…I was just wondering what the ballistic and medical aftereffects would be, if one were struck, from the side, by a .50 rifle round, on the tip of the chin? Say, about .60 inches in from the edge of the bone?
I’m guessing that it would be “really bad,” in any case. But HOW bad? Would the victim lose the entire jawbone, or could it be salvaged/reconstructed? Or would he likely bleed out before he could even get to a hospital?
And no, for the record, I’m NOT going to try this out on anyone or anything. And, in the incredibly unlikely event that it should ever happen to ME, I’ll be sure to go to the proper authorities for medical treatment. Thank you.
Ranchoth, I know this is gonna open up a can of worms, but I really have to ask the question: which .50 rifle round would you like to explore first? We have the .50 BMG, the .500 Nitro Express, the .50 AE, and several others, prolly. If we are discussing the .50 BMG (Browning Machine Gun), I would say, “it’s all bad.” There’s no doubt in my mind that a person hit on any bone by a .50 BMG (even a FMJ round) would be in very dire circumstances. Loss of the jaw would be the very best that a gunshot victim could hope for. Look at it a different way: imagine that a person holds a one-half inch diameter steel rod on end against their chin, in the area you are proposing, and then another person (a very strong person) slams a sledge hammer into the other end of the rod - what do you think would happen? 'nuff said…
A .50 BMG? Hell, I would imagine that the shockwave the bullet produces could still kill you even if it passes a few inches away from your head… them things’re HUGE!
The head/neck is a delicate region. The previous posters are right that damage limited to the jaw would be a lucky outcome. In addition to the gory possibilities from shock waves or high speed bone fragments, a smashed mandible can disrupt the local anatomy enough to interfere with breathing, especially after loss of consciousness. You can easily gag on your own tissues or drown in your own blood.
No, it wouldn’t, or else a near miss with an ordinary bullet would bruise you or break your bones, and that doesn’t happen. If a bullet misses you, it misses you.
I used to hear that all the time in the Army, though. It’s one of those funny Army legends. Another one I kept hearing - and it’s believed by a lot of soldiers as being the absolute gospel truth - is “The Geneva Conventions say you can’t use .50 cals against personnel,” which of course makes no sense at all, since there’s A) no such rule and B) the G.C.s have nothing to do with permissible weaponry.
Getting “clipped” or “grazed” by any bullet tends to gouge a furrow into one’s flesh. In striking a bone, you get secondary projectiles in the form of bone chips if using an energetic enough caliber. I think people overestimate the destructiveness of the .50 BMG on flesh. A ball or AP round isn’t explosive and isn’t even moving all that fast compared to some smaller caliber rounds. It is very penetrative because of its mass and the way some projectiles are constructed. That is why it shines in an anti-materiel role. On human targets, it is likely to just make a .50 hole straight through. That is bad enough, of course, but also light years away from people being blown in half.
I have a lot of respect for the 50BMG round. But consider that most BMG’s are actually constructed as armor piercing. I think it will probably break your jaw and knock you silly, but other than bone splinters, not much else. On the other hand, if this calibre hits any major bone or muscle in a human body, he’d be lucky to keep limb or life.
Now, let’s talk about the 500 Jeffery or one of those. I think they will cause more damage, beacause they ar mostly built to kill big heavy animals. Granted, you should not get much expansion on such a puny bone as the jawbone, esp if the missile was a solid meant for a buffalo or elephant.
I think a 50 handgun caliber, would do the most damage because most of them are designed to kill big, THIN SKINNED animals i.e a human. Right speed + right size + correct expansion (i.e design) = 1 headless human.
Now what about we talk of small calibre, high velocity bullet, designed for varmint hunting, and we make the distance, say about 100m? I think that human would probably lose his whole lower face with bone an bullet splinters all over the show, inside and outside his head. Probably a dead human, albeit not a headless dead human.
This site claims that a professional boxer’s punch delivers about 130ft/lbs of kinetic energy.
This site claims that a 750 grain BMG round moving at 2,800 feet per second can deliver about 10,000 ft/lbs of kinetic energy. At 1000 yards, it probably still has half of that energy.
I’d say that even if just three percent of the energy in a BMG round is imparted on the unlucky victim as it passes clean through the jaw at 1000 yards, that’s still easily as much as a knockout punch to the jaw. I suspect that a lot more than three percent of the energy in the bullet will be transferred to the victim, making the damage to the jaw a lot less important than the head trauma sustained by the sudden shock of the blow.
The real question is, what range was the jawbone from the gun? He is definitely losing at least .60 inches of jaw (interesting number btw… any significance to it?). At say, 100 meters, not much beyond losing the front part of the jaw. At say, 1000 meters, a lot more of the jaw would be damaged. Energy transfer. A through and through round causes much less damage than a full transfer. There are a lot of websites with theorists that claim the opposite, but most are full of crap. Ballistics has an element of “black magic” to it.
Will the guy bleed out? Depends on how far medical treatment is, but unlikely, assuming basic first aid is applied, etc… a lot of variables. Can the jaw be rebuilt? Depdends on the guy rebuilding the jaw and the other variables.
It’s not really a question that can be answered with the information provided.
I heard tell of a guy over in the desert that hit someone in the torso with a .50 BMG at 2,000 yards and the impact blew the guy’s arms off. Gruesome, but if true that should give you some indication of the energy those things have, even out to long distances.
I dunno 'bout that one, Airman Doors, USAF, but there is a well-documented case of the bad guy who was sniping at personnel from a building in Beirut. He would take a shot and then jump away from the window and step behind the wall, between two windows. A USMC marksman, using a .50 BMG (a Barrett, IIRC) waited until the enemy sniper backed up against the wall, and then shot the bad guy through the wall. Don’t remember the range, but I’m sure someone will show up shortly with all the pertinent details. Seems like the USMC unit was at the airport? Too many dead brain cells to recall exactly.
