Could he survive this?

One character I have in my cyberpunk script that I'm working on has gloves that give him certain abilities. To take him out, his opponents get through his defenses and one of them stabs him in the hand while the other shoots his other hand to take out the gloves. Is this character likely to survive? He's only a 15 year old kid and I think I need to rewrite it (I'm getting the feeling that the gunshot to the hand will be fatal)

Should I just get the stabbing guy to just stab both hands?

edited 2nd Feb '11 9:53:32 PM by ShadowScythe

(I'm getting the feeling that the gunshot to the hand will be fatal)

Wait, what?

Not trying to invoke Just a Flesh Wound here, but there's no major arteries in the hand and in the absolute worst case scenario the limb can just be amputated (which is what they often did pre-20th century, and people did survive that. And here your characters are in the future).

Sweet, I wanted to make sure I was averting just a flesh wound.

True, that there are no major arteries in the hands. The only way he could really die is from blood loss which would take a few hours. But people usually already bandage it up by that time.

Or if the wound gets infected. But nobody would really notice/care if you avoid having that happen.

It might not heal right. The wrist is a massively bitchy piece of bone. Other than that, yeah, blood loss is your only main problemo when it comes to death, other than infection. I don't know how much blood is able to be lost from the hand though. That you might want to take to another forum — doctor orientated, probably.

How accurate is the person doing the shooting? Unless he's standing with his arms out, would they have accidentally hit another part of his body?

The guy is a fairly accurate sharpshooter using a sniper rifle from a bit of a distance (say, one block)

I keep wondering how it'd work with a rifle, I mean would be a fairly clean hole or with the hand just shatter into little bits?

Anyone know where I could go to research stuff like this?

Clearly, this requires empirical testing. I'll get my sniper rifle...

I imagine it would depend to a great degree on what kind of bullets were used, what angle they hit at, etc. — I'm pretty sure rifle rounds leave pretty clean entry wounds but cause lots of internal damage, and could easily fuck up complicated bone structures like carpals for life, but some of this could be Hollywood Science and I have no personal experience with guns of any kind.

Well the whole point is that he COULD survive it right? We figured that out. Sure he might be unlucky enough to be shot by a deadlier bullet or it could go through his hand to hit his neck. But YOU'RE writing this aren't you? So you could decide that it's not the case. Also how's his Plot Armor? That could help .

He'll probably never be able to use that hand properly again, but it won't kill him unless he's seriously unlucky.

Depends on the sniper rifle. If it's a Barett 50. Cal,that hand is coming off,maybe his arm with it. Really,any sniper rifle round is either going to tear the hand off or damage it enough to have it amputated.