So how exactly do bullets kill us? I mean, it’s pretty darn tough to live with a hole in your head or chest…but in terms of how they actually work…is it the blood-loss, the trauma to the body, the fact that it’s more or less a little explosion of gun powder inside us…what’s the technical way in which gun shot wounds kill?
The movie “Three Kings” had a graphic illustration
of ONE of the ways a bullet can kill you…
Bullets cause massive internal trama. This is what kills you. If you get shot in the chest, the bullet could riquochette off your ribs and your rip apart your lungs, causing you to drown in your own blood. With other injuries death could be caused by loosing too much blood.
There are some bullets out there that fragment when they impact. This would cause many tiny projectiles to fly through your relitivly soft body tissue and cut them up.
When bullets impact someone in the Torso, the cause of death is usually the aftermath of a major dissruption in the body’s tissues. This is why people are more likely to live when shot in the chest. If they can get to medical attention quickly, they might be able to stop the bleeding and start repairs on the injured organs. If the shot is to the head, well, there isn’t much hope there.
So basically bullets kill by tearing apart your insides. If those wounds are bad enough, you can die from them. I also saw the movie “Three Kings,” and it does have a good demonstration of what a bullet does to the insides of a human body.
Not surprizingly, the answer can be found right here…
Are movie representations of deaths by bullet or knife wounds so unrealistic they should be banned? In films like Braveheart or Last of the Mohicans death is always instant. It’s the same with most westerns. How long would an 18th - 19th century soldier survive without medical attention - or even with it?
I have too have often read that if you are shot in the mid scetion (aka stomach) you are very likely to get peritnitis (sp??) and other infections and die of it.
CA did an article on [ahem] oral sex, which discloses the danger of bacteria in your mid area
Thanks for the info y’all. 
Have a good one!
I have nothing cogent to add, as the link does outline the mechanics involved.
My only rider is in reference to the movie/TV quick-heroic death thing. Besides the internal trashing, bullets introduce all sorts of agents of infection. The slow death by infection is rarely shown. It’s messy, unheroic and scary as hell.
Just as an aside, it would be useful–and truthful–if even the aftermaths of survival were shown. People don’t just wear pretty white slings. Shattered bones and mangled tissue leave lasting injuries, and not just tidy little scars.
Veb
Would you consider the representation of Mr. Orange’s “belly wound” more realistic (in Reservoir Dogs)? I remember Mr. White telling him repeatedly that people take a long time to die from a shot to the gut.
DHR
There are a lot of different ways a bullet can kill. Most have already been mentioned. One of the things that makes people argue so much about how effective a type of ammunition is, is that people will often only look at one mechanism while ignoring the others.
Take the .357 Magnum, a highly effective round. Compare it to the 9mm Parabellum, which many people consider mediocre at best. They use almost exactly the same bullets: 0.356" - 0.357" in diameter, weighing 100-150 grains (heavier bullets exist, but I’m gonna ignore those). Why the huge difference in (reputation for) effectiveness? 357s send their bullets out at 1200-1500 feet per second; nines have muzzle velocities of 1100-1300 fps - not a huge difference in percentage terms. It is hotly debated why they are so different in stopping power. Some say modern nines are pretty good for stopping power, and that the difference is exaggerated. Others say the difference is real, and is accounted for by hydrostatic shock - the fact that humans are mostly water and water can’t be compressed much. Since the water comes in little fat-cushioned packages (cells), hydrostatic shock isn’t going to travel very far unless the bullet is going really fast; these folks say 357 bullets travel about the minimum speed to produce hydrostatic shock.
What about the other round that everyone is always comparing 9mm Parabellum to - the .45 ACP? It is significantly slower than the either of the above, yet it has a great reputation. It accomplishes its task more through rapid blood loss, which of course results in rapid blood pressure loss. It’s simply a function of the bullet being wide. The same can be achieved with expanding hollowpoint bullets in smaller calibers, of course (as long as those bullet actually do expand as advertised), but hollowpoints haven’t been around forever and are frowned upon by the Hague Declaration of 1899. So on the military battlefield, fat, slow bullets from the .45 ACP, or .455-caliber British revolvers, do the trick.
Naturally, there are other ways of killing. Infections are a big one, as has been mentioned. It was worse in the 19th Century, when bullets were often lubricated with grease in grooves. Sitting around military facilities allowed the grease to pick up all sorts of septic gunk, which made the bullets quite deadly. It was sort of unintentional biological warfare; it didn’t help the fellow who fired the shot, since he couldn’t wait for his target to get sick. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if plenty of people killed each other in those days, not being quickly stopped by low-velocity bullets, but being mortally wounded by insinuated disease. Eww.