[Doc3402]

That's a nice comparison, and I thank you for posting it as a guideline, but in the real world it doesn't mean much. The human body is generally thought to be 80% water, not the 100% used in the test. This percentage is highly variable depending on the area of the body. The brain and the thigh muscles might actually give you expansion close to what the testing represents, while the lungs will contribute next to nothing towards expansion. So where are we taught to aim in a defense situation? Center mass... an area that contains a lot of lung tissue.

Fortunately, as Americans add to the global obesity problem the expansion tests will become closer to reality.

[JonM]

Global obesity i think is just as mythic as most things in the media so its unlikely to play a factor in future bullet design.

Im all for obesity in the criminal class. I think prisoners should not be permitted excercise and fed only greasy fatty foods in the 25000 calorie a day range maybe more. Fatten em up let em smoke as much pot as they want in prison and i will gauruntee that crimes are vastly decreased in 20 years. When all the goblins are fat lazy pot heads the rest of us may not need guns...

But i DO have a couple of elephant guns just in case.

Whats more interesting to me is what happens when a bullet doesnt expand. Since uncle murphy has more say over that im more inclined to want to see such data.

[Wiebelhaus]

Originally Posted by Doc3402

That's a nice comparison, and I thank you for posting it as a guideline, but in the real world it doesn't mean much. The human body is generally thought to be 80% water, not the 100% used in the test. This percentage is highly variable depending on the area of the body. The brain and the thigh muscles might actually give you expansion close to what the testing represents, while the lungs will contribute next to nothing towards expansion. So where are we taught to aim in a defense situation? Center mass... an area that contains a lot of lung tissue.

Fortunately, as Americans add to the global obesity problem the expansion tests will become closer to reality.

What would you suggest as a more realistic medium? like a fresh hog corpse or something?

[lbwar15]

Who remembers Winchester black talon? Sxt is about the same thing but still.

[HiPowerGuy54]

JonM

Hmmmmmm interesting theory on prison foods. There was a special on TV a few years back about a sherff's dept somewhere that the state allowed them to spend the prison food money pretty freely & the dept got to keep the savings. The Sheriff bought TRUCK LOADS of cheap ass hot dogs!!! HAahahahahah it never did show the prisoners or talk about their weight. They had to be pretty darn plump after 6-10 months of that stuff. I could go along with your plan to test it for awhile :-)

[AIKIJUTSU]

Originally Posted by HiPowerGuy54

JonM

Hmmmmmm interesting theory on prison foods. There was a special on TV a few years back about a sherff's dept somewhere that the state allowed them to spend the prison food money pretty freely & the dept got to keep the savings. The Sheriff bought TRUCK LOADS of cheap ass hot dogs!!! HAahahahahah it never did show the prisoners or talk about their weight. They had to be pretty darn plump after 6-10 months of that stuff. I could go along with your plan to test it for awhile :-)

The prison could make some extra money by using the inmates to model "Lardasche" jeans.

[Doc3402]

Originally Posted by Wiebelhaus

What would you suggest as a more realistic medium? like a fresh hog corpse or something?

Well, taking my medical career into account my first choice would be personal injury lawyers, but there's no season on them. Failing that, convicted child molesters would do.

The testing in water for comparison is a good rough guideline. It's a constant medium, but that's the last thing you will see in real world defense situations. Little things like a muscle contracted or relaxed will change expansion. The brain density will normally not change much in a healthy human, but what bone the projectile passes through on the way in can make a huge difference in expansion. There are just too many variables to be able to say that any specific projectile will function better than another.

In theory you could say that hollow points will tend to give better results than ball ammo, but I wouldn't even want to go that far. Caliber, clothing, body weight, fat content, and a thousand other variables could make ball ammo the most efficient under certain conditions.

To sum up, Murphy's Law has not been repealed. When it gets right down to it, the odds are that when you need it the most, the right bullet, caliber, cartridge combination will be sitting on top of the dresser, and the junk you have loaded is barely adequate for what you need it to do. That makes being able to place your shots under pressure critical. Practice, practice, practice.

[Doc3402]

Whats more interesting to me is what happens when a bullet doesnt expand. Since uncle murphy has more say over that im more inclined to want to see such data.

That's when shot placement comes into play. A healthy knowledge of anatomy would help, too.

For all intents and purposes, we can assume that hydrostatic shock isn't much of a factor in handguns, especially since the area we have all trained to hit doesn't contain much water. That makes it more critical in placing your shot where major blood carrying organs or vessels are.

A better shot to instantly stop your assailant would be a high spine shot to sever the spinal cord. I don't know about you, but in the middle of a massive adrenalin dump I'm not likely to make that shot, especially with a handgun.

It's tough. All you can really do is practice, equip yourself with whatever you feel will give you the best chance, and hope Murphy is out to lunch. I've seen shots that should have killed, but didn't even take the person out of the fight, and I've seen some of the unluckiest fatalities you could ever imagine.