Thread title basically says it all. Long ago I was in a cabin heated by a wood stove, and there was a box of .22 rounds nearby, and I felt one of those paradoxical urges to throw it in. (I didn’t, of course.) But I’ve wondered since – how much harm would those bullets actually be capable of doing, with no gun barrel to build up pressure? I presume the shell itself would allow enough pressure to build up so that the slugs would in fact go flying, but would it be anything like the velocity of a slug actually shot from a gun?
try it and find out. I’m pre-filing the Darwin Award paperwork for you.
Nothing, it’s the shell casings that would fly. Might put an eye out.
Mythbusters did this one.
As you may have guessed, Mythbusters have tried it. Would it be lethal? Probably not. Painful? Oh, yeah.
Michael Caine’s character “Peachy” Carnahan did this in The Man Who Would be King. The shell went off, creating a distraction, which is what it was meant to do.
Not a good idea to use movies as a guide, but this seems a likely result. I’d expect the heat to set off the powder, but without the gun barrel to guide it, you’d get shell and casing going off in random directions.
Ayup, wear some safety glasses and stand a good distance away if you want to try this one. The propellant in each cartridge will ignite, and the pressure will drive the brass and the bullet apart. Not with a ton of velocity, since the seal is lost as soon as the two items completely separate (or as soon as the brass splits due to overpressure); it’s like having a gun with a barrel a 1/4-inch long.
The two items will part ways with equal and opposite momentum, where momentum equals mass times velocity. The brass, having a much lower mass than the bullet, will end up with a much higher velocity, and the bullet won’t go very far.
If the propellant is still burning when the two items separate, then the brass may gain additional velocity due to the escaping jet of propellant; in effect, it could become a tiny rocket, albeit with a very short burn time.
Anyway, yeah, the brass would get launched. If a blunt surface of it hits you, you might get a good welt. If the open (or split) end hits you, you might get a cut. I wouldn’t expect anything fatal, but it’s conceivable you could end up needing a couple of stitches.
Oh yeah, you’d also blast hot coals from the fire all over the place. Anyone who has tossed a brick of firecrackers into a campfire understands this.
I remember the Mythbusters episode on this. To me it looked like the .50 Cal casings would have hurt pretty bad, and if it hit you in the wrong place, well…
Of course, no one sane is going to throw .50 Cal cartridges into a fire since they are so expensive. 
I’m guessing .22 would probably just sting unless you were really unlucky and got on in the eye or something like that.
That said, kids…don’t try this at home…
-XT
You wouldn’t have to wonder this if you grew up in a redneck prone area. People throw cartridges and shotgun shells in bonfires as a (terrible) prank fairly often. True, it probably won’t kill anybody but it could hurt somebody maybe even permanently and it is startling to those around the fire. In short, it is a good joke to result in an ass kicking. Not recommended.
Oh right :smack:
Nitpick: nothing, because bullets are only made out of some combination of lead, copper, steel, and other metals. There is nothing ignitable in them. If you throw whole rounds in (bullet+casing+powder+primer), then it would proceed as above.
I see what you did there.
There’s a great scene in Red where Bruce Willis drops a handful of shells in a frying pan to create a diversion.
Years ago the hospital I was working at had an “interesting cases” bulletin board outside the doctor’s lounge, in a hallway not accessible to the public.
One posting was an x-ray of a man’s forearm with a .22 shell casing embedded in it. The official story is that he was burning leaves and there was a .22 bullet on the ground under the pile. I couldn’t tell from the x-ray the angle of entry or how deep, but Ow!!
Well, Bill Cosby says it proves that your Mother is pretty low-down.
It may not be fatal but I wouldn’t want to be anywhere nearby. When I was about 19, three of us at work were standing in a semicircle talking. One of them had found a .22 shell and said “I wonder what happens if I do this!” and threw it hard to the concrete floor at our feet before anyone could protest. BANG! It went off and something, whether casing or bullet I don’t know, took a half inch deep chunk out of a concrete wall a good 50 feet away, made a “twang” ricochet sound and flew off never to be found.
Luckily, we were evening shift and our boss was a big fat guy that liked to sleep at work. He came running “What the **** was that!?!?”
I’ll never forget the guy who threw the shell saying, “Oh, it was one of those Snap-n-Pop firework things.”
And my disbelief at the response,
“Alright, don’t throw them in the building.”
when gun shops catch fire, the bullets are typically found within a few inches of the casings.
The OP specifically mentioned throwing the rounds in a wood stove. I would guess that a wood stove with a solid door would completely contain the explosions of .22 cartridges, although I can cite no research to back that up.
As a side note, back when I was young and stupid some friends and I set up shotgun shells on a log with the primers facing us, got back about 40 feet, and shot at them with our .22s. When we managed to hit a 12-gauge primer the noise was impressive but the effect of the explosion was underwhelming.
Ha. Been there, done that.
After a day of shooting on my range, some buddies and I were sitting around the campfire, drinking beer and whatnot. One of them took a 7.62X39 round and threw it in the fire. We all ran. About 10 seconds later we heard a BANG! And then walked back to the fire to drink more beer.
Par for the course in rural Ohio. LOL.
Hmm, will have to try that sometime. What more fun could you have for three bucks?
Mythbusters did that one too (actually it was a regular oven with a glass door) and, yes, the exploding bullets could not penetrate that. The only way they could replicate the results of the myth (someone being killed by putting ammunition in the oven) was by putting the entire gun, loaded, cocked and with safety off, in the oven.