Well of course it is a simplification. The shooters were all ‘aiming’ the same way (east, north, whatever), so they were firing in a fan. That is part of a circle. In the same way, the fire described a fan in the vertical plane also. That is to say the fire was a portion of a sphere.
On the other hand, assuming a perfect circle, wouldn’t the amount of lead decrease by a factor of the square? If assuming a perfect sphere, wouldn’t it decrease by the cube of the distance.
In any case, get some distance from the shooters and lay real low, you’ll be fine.
How do you mean? That you’d want a full assault rifle, not just a submachine gun?
I thought they were on a specific mission- rescue some important guys (or <cough> “confirm” they’re dead)- not just a patrol. Wouldn’t a special operation call for some sort of squad automatic weapon, especially if they knew they might need to assault an enemy camp?
Ok, can someone confirm just which multibarrel weapon the movie depicts? I know there are different ones with quite different power/ammo requirements (though I sincerely doubt anyone could ever fire even the smallest from their arms)
I’ve seen miniguns small enough to be man-portable. Hell, I could lift the thing.
I have not, however, seen a minigun which could be made reasonably man-portable with batteries and enough ammo to last more than about a tenth of a second. No sane infantry squad is going to want to hump ammo for something that sprays that many rounds that fast, particularly on a guerrilla-style mission like Arnie’s squad undertook in Predator.
As to why they didn’t hit the Predator… I assumed that the Predator saw what was coming, and scrambled up a tree. Using the trees for cover and transportation was what it did for most of the movie until its inviso-gadget shorted out, and it ceased being played by a small, agile actor and started being played by huge Kevin Michael Hall.
During the scene in question, the actors are firing at about chest height, and they’re curved more or less outward in a curved skirmish line. Since they can’t see what they’re shooting at, you could probably stand a pretty good chance of survival simply by standing behind a good-sized tree. Climb UP the tree, and your chances of being hit drop to zero, unless you intercept a really lucky ricochet…
It was most definitely a Minigun. There is no doubt in my mind at all about that.
Pretty much. MP5s are entry weapons (and still not even the best choice). They’re for indoors or confined spaces of smaller than 25 meters. They’re something you take to a hostage rescue in an Iranian Embassy… not out in the jungle.
The SEALS decided it would be cool to use submachine guns in Panama. They ended up assaulting across an airfield. The problem was the 50m range of their MP5s vs the 300 plus meter range of the enemy AKs. A couple SEALS died. Not so cool, was it?
The only problem here is your understanding of the term “patrol”. A combat patrol can be a Raid, a Recon, or an Ambush. Hostage Rescue is a type of Direct Action or Raid. That was a patrol.
You may be just confusing “patrol” with “out on patrol the way a security guard would be” or something.
It absolutely would. It would even call for something larger. A machinegun.
However, a Minigun is not a Squad Automatic Weapon or even a simple MachineGun.
A MiniGun is something you mount on a freakin Helicopter, or APC, or Hummer (maybe) or Ford Expedition (apparantly). It goes on a damn vehicle. Patroling with a MiniGun is a silly as strapping a Scud Missle to your rucksack. It’s stupid and makes no sense. What’s worse is that it is actually impossible. No human could carry the normal 5,000 rounds and the batteries and the framework required to do anything with a minigun. It goes on a Helicopter! (see The Matrix)
BTW, the one my buddy had in his SUV was even smaller/lighter with shorter barrels. But it was still nothing you could conceivably get any use from outside of the vehicle.
Say, it’s been awhile since I’ve seen Predator, but didn’t one of the guys have a grenade launcher, too? (I honestly can’t remember what kind it was—but probably an M79, if anything.) That might tip the odds back in their favor a bit—well, theoretically, anyway. We’ve all seen how fast the Predator could move, plus it was invisible at the time. It had probably already bounded out of range by the time Mac even picked up the Minigun, and it’s leg injury was probably just a lucky shot from Mac’s MP5. (Well, it might not have even been a bullet wound…maybe he just ran into a sharp branch.)
Oh, and according to the imdb…
And, interestingly, it goes on to say…
I do wonder what they would have “changed the caliber” too, considering that from what I know, the one used in the movie was already a model that had been scaled down to fire 5.56 instead of 7.62mm ammo.
Ranchoth
(I guess they should have brought a .50 cal GAU-19. Now there’s the inflated sense of self esteem!)
I too always figured that predator just climbed up a tree, but it seems like since they really only shot at the same height he could have just layed completely flat on the ground and not got hit at all.
No. Imagine the bullets on the border of the shape (circumference of the circle, surface of the sphere). As they move away from center you have the same number of bullets on an increasingly large border. The circumference of a circle is 2pir. The surface area of the sphere is 4 * pi * r[sup]2[/sup]. Hence a spherical pattern is 1/r[sup]2[/sup] (which is why gravity etc. falls off as 1/r[sup]2[/sup]) and a circular pattern is 1/r.
