Ooh, if I can pick a gun, it would be this. Here’s the bullet.
Well heck in that case I choose a Yamato’s 18 inch cannon with a Sanshiki round.
Could someone maybe make sure its pointing in the right direction though, I suspect aiming handheld at a moving target might be a tad tricky.
Otara
Come on everyone, we know his vision is based on movement yes? Spielberg never lies. Just stay still with your rifle cocked and ready.
He’ll eventually come over and start sniffing around and at that point you can aim exactly where you need to for maximum effect. You may then, at your leisure, “toast that mother” (as the “kids” say these days).
I admit there may be some practical difficulties with this method. Not the least of which is that it can be uncomfortable to stand still for any time after soiling oneself.
It’s technically (but not humanely) possible to bring an Elephant down with an AK-47 (7.62x39mm cartridge), and I know of professional Great White Hunters (back in the days when it was a legitimate career) who managed to humanely bring down elephants with 6.5x5mm calibre rifles. Having said that, I certainly wouldn’t want to try it…
Quoth Chronos:
I think ol’e Spraguey was engaging in some hyper-bowl.
Like swinging a baseball bat in a closet. Very tough to aim and use in an enclosed stadium.
I’m putting my money on the 50 cal. That bullet, in addition to delivering a phenomenal shock, also carves a gaping wound that could easily be lethal to most any animal regardless of size. I’ll shoot and camo down until he bleeds out.
As I understand it, they have a carrion-eater’s sense of smell. Unless your camo makes you smell like a rock over 500 miles away, and only a rock, you’re better off not thinking escaping his vision will keep you safe. Of course, if T.Rex has a gizzard and stuffs it with rocks the way birds do you might be screwed.
Wouldn’t matter where I aimed, I’d miss.
If I can hit the beastie in a knee or hip, I’m good.
Thanks, Lumpy, for linking to the prior threads on the subject.
I had a long, drawn out post ready, and then lost it, so I’ll summarize. The T-Rex and a giant bull African Elephant can be considered roughly the same size (within a factor of 2). So what reliably kills a bull elephant with one shot should be considered capable of doing the same to a T. Rex. The thing is, reading accounts of African hunting, very few elephants are only shot once. It’s especially rare to shoot them once and have them instantly go down. It’s happened: Karamojo Bell, et al, was able to do that, but he shot literally thousands of them, and knew exactly where the bullet had to go to reach the brain. You don’t have that luxury. The fact that the 50 BMG is packing 2-4 x the muzzle energy of an elephant gun, doesn’t make up for not knowing exactly where the T. Rex’s vitals are. Or whether they’re susceptible to a massive shock at a single point.
Your shot will probably mortally wound the Rex—you’re a Ranger, after all. However, whether the Rex is stopped by the single shot before it mortally wounds you, is an open question. I think you get graunched.
I voted for survival. At first I figured that a center-of-mass shot would be ideal, but I suspect the amount of trauma caused by a .50 caliber bullet with that much muzzle energy would be sufficient to distract Rexy from lunch long enough for me to get away and hide somewhere he couldn’t poke his now-painful nose in far enough to take a bite. Eventually, he’d bleed out and I’d be safe, as long as none of his relatives were waiting in the stands with sniper rifles of their own.
How about shooting it in the neck? it’s a thin spot, with lots of critical stuff crammed in there. If you’re lucky you’ll get the spine and spinal cord, or possibly the jugular vein. If nothing else, you’ll probably get a fair bit of esophagus. It seems to me that scoring the neck would cause enough structural damage that you’d take its concentration off you, enabling you to get that crucial second shot.
Of course, if you miss – which you can, since it’s a small target – you’re TRex-chow
I dunno, it’s the German 88 from WWII, used against tanks and aircraft. I think it can be pointed pretty quickly. And if it’s good against tanks a couple of thousand yards away, it’s probably good against a TRex at double that.
*Snake! You got the .50 BMG! Use it to kill Charging Tyrannosaurus!
Charging Tyrannosaurus?!
Charging Tyrannosaurus was brought foward in time in 1972, to perform in the title role in the movie adaption of Devil Dinosaur, but was abandoned after the movie deal fell apart. This soured him to capitalism, and he defected to the U.S.S.R.*
**The U.S.S.R.?!
**
*He was seen in Afghanistan in 1974, and was later seen in several developing countries, always shortly before communist revolutions broke out. Since the U.S.S.R. collapsed, he’s been shifting from one terrorist group to another, depending on who can provide him with the most goats. *
Metal Gear?! I mean, the most goats?!
He’s a tyranosaurus rex, Snake! He needs a lot of meat to keep him going. He’s very large and powerful. His head is five feet long, and one bite is all it takes. And he can run very fast!
Very Fast?! Is that why they call him Charging Tyrannosaurus?
No, that’s a coincidence. He’s called that because his credit cards are always maxed out. Despite his communist ideals, he’s very loose with his money. But that’s not important. Be careful. You’ve only got one shot.
One Shot?! Otakon! What should I aim at?
I don’t know. We don’t have absolute knowledge of Tyrannosaurs anatomy, and we have only educated theories on it’s behavior. That’s not enough to reliably predict how he’ll react to massive trauma. Will he keep charging for a minute or so after he’s mortally wounded? How long can he function with a sucking chest wound? How much of his brain does he need to have left to kill you? We just don’t know.
Don’t know?! Otakon, he’s here! Give me a target!
Ah . . . ah . . . The knee! Most of the internal organs are small, and you can’t see exactly where they are. Plus, while the BMG is a powerful weapon, I’m not sure how it would react to punching through several feet of flesh. But the T. Rex is bipedal! If you can hit the knee dead on while it’s running, it should trip. That in itself may cause enough damage to kill it. If nothing else, it should be crippled. Go for the knee, Snake! It’s a relatively small, rapidly moving target, but it’s you’re best chance, given our limited knowledge!
Limited Knowlage?! Otakon . . . When you asked me if love could bloom on the battlefield, were you . . . really talking about Sniper Wolf?
Sniper Wolf?! Snake, I don’t know what you’re asking.
What I’m asking?! Never mind. It’s nothing.
–
Snake? Snake?! SNAAAAAAKE!!
Their arms are too small, they can’t work the bolt action on the sniper rifles anyway.
That’s why T=Rex snipers work in pairs. One shoots, the other works the action.
.50 BMG is actually overkill for large, thick-skinned game. Let’s look at the ballistics data for a typical “Elephant Gun” caliber, .416 Rigby:
bullet weight velocity muzzle energy
400 grains 2,515 feet/sec 5,619 foot-pounds
And that is more than enough to kill an African elephant. Meanwhile, a typical .50 BMG loading looks like this:
bullet weight velocity muzzle energy
700 grains 2,978 feet/sec 13,971 foot-pounds
(this is all from Wikipedia). So a .416 Rigby takes you where you need to go as far large, dangerous game goes, with less than a half of the muzzle energy of the .50 BMG. Now this is all assuming that a T-rex is physically comparable to an elepant. I wouldn’t know anything about that but I could find some mosquitos in amber and run a little experiment.
Also, keep this in mind: .50 caliber military rifles don’t exist because you need all that power to kill a human; you can do that with a 9mm pistol or a 5.56mm carbine. The point of a large caliber sniper rifles is that it gives you much more range than smaller calibers, since performance at range for any firearm is mostly a function of bullet weight, which itself is a function of caliber.
To add to the previous comparison of the .416 Rigby with the .50BMG, here are stats (courtesy Wikipedia) of the classic .600 Nitro Express:
Bullet Weight: 900 grains
Velocity: 2050 ft/s
Energy: 8400 ft lbf
In addition, the Wiki articles says
“It was developed for elephant guns, but most hunters felt that it was too powerful and harsh in recoil for anything but emergency use to stop a charging animal. Because of the larger cartridge, there was more recoil and guns chambered to fire the .600 were significantly heavier than those firing the .577 Nitro Express, which was already considered as being at the extreme end of manageable gun size and weight for a professional hunter.”
If you were talking about 7.62 mm rifles this would be correct, but .50 caliber anti-materiel rifles are developed because of the need to kill things tougher than a human, like light armoured vehicles.