The first link is the Rail Gun from Eraser. The second link is a 20mm Sniper Rifle, suitable against tanks, accurate to over 1500 yds. A .50 cal is 12.5mm, this is 20mm. Do the math. 1500 yards is good enough to pop many a round into this steriodal lizard and watch him look for the source of the sting.
For the history buffs, the Gustav M/42 Anti Tank Rifle from the 1940’s (scroll down), with a 18cm cartridge, and a 20mm projectile with a weight of 108g and a muzzle velocity of 950 m/s. It had impact fuzed high explosive rounds, too. Fired resting on your shoulder, the blowback escaped from the rear. For development, see this page.
What, no one’s mentioned the folks at Metal Storm? You know the guys who’re working building machine guns capable of firing a million rounds a minute? I’d think that’d be tops on a lot of dino hunters’ lists.
There’s also what are called (AFAIK) “turkey shoot shotguns.” These are custom made shotguns that feature straight rifled barrels for keeping the shot from expanding greatly over large distances.
In any case, I’d want a weapon with a lot of stopping power and range! Not because of what could happen if I missed (there is that), but simply because of what will happen if I kill it! He’s going to fall somewhere and I don’t want to be close by when 20 odd tons or so comes tumbling out of the sky.
Assuming, of course, PETA doesn’t get wind to what you’re up to. In which case, you’ll have to mow down the protestors before you get to kill any dinos.
My all-time favorite cheesy movie is The Last Dinosaur [1977, made for TV], in which Richard Boone, with a small crew, goes after the last T-Rex in prehistoric time (which he accesses by burrowing deep into the Earth’s mantle with an Archimedes screw/capsule, but never mind that), with a modern elephant gun. I don’t recall exactly what went wrong with the original plan, but the survivors eventually manage to disable the behemoth by tying a polystyrene boulder to its tail (with visible seams), and sending it careening down a hillside. Maybe Boone’s character was just a lousy shot; I don’t remember. If you get a chance to see this movie, don’t pass it up; it’s an absolute hoot.
Seriously, though, what about electricity? I’m thinking of those stun guns that shoot a bolt over a distance. Would it be possible to upscale that to, say, 50X-100X normal strength, and deploy it more-or-less safely? It wouldn’t be too heavy, would it?
Once T-Rex is left rigid on the ground, you could calmly finish it off with a deadly neurotoxin dart, preserving the pristine beauty of its head, which would be suitable for mounting.
I think UncleBill has the right idea with the 20mm anti-armor gun.
You don’t want something like grenades or high explosives, because if you’re hunting the thing, you want either the meat, or the trophy, and maybe even both. So you want to kill it without ruining the carcass.
You don’t want to spray it with lead for the same reasons.
A large, single-shot rifle designed for taking out light armor is just the ticket. There’s no way bone is going to be harder to penetrate than a couple inches of steel.
20mm rounds haven’t been effective anti-tank weapons for about 80 years, FYI.
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In any case, it totally depends on the circumstances. Personally, for general purpose use, I’d probably want to drag along a barret light .50 (m82 in US military terms).
An RPG detonator requires a hard, flat surface to properly detonate it, I believe, and you’d have to have a pretty solid hit on a t-rex to get a proper detonation. And it would have to hit at the right angle, otherwise you’ll do pretty much nothing.
Grenades would be a pretty risky proposition. Reptiles have fairly think skin, don’t they? I’m not sure if the fragments meant to rip up human flesh would have any critical effect on them.
I’ve looked in all my books, and none of them mention a second brain in birds. It’s true that the spinal cord enlarges inside the synsacrum, but “lumbosacral enlargement” is a far cry from “brain.” I’m pretty sure that the cerebellum is what coordinates muscular activity. As for chickens living with their heads cut off, Cecil did an article.
I think you’re better off aiming for something other than the hips.
(BTW, it’s been a very long while since I posted. Gotta love all these cool features we didn’t have last time. Just click on a smilie and it appears? :eek: Amazing!)
Modern rifles designed for hunting elephants are not necessarily the most powerful in existence, though they are probably more than enough for hunting a Tyrannosaurus Rex. The thing about bone is, that twice as much bone isn’t twice as much strength. Twice the size isn’t twice the strength, either. Scale it, and the Tyrannosaurus is pretty fragile for his enormous size (re: recent calculations indicating that falls at a run would be extremely dangerous for T-Rex).
A .600 Nitro Express was suggested from a story above, but that cartridge is closing in on its 100th birthday, and for all its power is not now the most powerful in the world. However, it, too, is probably sufficient to take out a T-Rex with an expanding chest hit, or a head it in which it mushrooms into a hand-sized chunk of lead and blows fragments all over the place. The cartridge is considered overpowered for elephant, and used only against them in emergencies. A non-brain head hit on a bull is thought to be enough to knock the elephant down.
The .460 Weatherby Magnum would be my choice. It’s massively powerful (more so than the .600), well-designed, and in relatively wide distribution. It has more than enough power to go through anything a T-Rex has to other. I would equip my backup with a .577 Tyrannosaur, because that’s what it’s designed for: a last-ditch weapon for use against Cape Buffalo and similarly dangerous beasts. An angry Cape Buffalo is a harder kill than an elephant, by some estimations.
There is also an argument for using smaller, higher-velocity rounds. .22 rimfires, when they manage to penetrate the human skull, have a tendency to bounce around and set up destructive shockwaves (this information from one of Discover magazine’s medical stories). You could use the smaller, faster rounds for a headshot to obliterate everything in the cranial cavity.
Lastly, for all those suggesting military weapons, I have a caveat. Military weapons are either designed for use against humans or vehicles. They become very specialized (as mentioned above, anti-tank weapons frequently need a steel plate in front of or behind the target to function). That said, just about anything you shoot with a 100mm rocket is going to suffer from it.
I guess it depends on whether you’re the hunter or not. Sounds like a lot of folks want to fight this thing up close. Me, I prefer a little distance between me and my target. Large caliber, good scope, 1000 yards, my ass hid well! an eyeball is an easy kill shot and you don’t need a damned patriot missle. Although that wouldn’t be a bad way to go.
Someone linked to an anti tank rifle that sounded pretty good. Remember it’s gotta be something you can carry w/out attracting attention. It would also help if you’d ever shot a rifle too!
Here’s the flight manual it’s not complete yet, but by the time cloning technology gets to the point where you have to worry about giant thunder lizards, they’ll have the rest of it up.
Then again, considering t-keela’s post, you might want to send them an e-mail asking them to hurry it up a bit!
Ditto on the .460 Weatherby. Long-range shots are going to be at a premium, based upon what paleontoogists are thinking were the 'Rex’s normal habitats, like semi-open woodlands. A good, handy, double rifle is what’s called-for. Why a double? It’s for the really fast follow-up shot when you piss-away the first shot in shock at what you’re hunting…
A .416 Rigby or .375 H&H would be worthy contenders, too.
Why has no one mentioned specific lung-shots? Heart shots are problematic, if you don’t know the beasties’ anatomy well, but lungs should be obvious. An active hunter that size would have to have lungs the size of pup tents. A good mushrooming slug through those should have it bleeding out fast. Also: Why not go for a crippling leg shot… Those legs were big and muscular, but you put a big round through one from the front (as in “He’s coming right for us! Aaah!” >|BanG|<), and Mr. 'Rex is going to fall over and paddle around in a circle like Curly for a while (thanks, Eve!), giving you time for a more leisurely heart-lung shot.
Oh, and Damn you, Tris! Had I not been wrestling with a crappy browser product, I’d have been the first in with the A-10 joke!
the hamsters seemed to have eaten my first attempt at this. The 20mm is actually a rather effective weapon against armor, depending on what ammo you are using. If the requirement is an individual rifle, I’ll take a 20mm sniper rifle, a .577 as a second choice. For anything else though, any type of rocket launcher/recoilless rife would give me a warm fuzzy.
Now that I think about it, don’t some species of reptiles (or at least some kind of animal) have a heart structure that resembles a cluster of grapes? I’m asking, because with all the talk of heart shots, I’m wondering what might happen if the heart was different than your average lizard heart. (I realize that hydrostatic shock can render this moot, of course, but if the hydrostatic shock’s not enough to drop “Daddy-T” immediately, things can get ugly, depending upon how close you are to him.)
I’m not sure what you’re thinking of, but it doesn’t apply to reptiles, nor would it apply to dinosaurs. Think “croc heart” or “bird heart” for dinos. Look at it this way: if you can bring down an emu with a heart shot, you can do so for Big Daddy Rex as well. He’s just got alot more heart.
You can look here for information on Willo, the Thescelosaurus which was unearthed with a fossilized heart (including images of where in the chest the heart is located, so you can make the first shot count). While Willo was a plant-eater, a T. rex heart isn’t likely to differ in any significant way as far as structure.
