# Nitroglycerin bullets??? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [December 30, 2008, 10:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nitroglycerin-bullets/479288 "2008-12-30T22:35:53Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 14\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Todderbob](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e47774/32.png) [@Todderbob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Todderbob)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2008, 4:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nitroglycerin-bullets/479288/41 "2008-12-31T16:42:26Z")
I’d like to note that with the rising cost of commodities, specifically Brass, that it’s often _cheaper_ for person to reload their own ammunition. Even if they don’t do it to obtain the best possible load, and simply recreate the load used in Federal or Winchester boxes. ---
**Author:** ![paperbackwriter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/53a042/32.png) [@paperbackwriter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/paperbackwriter)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2008, 4:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nitroglycerin-bullets/479288/42 "2008-12-31T16:44:35Z")
> [@puppygod](#): > > Though mercury poisoning might be effective assassination tactic. Mercury has historically been used as a poison in assassination, it would be a poor choice as a toxic bullet payload. LD[sub]50[/sub] is a measurement of the concentration of a toxin that will kill 50% of a study group. Elemental mercury has an oral LD[sub]50[/sub] [of 10 to 40mg/kg](http://rais.ornl.gov/tox/profiles/mercury_f_V1.shtml). I don’t see numbers for IM toxicity anywhere, but IM absorption is slower than oral for most heavy metals, and an assassin wishing to use this technique would probably want to at least quintuple the dose to ensure killing their target, if not more. For an average 80kg adult male, that means your theoretical bullet needs to pack 4000 to 16000mg. I’m not up on the most recent professional assassin literature, but a common police sniper round is the [.30-30 Winchester](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.30-30_Winchester). A very large bullets for that caliber is 11g. Using the above numbers, the necessary mercury dose would be 36%-145% of the bullet weight. I wouldn’t be comfortable drilling out even 25% of the mass of any rifle round and expecting it to function normally. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2008, 4:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nitroglycerin-bullets/479288/43 "2008-12-31T16:59:41Z")
> [@paperbackwriter](#): > > I’m not up on the most recent professional assassin literature, but a common police sniper round is the [.30-30 Winchester](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.30-30_Winchester). A very large bullets for that caliber is 11g. Using the above numbers, the necessary mercury dose would be 36%-145% of the bullet weight. . The 30-30 hasn’t been a Police Sniper round since the days of Wyatt Earp (if then).😛 It’s been the 30.06 from WWI through the Korean War, then the .308/ 7.62x51mm NATO. A heavy bullet for that round is 180grains/12Grams. ---
**Author:** ![wolfman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/a8b319/32.png) [@wolfman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfman)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2008, 5:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nitroglycerin-bullets/479288/44 "2008-12-31T17:17:17Z")
This reminds me of an Urban Legend I heard long ago, during Veitnam. Soldiers were getting tired of Jacketed ammo. They were shooting guys, but the bullets went through without enough trauma to drop the guys, and were getting off enough shots to do serious damage after being shot. So supposedly they started drilling holes in the round off-center to throw off the balance(In violation of Geneva) so that the round would start tumbling after exiting the barrel and becoming more of a man-stopper round expending its energy in the target. Seems to me the pay-off in lost accuracy would out weigh the benefit. One guy who told me this went so far as to say the tumbling round could enter a guy in the shoulder, drill and tumble through, and leave through the back of the knee. Anybody else ever heard of that? ---
**Author:** ![ExTank](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/35a633/32.png) [@ExTank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ExTank)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2008, 5:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nitroglycerin-bullets/479288/45 "2008-12-31T17:17:53Z")
> [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](#): > > Oh, and HEAT stands for High Explosive, Anti-Tank. Such rounds are usually in the 70mm class or larger shells, as they have to be large enough to contain the shaped charge that punches through armor plate. This is different from an HEAP/HEI round, and would be gross overkill for anti-personnel usage. > > Stranger > [@Cluricaun](#): > > But fun, you forgot fun. [For someone, at least.](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMwIWtQgtHc) It’s a little hard on the real estate, though. ---
**Author:** ![ivn1188](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/e480ec/32.png) [@ivn1188](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ivn1188)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2008, 7:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nitroglycerin-bullets/479288/46 "2008-12-31T19:41:09Z")
> [@mks57](#): > > A non-expanding bullet fired from a battle rifle, like a typical military bolt-action rifle, can make a real mess of someone’s head due to the large amount of kinetic energy that is transferred to the target. Other way around; the point of a bullet expanding and deforming is to transfer as much of the energy into the target as possible. As per the Vietnam bullet drilling thing, it might be true that some guys did it, but a spinning round isn’t going to tumble too much. If a round actually tumbled during flight, it would be nearly worthless - better to hit a guy with a less effective round than to not hit anything at all. If bullets tumbling in air made them more lethal, they would be designed to do so. However, modern military rounds tend to start tumbling inside the target, which is probably where the tumbling round meme comes from. ---
**Author:** ![Tripler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripler/32/21807_2.png) [@Tripler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tripler)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2008, 7:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nitroglycerin-bullets/479288/47 "2008-12-31T19:41:28Z")
> [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](#): > > Oh, and HEAT stands for High Explosive, Anti-Tank. Such rounds are usually in the 70mm class or larger shells, as they have to be large enough to contain the shaped charge that punches through armor plate. This is different from an HEAP/HEI round, and would be gross overkill for anti-personnel usage. Just to add (although it doesn’t add to the OP): there _are_ HEAT hand grenades still out there, although I can’t think of anyone still building them. And a further trivia tidbit: “RPG” does not stand for ‘Rocket Propelled Grenade.’ It’s the initials of the Russian phrase meaning, “Grenade, Hand, Anti-tank”. Tripler . . . but thanks again to Hollywood, everyone thinks it’s a Rocket Propelled Grenade [sub]which, technically, it is.[/sub] ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2008, 7:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nitroglycerin-bullets/479288/48 "2008-12-31T19:56:18Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > The 30-30 hasn’t been a Police Sniper round since the days of Wyatt Earp (if then).😛 It’s been the 30.06 from WWI through the Korean War, then the .308/ 7.62x51mm NATO. A heavy bullet for that round is 180grains/12Grams. Correct. The .308 Winchester is inarguably the most common round used in law enforcement urban sniping situations in the United States and Western Europe, although a few other calibers have been employed by various parties, such as the .270 Remington, 7mm-08 Remington, .300 Winchester Magnum, 7mm Remington Magnum, and most recently the 6.8 Remington SPC (the latter used in more of a short/intermediate range forward marksman application in Armalite-based semi-automatic rifles). The 30-30 has too short a range and too much trajectory arc to be employed in a proper sniping application; understandable, as it was originally intended to be used for close range defense work out of repeating lever action carbines. > [@wolfman](#): > > This reminds me of an Urban Legend I heard long ago, during Veitnam. > Soldiers were getting tired of Jacketed ammo. They were shooting guys, but the bullets went through without enough trauma to drop the guys, and were getting off enough shots to do serious damage after being shot. > > So supposedly they started drilling holes in the round off-center to throw off the balance(In violation of Geneva) so that the round would start tumbling after exiting the barrel and becoming more of a man-stopper round expending its energy in the target. Seems to me the pay-off in lost accuracy would out weigh the benefit. One guy who told me this went so far as to say the tumbling round could enter a guy in the shoulder, drill and tumble through, and leave through the back of the knee. > > Anybody else ever heard of that? This is indeed (mostly) an urban legand. First of all, it is the [Third Additional Declaration to the Hague Convention of 1899](http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/dec99-03.asp) which prohibits the use of deformable bullets in warfare. This was based upon the earlier [St. Petersburg Declaration of 1868](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declaration_Renouncing_the_Use,_in_Time_of_War,_of_Explosive_Projectiles_Under_400_Grammes_Weight). The United States did not participated in the St. Petersburg conference (at the time not being considered a world power), and while it was a full member of the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907, it was not a ratified signatory to the Declarations. [The Geneva Protocol for the Prohibition of the Use in War of Asphyxiating, Poisonous or other Gases, and of Bacteriological Methods of Warfare](http://www.brad.ac.uk/acad/sbtwc/keytext/genprot.htm) (generally what people are referring to when they invoke the “Geneva Conventions” with regard to warfare) says nothing about small arms or ammunition. It is true that the United States and other armies generally use fully jacketed rounds; however, this is to enhance penetration and reduce weapon maintenance. The original bullet weight and twist rate on the first issued M16/AR-15 rifles and M193 ball ammo was designed to enhance the potential for tumbling and fragmentation in a hydraulic medium; however, this combination turned out to provide poor accuracy on the battlefield, and when the 5.56x45mm round was adopted by NATO as a standard, the SS109/M855, a lighter round with a steel core was selected as it offered better accuracy over battlefield range and better penetration against personal armor. Drilling a hole in the bullet or creating any other kind of offset would reduce the accuracy of such rounds to useless levels. I have heard stories about 9mm and .45 ACP M3/M3A1 being used with hollowpoint or flatpoint rounds; however, the accuracy and reliability of these weapons was never very good to begin with, and they were essentially intended as point defense weapons for armor crews and secondary personnel. The Soviet Union employed a variety of configurations of the 5.45x39mm round in the AK-74 and derivatives (a light infantry round/weapon combination comparable to the 5.56mm NATO/AR-15) some of which technically had a hollowpoint (albeit covered by a full copper jacket) or two and three part steel and lead core bullets. It was assumed by many that these were intended to enhance fragmentation; however, terminal ballistics studies done by Martin Fackler, et al indicated that the degree of fragmentation and tumbling was comparable to the solid core 5.56 SS109 round, although some configurations offered significantly superior penetration against personal armor. Although tumbling rounds can do some really freaky things especially if they bounce off of bones or otherwise become unstable, no round is going to enter near the shoulder and exit by the knee, and even high power rifle rounds tend to stop in about 20-24" of 10% ballistic gelatin. Rounds like the 5.56 NATO tend to penetrate to only about 16-18" even without tumbling. Stranger ---
**Author:** ![paperbackwriter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/53a042/32.png) [@paperbackwriter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/paperbackwriter)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2008, 8:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nitroglycerin-bullets/479288/49 "2008-12-31T20:02:33Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > The 30-30 hasn’t been a Police Sniper round since the days of Wyatt Earp (if then).😛 It’s been the 30.06 from WWI through the Korean War, then the .308/ 7.62x51mm NATO. A heavy bullet for that round is 180grains/12Grams. Well, I said I wasn’t up on my professional literature in that field.:smack: The slightly higher weight of the correct round doesn’t significantly reduce the percentage of the round you’d need to remove to poison some-one (33.33%-133.33%). ---
**Author:** ![mks57](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b9bd4f/32.png) [@mks57](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mks57)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2008, 10:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nitroglycerin-bullets/479288/50 "2008-12-31T22:24:41Z")
> [@ivn1188](#): > > Other way around; the point of a bullet expanding and deforming is to transfer as much of the energy into the target as possible. Of course, an expanding bullet transfers more energy. My point was that even a non-expanding bullet, propelled at high velocity, can make a target “explode”. There’s a big difference between the effects of a non-expanding bullet at 800 fps (handgun) and 2600 fps (rifle). ---
**Author:** ![Patch](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/a183cd/32.png) [@Patch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Patch)\ **Post date:** [January 1, 2009, 7:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nitroglycerin-bullets/479288/51 "2009-01-01T19:08:35Z")
> [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](#): > > The Soviet Union employed a variety of configurations of the 5.45x39mm round in the AK-74 and derivatives (a light infantry round/weapon combination comparable to the 5.56mm NATO/AR-15) some of which technically had a hollowpoint (albeit covered by a full copper jacket) or two and three part steel and lead core bullets. It was assumed by many that these were intended to enhance fragmentation; however, terminal ballistics studies done by Martin Fackler, et al indicated that the degree of fragmentation and tumbling was comparable to the solid core 5.56 SS109 round, although some configurations offered significantly superior penetration against personal armor. The 5.45x39 round used in the AK-74 and its clones doesn’t fragment. And to crrect terms, bullets don’t ‘tumble’ in the target. Most bullets have their center of gravity towards the base, and the tendancy of the bullet is to rotate 180 degrees and finish their travel base first. Rifling is sufficient to prevent this fro happening in air, but in a dense medium such as water (or tissue), it no longer provides stability. The bullet will rotate 180 degrees and finish traveling base first (assuming the path in the target is long enough). Martin Fackler has a number of wound profiles that show this, and even the lowly .22 LR demonstrates this behavior. ---
**Author:** ![Patch](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/a183cd/32.png) [@Patch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Patch)\ **Post date:** [January 1, 2009, 7:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nitroglycerin-bullets/479288/52 "2009-01-01T19:12:12Z")
> [@puppygod](#): > > I’d say they are rather opposites, with liquid filled bullet being more of poor-man equivalent of Glaser round. More or less, yes, except that the only fragments would be the particles that sealed the front of the bullet. The rest of the bullet would remain intact. If that’s the effect yer looking for, you’re better off just grabbing a Glaser. Me, I’ll stick with my Ranger SXTs. ---
**Author:** ![puppygod](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ce7236/32.png) [@puppygod](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puppygod)\ **Post date:** [January 1, 2009, 8:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nitroglycerin-bullets/479288/53 "2009-01-01T20:26:54Z")
> [@Tripler](#): > > Just to add (although it doesn’t add to the OP): there _are_ HEAT hand grenades still out there, although I can’t think of anyone still building them. And a further trivia tidbit: “RPG” does not stand for ‘Rocket Propelled Grenade.’ It’s the initials of the Russian phrase meaning, “Grenade, Hand, Anti-tank”. > > Tripler > . . . but thanks again to Hollywood, everyone thinks it’s a Rocket Propelled Grenade [sub]which, technically, it is.[/sub] Actually, Russian military used designation RPG twice: once, for line of WWII era anti-tank hand grenades, and then for line of post-WWII anti tank weapons (both recoilless and rocked-propelled). In second case “G” in RPG stand for Grenade-launcher, so it will make it “Grenade-launcher, Hand-held, Anti-tank”. ---
**Author:** ![Tripler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripler/32/21807_2.png) [@Tripler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tripler)\ **Post date:** [January 1, 2009, 11:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nitroglycerin-bullets/479288/54 "2009-01-01T23:08:17Z")
> [@puppygod](#): > > Actually, Russian military used designation RPG twice: once, for line of WWII era anti-tank hand grenades, and then for line of post-WWII anti tank weapons (both recoilless and rocked-propelled). In second case “G” in RPG stand for Grenade-launcher, so it will make it “Grenade-launcher, Hand-held, Anti-tank”. You’re right. My pubs (which I cannot cite–they’re “Secret”) mentioned they carried it over, but indicated it _was_ a holdover. You know those wacky Soviets–always keeping old crap and designations lying around, “just in case. . .” Tripler It was an interesting historical note in a technical publication. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nitroglycerin-bullets/479288.md?page=2)