MythBusters Episode 50: Bullets Fired Up
Air Date: April 19, 2006
Bullets fired into the air maintain their lethal capability when they eventually fall back down.
busted / plausible / confirmed
In the case of a bullet fired at a precisely vertical angle (something extremely difficult for a human being to duplicate), the bullet would tumble, lose its spin, and fall at a much slower speed due to terminal velocity and is therefore rendered less than lethal on impact. However, if a bullet is fired upward at a non-vertical angle (a far more probable possibility), it will maintain its spin and will reach a high enough speed to be lethal on impact. Because of this potentiality, firing a gun into the air is illegal in most states, and even in the states that it is legal, it is not recommended by the police. Also the MythBusters were able to identify two people who had been injured by falling bullets, one of them fatally injured. To date, this is the only myth to receive all three ratings at the same time.
Vodka can remove poison oak.
busted
For some reason, although most of the MythBusters were allergic to poison oak when they were young (especially Kari, who was exempted from the test because she had once had a dangerous reaction), it didn’t affect anyone but John the Researcher. The vodka still gave no results.
Vodka can painlessly remove plastic bandages.
confirmed
Both a control and vodka-soaked bandage were quickly removed from hair-covered legs and, while not painless, the vodka-soaked bandage came off less painfully and removed less hair than the control.
Vodka can be turned into high-quality vodka through charcoal filtration.
busted
Through a double-blind taste test, the cheap vodka seemed to taste better with every subsequent filtration, although the top-shelf vodka beat them all. However, a chemical analysis showed no actual difference between the filtered and unfiltered cheap vodka.
Newer: Episode 51: Myths Reopened
dear mythbusters, im an ialian fan and i watch our episode on discovery channel. i love our program, and i have a suggestion for revisit the myth: bullets fired up. you create a long tube (50 or 75 meters) and plant it in the desert with a 44 magnum or a revolver .38 over the tube….
August 28, 2007 at 2:08 AMyou shoot and when the bullet fall down calculate if the fall is dangerous for the umans. please say hello at adam, jamie, tori, kari, and grant….
W mythbusters…
P.S
revisit my myth please
thanks
michele
Hey guys, Your bullet in the sky repro failed to figure in the spin ! the .30 M1 Garand you used had a 24″ barrel and a 1/10 twist. So figure 2400 fps 2400×12/10*60
September 26, 2007 at 8:34 PMis about 172,800 RPM ! You do know that the bullet is still spinning when its on the way back, dont you ?
caliber: 9mm
October 2, 2007 at 1:11 PMheight:>1000m
speed:>300km/h
result: deadly
video (german, but you can see the results)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZDS_2ooqpU
I also heard that there was a substantial difference in lethality between high-velocity and low-velocity rounds….can the mb’s confirm? I was told that high-velocity rounds would remain lethal after being fired high in an arc, but low-velocity (44 mag., et al) would not.
a revisit would be very nice…
October 27, 2007 at 5:19 PMYou’ve done dropped pennies, dropped bullets… the mass problem means these aren’t lethal. At what mass does something dropped from a tower/high building become dangerous? Bricks, for instance, I would think would be a real issue. Certainly watermelons and champagne magnums (as seen on Letterman) would be dramatic.
November 30, 2007 at 10:51 PMDecember 24th 2007 Basra Iraq. lots of bullets, just that this one just fell out of the sky!!
December 24, 2007 at 12:09 PMHere’s a story that should change “Bullets fired into air…” rating to confirmed:
January 2, 2008 at 2:43 AMhttp://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22465197/
That msnbc link can’t confirm anything. There’s nothing to say that those bullets were fired straight up in the air.
February 23, 2008 at 11:51 AMI heard the story that the Poms used to do a check fire when they had a new batch of
February 27, 2008 at 4:55 AMartillary shells.
They would take one of their guns down to the beach, point the barrel up vertically
and pull the trigger.
They reasoned the only place the shell
wouldn’t land was back down the barrel,
so they wore their tin hats and camped as close the the gun as possible.
Filtered Vodka
In wartime France, the fuel if you could get it ,contained a large quantity of alcohol.
Bloke I new used to extract the alcohol and
February 27, 2008 at 5:38 AMDrink it by passing the fuel through a carbon filter.
Errata Filtered Vodka
To be more accurate you must first add water to the fuel.
This causes the Alcohol to separate out from the mixture.
You can then decant and carbon filter the alcohol.
In Australia you can buy fuel that is ten
percent alcohol.
That translates to 0.8 of a pint of 100%
alcohol to a gallon of fuel.
As normal spirits are only about 40% by volume alcohol that translate to two pints
of drinking alcohol per gallon of fuel.
Starts to make a trip to the gas station
February 28, 2008 at 6:43 AMan economic opportunity!!
Discovering The Best Antivirus Software For You Antivirus software
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just a heads up about vodka & posion oak.in order toget an allergic reaction from posion oak you must expose the lab rats to posion oak.the plant you used in your test was not posion oak.better revisit the episode & look at the shape of the leaf you thought was posion oak & try again.i’ll send you all the posion oak you want.
November 17, 2008 at 12:21 PMErrata Filtered Vodka
I would be very careful about drinking alcohol extracted from gasohol type fuels. Many fuel additives (MTBE, tetra-ethyl lead, etc.) are water soluble and will separate out with the alcohol. Most will be present in quantities sufficient to produce long term toxic effects even after 99% removal.
January 1, 2009 at 5:41 AMIn what states is it still legal to shoot up in the air?
January 25, 2009 at 2:52 PMDidn’t the bullets they fired straight up in the salt lake hit the ground sideways? That would prove they were not spinning.
April 3, 2009 at 12:40 PMKILLING ODORS–Peroxide,bakesoda etc. Did anyone saw that show ?
June 15, 2009 at 8:54 AMCharcoal Filtered Vodka…
July 6, 2009 at 3:01 PMImprovement IS possible… it just requires use of ACTIVATED charcoal, and depends upon the impurities present in the first place… Requires more comprehensive science to determone the constituents of cheap vodka, those removable by activated charcoal and which vodkas have such a composition.
I advise use of proper pressurised liquid chromatography in a good lab, and the type of activated charcoal actually used by vodka companies… Personally I consider this confirmed by the fact that thi IS used by Vodka companies … it’s not a cheap process so they’d not do it purely for the gimmick!!
Two weeks ago, a 19-year-old boy was killed during a beach party, when the mob turned on the police. After research, they now say that the boy was killed by a police bullet after a warningshot had been fired. As far as I know, Dutch police uses Walther P5. Possible?
September 8, 2009 at 4:29 AMI,ve lived in LA. all my live and I,ve heard time and time again, of people in New Orleans that have DIED vary often. This is due to people shooting their pistoles (guns) into the sky and the bullet falling back to earth kills. Several people have DIED from this act NOT JUST 1 or 2.
December 6, 2009 at 12:17 PMA falling bullet cannot kill you, provided that it is falling only. It’s terminal velocity will be about 120 MPH. A bullet on a ballistic trajectory still maintains a significant percentage of force from the propellent and can easily kill. that why the myth is busted, plausible and confirmed…
December 25, 2009 at 12:59 PMTo even mention that in the instance of firearms fired at a precisely vertical angle, terminal velocity being less than lethal on impact is irresponsible. To describe celebratory gunfire deaths as “busted” even though mythbuster’s also apparently called them plausible and confirmed is careless. The precisely vertical scenario is not just extremely difficult but so close to impossible that to reference the myth as busted is, reckless. The deaths and injuries on the other hand are well known and documented way beyond your two people who had been injured by falling bullets, one of them fatally injured.
C’mon where did you look?
The International Action Network on Small Arms has a site at http://www.iansa.org/documents/Aerial07-08.pdf which documents; Children and adults killed and wounded by celebratory gunfire
Total: 15 deaths and 77 injuries in 13 countries
In Puerto Rico, where such celebratory actions are common, news media reports have indicated that approximately two persons die and an estimated 25 more are injured each year from celebratory gunfire on New Year’s Eve. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15614232
Spent bullets and their injuries: the result of firing weapons into the sky.
Ordog GJ, Dornhoffer P, Ackroyd G, Wasserberger J, Bishop M, Shoemaker W, Balasubramanium S.
Department of Emergency Medicine, King/Drew-UCLA Medical Center 90059
January 3, 2010 at 12:20 AMPeople often celebrate holidays by firing guns into the air without realizing that this can cause serious injury or death. The present study identified 118 patients treated since 1985 who were hit with spent bullets. Most (77%) were hit in the head. The mortality rate was 32%, which is significantly higher than for all gunshot wound victims in general seen at the same medical center. Laws have been enacted to help prevent people shooting into the sky, but more education and enforcement are required to prevent these serious and preventable injuries. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7996596?ordinalpos=7&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum
Look at the German movie http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZDS_2ooqpU (thanks Dirk).
You can see the trajectory the fired bullet travels (followed by radar) at 2:49 minutes.
Using some goniometric calculations it can be seen that the bullet was almost fired straight up (angle around 83 degrees) with a speed of 1500 meters per second and falls downward with a final angle of around 63 degrees with a speed of 350 meters per second. That is much slower but still lethal. The distance the bullet travels upward is around 1000 meters. On the same picture the horizontal distance can be measured as around 800 meters. That’s a lot.
See the movie around 4 minutes. A bullet specially prepared to be fired with low speed still penetrates a block of gelatine (resembling a body) with a distance of around 0.3 meters.
A block of gelatine prepared with a shield on its side (to resemble the skull) is still penetrated with a distance of estimated 0.1 meters.
That’s enough to kill a man and surely enough to kill a child.
Lowering the angle of the shot to around 60 degrees will result in a much larger distance travelled, a few kilometers could even be possible.
January 5, 2010 at 5:33 PMGiven this is the only myth to have all 3 ratings shouldn’t it be updated? I see the above indication that an angle less than 83% can be lethal.
I imagine that bullets with a higher ballistic coefficient (more aerodynamic) are more likely to maintain the energy and rotation with which they were “launched”. The lethal angle for pistols and rifles is probably different.
Also, how heavy does something have to be before it becomes lethal at terminal velocity in general? Pennies (or uncased bullets) dropped off the empire state building are apparently not lethal. Bricks would be a different story.
Bullet size varies a lot however and can range from under 3 grams to over 40 grams. A 40 gram metal object dropped from the empire state building (or fired vertically from a gun) is much more likely to cause enough blunt force trauma to kill even if only at its terminal velocity.
Can we get a myth busters update?
January 16, 2010 at 6:53 PM