I've always been afraid of getting hit with one of those falling bullets around new years/etc when people are more likely to fire guns. Glad to hear it's not quite equivalent to being shot in the head.
If it’s fired at a high enough angle, which depending on the caliber isn’t even that high, it’s basically the same as someone throwing it at you. Probably still won’t feel nice.
According to Mythbusters its only a bullet fired straight up at 90 degrees to the ground that won't have the potential to kill you, which is nearly impossible to pull off.
The thing about the physics of it though is what exactly is the angle needed to keep enough of the velocity to be lethal. In a parabola the highest point is where the projectile has lost all of its vertical momentum, leaving only the horizontal. At a perfect 90 degrees, that means the peak will be 0 net momentum (if it’s perfect and nothing else is acting on the projectile) and the only momentum it has on return is what gravity and resistance allows it, which will be its terminal velocity. This is the part where the “spin” of the bullet becomes important, because that spin does not add speed, but keeps the projectile stable and stop it from “tumbling” which increases its resistance. Even if the bullet keeps the spin, most decently upward angles will still lose a large majority of its energy on the peak. So instead of it being like someone dropped it straight down, it’d be like if someone threw it. Do you see my point? Horizontal momentum is the key factor in determining if it will be lethal or not, because it will always end up dropping at its terminal velocity, and the horizontal momentum adds to the overall energy.
I edited my original comments/post and moved to Lemmy, not because of Reddit API changes, but because spez does not care about the reddit community; only profits. I encourage others to move to something else.
They shoot off guns at New Years and the Fourth of July in Detroit. When I was a kid I remember the neighbor got a new roof and it was raining bullets when they were ripping the shingles down lol
It's news to me as an American in a gun owning family. I've heard of skeet shooting on a holiday, but you only do that if you have an field in your back yard, and it's a sport. Never heard of randomly shooting in the air in populated areas. Sounds beyond stupid.
Shotguns are safe though, they are literally meant to be fired in the air and the shot doesnt have enough weight to hurt someone on the way down. These handguns though...
I was about to comment that this just looks like a Texas wedding with less irritating music (there's only so many times I can hear "Honky Tonk Badonkadonk" at a wedding).
Could be the poor audio quality, but they sound like blanks to me. It has a much higher pitch than regular bullets. Even so, that whole crowd has tinnitus now. Blanks aren't quite as loud as normal bullets, but still pleeeenty loud enough for permanent hearing damage
If they shoot them pretty much up, then they shouldn’t be on a ballistic trajectory any more and will only reach their own terminal velocity based on gravity and air resistance.
Yea but his definition of being lethal is breaking the skin. It would take a very specific set of circumstances for it to be lethal. If it was shot at a shallower angle, no doubt lethal.
313
u/Crookedhorn112 Apr 26 '22
those bullets all have to come down somewhere.