A fellow I work with is an ex-Marine. He’s served in Iraq, Afghanistan, and 19 other countries on various assignments. He served as a sniper, among other things.
He told me that the best place to shoot a person is in the heart, because a person is less likely to survive a shot there than in the head.
He went on to say that if he shot a person square in the middle of their forehead, that person would have a 75% chance of survival, as the path of the bullet would likely pass between the two hemispheres of the brain. Is this true, or is he just blowing smoke where the sun don’t shine?
I don’t have any numbers or anything, but one issue is that military conventions (Geneva, maybe?) ban the use of expanding bullets by the army types. Meanwhile, hunting regulations ban the use of non-expanding bullets for hunting (at least here). Both these based on the fact that an expanding bullet does a lot more damage. In hunting, you want this to make the one-shot kill as likely as possible. In the twisted world of gentlemanly warfare, you don’t want this, to give the guy you shot a fighting chance to make it to the MAS*H and survive. Plus, tactically, a wounded dude takes more combatants out of play that a dead one. Grisly, I know, but there you have it. Civilian law enforcement also tends to use expanding bullets so they dump their energy in the intended target rather than coming out the other side and going who-knows-where.
So there’ll be different survival rates in military vs. civilian/ ``accidental’’ situations.
As for the target, as a neophyte hunter I was taught to shoot for the heart, though for slightly different reasons. A shot to the brain will probably kill. I don’t have data, but I do not buy that 75% figure and argument. On the other hand, brains (even ours, despite our arrogance to the contrary) are small. So if you aim for between the eyes, but you’re off by 3", you clip your target’s ear (or, worse, jaw, and then the poor moose stumbles off to die a slow agonizing death in the bush, and your freezer is still empty). Whereas if you put a shot more or less anywhere in the heart-lung area, even if you don’t get the ideal instant-drop, you have a good chance of causing severe enough blood loss that you can track the animal and finish it off (or remove your enemy from the battle-field, if that’s what turns your crank)
His contention about the bullet passing through the hemispheres of the brain seems like a load of bull to me. (People have, however, survived traumatic brain injuries, though usually they are impaired for life.)
I think the reason that head shots are discouraged is because:
The head is relatively small compared to the torso. Six inches to the left of a person’s head results in a miss. Six inches to the right of a person’s heart hits their shoulder.
The skull is designed to protect the brain, and funny deflections can occur, especially at the extreme end of a bullet’s range, when it is travelling relatively slowly (as compared to the muzzle velocity).
As a side note, it’s been my observation during my time in the military that many people in the service know what to do (e.g. aim for the center of mass), but often do not know the why that action should be done.
I mean, does your friend honestly think that a person who takes a bullet down the center of their brain is going to be an effective soldier? Who cares whether they ultimately survive or not? In fact, wounded, they are a liability to their own side.
No–the real reason is that you are more likely to end up with a complete miss if you aim for the head.
My layman’s imderstanding is that one shoots for center mass (center of the chest) because the extremities are too prone to rapid, unexpected movement. Therefor the chance of putting the bullet exactly where planned is substantially increased.
One would think, even if the hemsphere thing were true, a sniper could compensate by shooting at a head in profile. I have extrememdoubts about that survival percentage, but no facts to back that up.
This isn’t even close to true. Full metal jacket (non-expanding) rounds are more likely, not less, to be fatal. They tend to have a higher grain load, too, making them more generally useful for military applications.
I think Boyo Jim is getting to the crux (and not just because he’s a fellow Madisonion). The center of mass is the easiest and largest area to hit, and it doesn’t move very much. The head tends to move suddenly and erratically and is hard to hit, even for an expert marksman.
That said, the comment about a bullet to the forehead passing between hemispheres w/o causing damage is ludicrous. Think watermelon dropped out of a speeding car. Unless you’re using a BB gun, a shot to the forehead will literally take someone’s head off (or most of it anyways).
That might depend on the range, although at longer ranges they tend to keyhole, possibly causing less penetration and more damage. The ammo for a sniper is typically in the .30 cal range, though(with numerous exceptions). Even worse.
Cerowyn, why are the jacketed bullets more likely to be fatal?
I’m sure there are people with a broader background who can give better details. My training is with military weapons; my knowledge of expanding bullets is limited to a bit of classroom coverage.
More powerful rounds are more stable in flight, have better penetrating power and carry more kinetic energy. The expanding bullets (and soft-jacket bullets), as I understand it, are designed to release their energy in a much shorter distance, which makes them very messy (think ‘bigger splash’).
The “bigger splash” is exactly why I would expect the softer bullet to be more likely fatal. I’d expect the full metal jacket to have much better penetration, meaning they could pass through the target and still have energy left (meaning less damage done).
hammerbach, that’s the reasoning I’ve heard, too. Of course, what little I know (and it is oh, so little) applies to deer and moose, which don’t have body-armour For a thicker-skinned animal, like the moose, or elephant, or dude wearing armour, you want a less-expanding bullet so it doesn’t expend all it’s energy getting through the skin.
Also, many non-expanding bullets do tumble, which also increases the diameter of the cavity and drops energy off inside the tender bits of the target, so saying they just go straight through isn’t quite accurate…
FMJ rounds are generally considered to have better armor penetration and be slightly ballistically superior (due to aerodynamics).
HP (hollow point) rounds are generally regarded as more lethal on soft targets due to increased permanent wound cavity and more energy delivered.
As for the rules of war - the law that prevents HP bullets from being used in the military was written before they really came into being as a viable technology. Originally, the laws against inhumane weapons were geared towards poisonous bullets, wood-cored bullets, and the like - but the rules they used to define such bullets later were applied to HP rounds. And relatively, they’re not cruel in the same way at all - they’re just a more efficient way to transfer energy, resulting in greater wounds, but not “inhumane” wounds as a wood cored bullet would.
Oh, and the 75% rate seems absolutely ridiculous. The idea of someone having a bullet drill through their brain and survive is pretty far fetched - the idea of 75% of the people doing that is just ridiculous.
Also, forgot to mention, most modern rounds have a way of creating superior ballistic performance in an FMJ round, which typically cause greater wounds and probably with greater cruelty than the HP rounds that are banned.
5.56x45 NATO is generally built with a weak - uh, I think the term is o-give ring? The part where the bullet is crimped where it comes in contact with the case. Anyway, a lot of implementations of the design have weaker and thinner metal at that point than the design calls for, and as a result, at high velocities (generally 2500 fps or above), the force of the impact will cause the round to come apart and fragment into 20-40 fragments, all travelling randomly about the body.
Swedish ammo was particularly known for that, which is ironic, given that they lead most of the UN conferences on ‘inhumane’ weapons. German .308 is also known for the same effect, for roughly the same reasons.
The new SS-109/M855 cartridge that’s come into standard use with most NATO armies actually reduces the effect of fragmentation - and tumbling - due to it’s design, primarily because it was required to have significant armor penetration at the edge of it’s range primarily because of the switch from .308 to .223 squad fire support weapons and because (at the time of design) intelligence projections predicted the Soviet army deploying body armor in a wide spread fashion. The result is, while the penetration is better, the terminal ballistics are relatively absymal, and .223 has become the least lethal military round out there - often requiring multiple shots to critical areas to bring someone down.
Russian 5.45x39 is designed with an asymetric air cavity in front of the mass of the core of the bullet. Upon impact, the core shifts foward in an asymetric pattern, causing quick and severe yaw. It’s effective at creating nasty wounds - and was nicknamed “the poison bullet” in Afghanistan (in the 80s) because of it’s tendency to create unsurvivable wounds. It’s not uncommon for the round to, say, hit someone in the chest from the front and come out of their ass.
You’re exactly right. There’s a reason why hunters don’t use jacketed rounds - they don’t kill. Cerowyn, I’d suggest you search the net for ballistic gel tests and look at the differences between jacketed, soft-point, and hollow-point bullets when they hit.
Quick note: this is based on my experience, and clearly some others here have different opinions. I was a Range Safety Officer, and spent a fair bit of time in the classroom studying this, but I’m by no means an expert on all types of ammunition.
A couple of clarifications: jacketed is a term that can apply to hollow point (JHP), soft point (JSP) or full metal (FMJ). Calibrated gelatin tests are designed to be a “human tissue analogue” for testing wound ballistics (injuries and lethality of firearms).
In terms of penetration depth, FMJ rounds achieve the most, followed by JSP and JHP in order. The major concern with using FMJ rounds (especially for hunting) is over-penetration, where the round passes through the target, carrying energy with it. On the other hand, sufficient penetration is desirable for lethality, since vital organs tend to be deeper within the target.
At medium or long ranges, particularly for the sniper that the OP was talking about, a hollow point or soft-point round may not have adequate penetration to be fatal. The wounds will still be debilitating, which is actually more desireable to some strategists (based on the idea that it takes more resources to care for a seriously wounded soldier than a dead one).
As I said, this is based on what I learned some years back. If you have contrary evidence, I’m certainly willing to re-think my position.
My comments regarding the lethality of the 5.56 NATO round stems from my non-military use of my AR-15, chambered for the 5.56 (.223 cal) NATO cartridge. The 55-grain projectile traveling at a muzzle velocity of 32 or 33 hundred feet per second has an amazing amount of energy. I have dispatched jackrabbits at ranges up to approx 100 yards. The damage created, even at 100 yards, was impressive. No neat hole here. In fact, victim rabbit was nearly cut in half. Disembowled completely, with blood spray for several yards in the sand. Now, if we start talking about the 7.62 NATO round, forget it. Your head is coming off.
I think everyone has pretty much figured it out. GI’s are probably taught to aim at center mass to increase hit probability, not because of increased lethality. In fact, blowing the arm off of an enemy may be better that killing them outright. Hearing him scream may distract others, who can then be ‘dispatched’.
Jim
Okay, so my co-worker was incorrect (or lying) about the 75% survival rate and the reasons for aiming at the chest. What should I tell him Monday morning?
For a thicker-skinned animal, like the moose, or elephant, or dude wearing armour, you want a less-expanding bullet so it doesn’t expend all it’s energy getting through the skin.