(Very, very graphic death) https://x.com/_geopolitic_/status/1965851790714482943 (not safe for life / NSFL)
[Graphic description] What kind of gun could that have been? Incredible amount of kinetic energy—you can actually see a hydraulic pressure wave oscillating through his entire chest. This was obviously fatal, if anyone wasn't sure. Probably died instantly, given the neurological "fencing" response (suggests spinal cord was hit—never mind the artery, he was already dead).
A lot of the damage of a bullet is this concussive damage, not the piercing damage. Hollywood has been lying to you (apparently real gun experts hate the movie “shoulder shot” because there’s a lot of things to damage there, especially once you take the concussive force into consideration).
For those who are on the fence, don’t watch it. I just did and I regret it. Suffice it to say that the blood loss alone will be critical condition at the very best.
Could you expand on this? What does neurological "fencing" response mean, and what in the video indicates this is it?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fencing_response ("Fencing response")
Ironically the prevalence of AR-15s has made people underestimate the amount of power and damage that most deer hunting rifles possess. 5.56 is like the bare minimum you can get away with to reliably disable or mortally wound a human or similarly sized animal, which is why the military used it because it saves weight so soldiers can carry more of it even if they have to hike 20 miles to their objective. Most hunting rifles are serious overkill for killing their target because hunters want instant take downs, not an animal that is able to stand up and get an adrenaline boost and sprint away if even for just 15 seconds into the brush because the shot was a half inch to the left. .30_06, a common deer round and used in the M1 Garand of WWII, is just under twice the muzzle energy of 5.56.
There are many different kinds of ammunition design. Some pierce and punch holes, some fragment and tumble, some balloon and expand, some cause large tears and cavities.
Ballistic science is actually a fairly complicated rabbit hole
Also: smaller assault rounds like 5.56 can in fact do more damage than larger ones in some case because of its tendency to bounce around in the body.
But also, no, the smaller rounds don't have a "tendency to bounce around in the body". It sounds like you're referring to the phenomenon known as tumbling, where the wound track ends up being curved because the bullet loses stability as it hits. This happens because bullets are heavier at the base and thus unstable; while in air, they are stabilized by rotation imparted on them by the rifling, but once they hit anything dense (like, well, human body) it would take a lot more spinning to keep them stable, so all bullets do that. It does not involve any bouncing, however.
Light and fast bullets like 5.56 are particularly unstable and will do it faster, though. But even then, for 5.56, the primary damage mechanism is from bullet fragmentation: between the bullet being fairly long and thin, and high velocity of impact, the bullet literally gets torn apart, but the resulting pieces still retain most of kinetic energy. Except now, each piece, being irregular, travels on its own random trajectory, creating numerous small wound channels in strong proximity, which then collapse into one large wound cavity. But, again, this is mostly a function of bullet velocity and construction (e.g. presence or absence of cannelure), not caliber as such.