# Would a "landmine" that just has bullets pointing upward triggered by weight actually work?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-a-landmine-that-just-has-bullets-pointing-upward-triggered-by-weight-actually-work/843057>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [November 6, 2019, 1:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-a-landmine-that-just-has-bullets-pointing-upward-triggered-by-weight-actually-work/843057 "2019-11-06T01:03:41Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 2

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![lingyi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/d2c977/32.png) [@lingyi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lingyi)\
**Post date:** [November 7, 2019, 3:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-a-landmine-that-just-has-bullets-pointing-upward-triggered-by-weight-actually-work/843057/21 "2019-11-07T03:12:21Z")

</div>

> [@brossa](#):
>
> What if you had a tube a couple of inches long with several bullet stacked in it? Only the tip of the top bullet pokes out of the tube, but stepping on it fires the bullet at the bottom?

In theory, there may be a cook-off, where the heat from the bottom round generates enough heat, long enough, to cause the primer in the cartridge above it to fire and so on. I suspect the more likely event would be that by the time the energy of the bottom bullet was transferred to the top unfired cartridge, there would be little “oomph” left, possibly enough to cause hurt, but not lethal. Even more likely is that the tube would explode because the expanding gas and bullet couldn’t push the cartridges on top out quick enough.

[Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-a-landmine-that-just-has-bullets-pointing-upward-triggered-by-weight-actually-work/843057.md?page=1)