredom or something?
You are allowed to take steps to stop an attacker, up to and including deadly force. In the eyes of the Courts however, you are supposed to want to stop them only, and if they die as a result that is unfortunate. If you were to find yourself in such a situation, I only ask that when the Police arrive you tell them “I KILLED that bastard like I intended to do. Hell no! I don’t want him to survive this thing” and stick with that through the court system.
I agree with you. I don’t want to take any chances with this situation anymore than you. Your official position should be “Oh my God! He was going to kill me. I hope he’s all right. I just wanted to stop him from hurting my family”
Subtle difference. I think not.
On second thought, this is a highjack of the OP. Nuff said.
Is there a solvent for mercury fulminate? I could see the Jackal filling the bullet cavity with a solution of mercury fulminate and letting it dry in place like nitrogen triiodide.
I’m still wondering how, between the shock of the cartridge firing and the compression of the rifling, you’d avoid a pre-detonation in the barrel!
Forsyth describes the production of these in minute detail in the book TheDay of the Jackal. “The Armorer”'s question suggests that glycerine can be used instead of mercury. That seems odd – there’s a huge difference in density and viscosity between the two liquids, and you’d think there were plenty of other easily available alternatives between the properties of glycerine and mercuery.
What’s always bothered me about Forsyth’s explanation (that the sudden deceleration of the bullet on hitting it’s target isn’t matched by the mercury, which tries to continue going, then slams into the bullet casing and tears it apart, causing a fragmentation that isn’t really explosive in nature, but sdpreads shrapnel over a large area) is that the same thing ought to happen on the bullet’s acceleration, which would make the bullet fragment uselessly and probably dangerously in the gun barrel. Unless maybe you leave a lot more bullet near that back, and only a thin shell over the front, or something.
After the movie The Day of the Jackal came out, another movie lifted the idea – The Exterminator. In this movie they showed, if memory serves, a guy making these bullets by drilling the bullets and soldering them with a propane torch while still attached to the brass shells. All I could think was that waving a propane torch around live shells was a disaster in the making.
The “explosive bullets” John Chapman used on President Reagan and James Brady were veery different. As I recall from news reports, they contained an explosive compound – an azide – that was really supposed to explode and send fragments. Exact how they were triggered, I don’t know (and I still have that question – what’s supposed to keep them from going off in the gun barrel instead of on impact?). They didn’t go off, apparently. Reagan and Brady’s wounds were from the bullets themselves, as I understand, not explosives.
Forsyth seems to research his topics pretty well. I’ve been very impressed by his detailed descriptions of procedures and mechanisms. He goes out of his way, in Fist of God to describe precisely how Iraq or Iran could have built a plant to refine fissile material and kept it hidden, not simply asserted that they could do so. But when he described an Image Intensifier Tube in The Devil’s Alternative, he screwed it up. So he’s not immune to error.
Forsythe can write an engaging thriller, and he does do his research, but science isn’t his strong point. In another one of his books (a short story collection, if memory serves) a fired bullet was matched to a batch of cartridges because the lead had the “same molecular structure”.
That said, a lot of bullets, both for pistols and rifles, are designed to expand on impact to make a bigger hole. Bullets for hunting are partially jacketed to expose the soft lead nose so that they mushroom. The old round-nosed Lee-Enfield .303 bullets were deliberately modified in this way at the Dum-Dum arsenal in India to increase their effectiveness, hence “dum-dum bullet”. When the pointed spitzer bullets were adopted, the dum-dum disappeared but the name still gets applied to all sorts of expanding bullets.
For pistols, the most common design of expanding bullet is the jacketed hollow point (JHP), where the bullet tip has an axial hole with a small polymer cap. I’ve never been sure whether the expansion of these bullets is simply due to the geometry of impact, or whether air compression in the cavity plays a role. I can see that filling the cavity with a non-compressible fluid such as mercury might increase expansion, but a heavy grease strikes me as more practical and there would be no need for a lining to prevent amalgam formation.
Another design for expanding bullets is to weaken the jacket so that it splits and peels back like metal flower petals. The “black talon” bullets were a commercial product that worked in this way, but the simple expedient of cutting a cross in a bullet tip apparently works as well. I’m not sure why this would get you into trouble when you can buy JHP rounds and are recommended to do so for defensive shooting, but the law is a funny thing.
Putting explosives into small bullets has had inconsistent results - they have a tendency not to actually explode, a fact that may have saved Ronald Reagan’s life. The following letter might of be of interest:
Note that it mentions mercury in handgun ammo, but only in conjunction with explosives. It might in fact refer to mercury compounds rather than elemental mercury.
This page shows a few designs used for real exploding ammunition. The author had some extreme opinions (he’s dead now) but he certainly seemed to know his stuff.