Gun Porn!

Ros; When I get a chance I will dig up the variants for you as there are actually quite a few.

When I were but a nipper, just after I watched some of the older guys in my unit taking that Nazarene guy down from his cross, I was specifically told by people in the trials team for the SA 80 (who were trained by our Small Arms School - and were thus really good at the old shooting thing) that it and its ammunition were first and foremost designed to wound, not kill, as it took more people out of the fight to help a wounded guy than it did when you killed him.

Then things changed to, "Now this 5.56mm stuff and the rifle that goes with it is designed for killing people. Forget all you were told before."

This was a good twenty or so years ago, and there's been many changes in the military .22 class ammunition world, so I'm fairly convinced, after much reading, that the new stuff the US Army and USMC uses are rounds that have a much higher lethality.

But there's nothing in the shoulder-fired class under .50 BMG that will definitely kill you in one shot. I know of at least one guy who tanked a 7.62mm NATO sniper-class bullet fired from a FN FAL to the head and survived to have kids.

Tam more or less nails it.

Ros: This ammo document from Ammunitionstore.com has a pretty good list of the ammo varieties for just 5.56mm.

Flame Thrower in Slow Motion

Very cool.

Re: "weak" bullets — I'm reminded of a story...

A young shooter goes to the Great Gun Guru and asks him, "Can you tell me, oh Wise One, the secret of the perfect load?"

The Great Gun Guru replies: "Go unto the shooting range, my son. And practice, and practice, and practice yet some more. And when thou canst keep all thy shots within the ten-ring, come back and I shall tell thee the secret of the perfect load."

The young shooter nods and leaves. Months, and even years go by, but he never returns to learn the secret of the prefect load.

One day, the Great Gun Guru is down at the shooting range, and he sees the young shooter practicing nearby. And sure enough, all his shots are inside the ten-ring. He says to him, "Tell me, My Son, why didst thou not return to learn the secret of the perfect load?"

The young shooter replies, "Because I don't need it any more," as he fires another shot into the bullseye.

Moral: shot placement is primary; the most powerful caliber in the world is useless if you miss.

There's the old anecdote about soldiers shooting at enemies hiding in the brush, and having the anemic 5.56 rounds get deflected by the underbrush, preventing them from hitting the target.

Of course, some folks point out that the foliage might have simply been making it more difficult for them to aim at their targets. Concealment and all.

I swear my bullet went wild because it was deflected by a twig, and definitely not because I was snap-shooting at a dim shape barely glimpsed!

And then there are repeated occurrences of people taking a half mag's worth of confirmed hits from stuff like 5.56mm or .30 Carbine and still coming at them.

Of course the limit between guaranteed death and beyond improbable survival in terms of caliber is asymptotic. People have survived hits from 20mm cannon fire to the brain before. But the rate of such dramatic survivals diminishes the larger the caliber. That guy who survived a 20mm to the dome (as happened in Afghanistan)? That's a one a in a million. A guy who survives a .50 cal hit is one in ten thousand. The guy who survives .308? About one in one hundred. The guy who brushes off 5.56mm is like 1 in 10.

There is the converse to the whole shot placement thing. The best shot placements in the world mean nothing if the target doesn't drop. If you put a perfect hit through his heart center mass and he still kills you before dropping dead later, is that round you hit him with effective? You're still dead, so...probably not.

Tom; I hate to break to you but people survived .308 and even .30-06 by about the same margin. Modern medicine ensures more people survive just about everything a lot better. Again shot placement is king.

^ Again, the converse. The best shot in the universe means nothing if the target doesn't drop. The smaller the caliber, the more likely that happens. Especially at range.

And engagement distance is also very important, a 5.56 NATO at close range will be certainly more deadly than a 7.62 NATO at longer distances.

Tom: Again not true. Remind me again what were the percentages of wounded by gun fire in WWI for the US alone you know the war firing the full power rifles? Oh yeah over 62% were wounded not killed wounded by gunfire. We lost more men to influenza then to gun fire and artillery combined and artillery had the lions share of the killing. I hate to tell you Tom you have about equal odds of surviving.

From what I've heard of M80A1 EPR's....that is no longer the case. Both M 855 A 1 and M 80 A 1 have about effectively equal fragmentation at 100 meters. And it retains fragmentation potential to 400 meters.

And the percentages from modern intermediate calibers in today's wars?

Dropping the target doesn't necessarily mean the target dropping dead. You can get hit, go down, and be out of the fight (and out of the entire war) but still survive.

Tom; As per usual you can't pay attention to the facts tom.

And we have covered the range bit numerous times and intermediate rounds are still better suited to the majority of combat situations then larger rounds for numerous reasons and larger calibers are better suited for support weapons. The improved lethality of both rounds means they are both more effective further out meaning we are still where we were to begin with. Both rounds are looking to be highly effective and there is no reason out there to support your usual misinformed song and dance that we totally need to only use .30 cal weapons. All the M80A1 did was keep the status quo.

As for likelihood of being wounded they are about the same as it matters most where you are hit. You are just as likely to be wounded when you are shot now as you were then. Location, location, location you really can't seem to grasp the actual point of the importance of shot location.

The biggest difference isn't the calibers it is that today medical care is so advanced for even items out of your carried kit you have much higher survival rate. There are very few locations you can be hit and your med kit doesn't have a decent chance of holding you together long enough for medevac. Add in post injury care has vastly improved including surgery and post care recovery is more complete. Even insurgents have better medical care options then they used to. WWI had so many advances before and during the war in injury treatment you were a lot more likely to die from being shot in the Crimean or American Civil war then WWI.

You have to start getting into notably more powerful rounds to do any "your pretty fucked if your hit" type damage because of sheer volume of tissue that is crushed and torn when they hit personnel. Even then there are multiple accounts of people getting hit and surviving just fine. Center mass hits though are pretty much game over man.

edited 30th Jul '16 6:47:27 PM by TuefelHundenIV

Scenario: You've just been informed that people all over the world have been sighting the recently dead rising again and consuming the flesh of the living.

What is your choice of firearm, and why?

I'm gonna go none of them because I'll just lock my door and wait for a week. Any zombie apocalypse would be shut down pretty much immediately by the CDC. They do not fuck around when it comes to pandemics.

suppose it originated there.

This is The Walking Dead's version of the plague: everyone turns.

edited 30th Jul '16 6:52:25 PM by blkwhtrbbt

If it originated at a CDC facility then I'm even safer.

Dude, the CDC has no fucking qualms about shutting down cities, destroying infected, and forcibly giving your kids lye baths. A zombie apocalypse just ain't gonna happen.

Doubly so because believe it or not the CDC genuinely has several plans of action in case of zombie infection.

CDC is not monolithic. It would also depend greatly on what sort of fictional zombie setting we are talking about. I would prefer a good sturdy puncturing melee weapon of some sort. Guns are loud, may draw unwanted attention, and have a larger logistical foot print then melee weapons.

Ruchnoy Protivotankovy Granatomiot 7. Takes zombies out by the dozen plus per shot especially if I use thermobarics.

Backed up by either a PKP Pecheneg or M 240 L GPMG. Because I want them cut to ribbons and pieces and also of course because happiness is a belt-fed weapon.

If it is those parkour motherfuckers and Olympic wall climbers shitheads from L 4 D then we're fucked, if it is The Walking Dead type, I'd just go to my uncle's farm and have a Saiga-12, try to wall the perimeter and secure a nice food supply.

If everyone's going to be a zombie when they die, no matter the circumstances (and for some reason we're actually going to be using the plot from that badly written episodic, interminable, dirge-fest instead of anything more credible), then I'm pretty sure that's where all the nukes in all the world just get deployed at the same time in a mutually agreed mutual-kill.

Because what's the point of carrying on if everyone's going to be a zombie anyway? What's the point in fighting?

End of the world, hmm?

Pros: nobody to bother me with stupid questions (except for the undead, who aren't talkative)

Cons: no more of those little cakes I like. Also, the undead smell awful.

edited 30th Jul '16 10:52:28 PM by SabresEdge

I'd just ring my hideout with copper wire and hook it up to a radio transmitter with a bunch of linear amplifiers to bake anything that tries to get too close.

Of course, there is the small chance that I'd burn the shit out of myself flipping the power switch. Better invest in a finger longerer so I can work the traceiver from a safe distance. I might also set something on fire. Probably the hideout.

Regarding stopping power, the recent popularity of improved body armor is also going to have interesting effects on the calculus. If your enemy has Category IIIA body armor, even that 7.62 may prove underpowered if you can't reliably put multiple shots on target quickly, and I understand that difficulty with rapid-fire accuracy was one reason they moved towards smaller calibers.