Beartracker
Member
- Joined
- Sep 14, 2005
- Messages
- 447
This artical I found on the net will make the nay sayers think again about the old lead ball and it's stopping power:
A little bit about bullets:
There are various schools of thought about bullets, and what happens when a bullet hits a person. The popularly accepted theory is that when a bullet strikes a person it does three things: it pokes a hole in them, it delivers a certain amount of kinetic energy to their body, and some of that kinetic energy is expressed in what is called a "wound channel". So when you shoot someone, the bullet hits them. They will feel a concussive shove, very much like getting punched. But there will also be this other thing that happens: when the bullet goes through their body it will deliver kinetic energy into the surrounding tissue, causing the tissue to "jump away" from the path of the bullet. Some tissues deal with that kind of treatment better than others. The muscle tissue in your leg, for example, will jump away from the bullet and then snap back into shape. This will cause horrible bruising, but the tissue will basically recover. Your liver, on the other hand, will explode into pâté. The liver is fairly important. You'll live about five very painful minutes without it.
Like everything else about bullets, there is a great deal of debate about how different bullet shapes and velocities affect the variables of bullet wounds. However, I tend to go with the theory that makes the most intuitive sense to me: bullets are like objects being thrown into water. Narrow bullets that have a nice latitudinal spin will go deep into the water and not disturb it much as they go. Big fat bullets, or bullets with a longitudinal spin, will tend to "splat" into the water, creating a lot of resistance, disturbing the water, and making a big mess.
One popular illustration of this principle in action is the development of the .45 caliber round for use in the Philippines. U.S. troops were having this problem where they were being overwhelmed by Filipino human wave attacks because the Filipinos would keep coming, even after they'd received a lethal bullet wound. So the U.S. forces adopted a slower-moving, larger bullet that wouldn't penetrate as deep and delivered more of its kinetic energy into the "shove" part of the equation. The idea was to use the bullets to actually knock the Filipinos over, breaking the momentum of their attack. What came of these efforts was the .45ACP round, developed by Browning, who was working for Colt at the time.
By all reports, it worked marvelously.
Against the Filipinos.
Who were typically armed with antique muskets and spears.
And fighting for the right of self-governance, on their own land.
But I digress.
I was talking about soft slugs.
The thing about a hollow-point or soft lead bullet is that it moves through the air in a fairly orderly fashion, then splats like a water balloon when it hits something a little stiffer. Like a person. During the American Civil War, the common ammunition for muskets was a soft lead ball. And you can see the effects of soft lead balls in some of the pictures from that war; you'll sometimes see pictures of dead soldiers lying face up in fields, and they look like they're doing a very slight back bridge. That's actually because their backs have been blown completely out, and something about the way the meat dries makes them curl up around the wound. Musket balls were usually in .30 to .50 caliber range. In addition to causing lead poisoning, they tended to blow great big messy chunks off of people. A musket ball in the upper shoulder would literally blow a person's arm off.
By the 20th Century, this kind of thing started to seem a little cruel and unusual to people, so they made rules mandating smaller bullets with metal coatings that would keep them from "splattering". The basic idea is that a hit to the vitals is still likely to be lethal, and a hit to the extremities will still put a soldier out of action— but there will be many fewer people with missing pieces after the war.
Which is fine as far as it goes. But it doesn't really have the psychological impact of the big messy wounds of yore.
A little bit about bullets:
There are various schools of thought about bullets, and what happens when a bullet hits a person. The popularly accepted theory is that when a bullet strikes a person it does three things: it pokes a hole in them, it delivers a certain amount of kinetic energy to their body, and some of that kinetic energy is expressed in what is called a "wound channel". So when you shoot someone, the bullet hits them. They will feel a concussive shove, very much like getting punched. But there will also be this other thing that happens: when the bullet goes through their body it will deliver kinetic energy into the surrounding tissue, causing the tissue to "jump away" from the path of the bullet. Some tissues deal with that kind of treatment better than others. The muscle tissue in your leg, for example, will jump away from the bullet and then snap back into shape. This will cause horrible bruising, but the tissue will basically recover. Your liver, on the other hand, will explode into pâté. The liver is fairly important. You'll live about five very painful minutes without it.
Like everything else about bullets, there is a great deal of debate about how different bullet shapes and velocities affect the variables of bullet wounds. However, I tend to go with the theory that makes the most intuitive sense to me: bullets are like objects being thrown into water. Narrow bullets that have a nice latitudinal spin will go deep into the water and not disturb it much as they go. Big fat bullets, or bullets with a longitudinal spin, will tend to "splat" into the water, creating a lot of resistance, disturbing the water, and making a big mess.
One popular illustration of this principle in action is the development of the .45 caliber round for use in the Philippines. U.S. troops were having this problem where they were being overwhelmed by Filipino human wave attacks because the Filipinos would keep coming, even after they'd received a lethal bullet wound. So the U.S. forces adopted a slower-moving, larger bullet that wouldn't penetrate as deep and delivered more of its kinetic energy into the "shove" part of the equation. The idea was to use the bullets to actually knock the Filipinos over, breaking the momentum of their attack. What came of these efforts was the .45ACP round, developed by Browning, who was working for Colt at the time.
By all reports, it worked marvelously.
Against the Filipinos.
Who were typically armed with antique muskets and spears.
And fighting for the right of self-governance, on their own land.
But I digress.
I was talking about soft slugs.
The thing about a hollow-point or soft lead bullet is that it moves through the air in a fairly orderly fashion, then splats like a water balloon when it hits something a little stiffer. Like a person. During the American Civil War, the common ammunition for muskets was a soft lead ball. And you can see the effects of soft lead balls in some of the pictures from that war; you'll sometimes see pictures of dead soldiers lying face up in fields, and they look like they're doing a very slight back bridge. That's actually because their backs have been blown completely out, and something about the way the meat dries makes them curl up around the wound. Musket balls were usually in .30 to .50 caliber range. In addition to causing lead poisoning, they tended to blow great big messy chunks off of people. A musket ball in the upper shoulder would literally blow a person's arm off.
By the 20th Century, this kind of thing started to seem a little cruel and unusual to people, so they made rules mandating smaller bullets with metal coatings that would keep them from "splattering". The basic idea is that a hit to the vitals is still likely to be lethal, and a hit to the extremities will still put a soldier out of action— but there will be many fewer people with missing pieces after the war.
Which is fine as far as it goes. But it doesn't really have the psychological impact of the big messy wounds of yore.
The thinking behind that logic is that a dead soldier lays on the battlefield and his compatriots pass him by because there is nothing they can do for him anymore, but a wounded soldier screams and hollers and wants help so his fellow soldiers stop to carry the wounded man to medical help...soldiers who could be fighting are instead carrying wounded to the rear leaving fewer soldiers to fight the battle. So, the military FMJ ball ammo is not designed to kill, but to wound instead...it has good penetration but little expansion. It pokes a hole without doing much serious damage. The lead ball is different as per the article cited by beartracker. 
