Is it actually possible to kill someone with a liquor bottle?

Might depend on the weight of the bottle. A champagne bottle, for instance, is far heavier than a beer bottle.

It is possible. Bottles don't always break. Assaults are typically characterized by multiple blows. The skull is amazingly tough - but not invincible.

Without getting into the physics, a full bottle can do more damage than an empty one.

Ever try to break a Coke bottle from the '50s?

The 6-8-10oz versions were (are) damn near indestructible!

People have died from a single punch to the head...

Some of the liquor bottles I know are made of thicker glass than, say wine bottles or soda bottles. I do reckon all the TV and Hollywood broken glass-scenes have left me with a somewhat unrealistic view of how glass reacts when smashed against something with force. But if I think of how much effort it sometimes takes to hear the glass shatter in the glass recycling containers when I throw in bottles, some bottles obviously don't shatter easily.

So I can very well imagine someone killed instantly with a good swing of a liquor bottle. And I don't think it will take un-ordinary force or a special bottle.

I have survived quite a bit of blows to the head over the years. (Still have the dented metal waste basket to prove it.) But I take it the location on the skull where the blow falls may also have a significant influence on the mortality. I think I have been very lucky so far.

Can it most definitely. Will it always? Probably not.

The empty vs full thing's interesting. Mythbusters tested it a couple years ago. You might take a look for the episode.

Oh, yeah Hollywood bottles don't break like real ones. I treated a stupid friend that tried to break a bottle on his head at a party. The bottle didn't break but he got 8 stitches.

By a pretty random chance.


I'd knock them out, then their fall might end up a little wrong. Just a thought.

If the blow was to the temple with a thick glass bottle ie: champagne, I'd say it's absolutely possible.

Sure it could happen. If you aren't convinced the bottle would outright kill them just have them fall, unconscious, backwards on a hard floor. A dead drop can kill you all in itself.

veinglory said:

Sure it could happen. If you aren't convinced the bottle would outright kill them just have them fall, unconscious, backwards on a hard floor. A dead drop can kill you all in itself.

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Yup. I've taken some bad blows to the head, but apparently not to the wrong spots. If you're still having a hard time with it, consider an underlying problem. A friend of mine has a "bubble of blood" in her brain (not sure of the details, sorry) from a bad car accident she was in as a child. She's been told that hitting her head could rupture it, and that if that happens it will likely kill her, so she's rather careful. If your vic has a similar problem (he might not even know he does) he could be extra vulnerable.

There was a Mythbusters episode about full versus empty bottles that might be helpful. You can kill someone.

mayqueen said:

There was a Mythbusters episode about full versus empty bottles that might be helpful. You can kill someone.

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Hell yes. You will find the ep on YouTube. Bits of skull all over the place.

This piques my curiosity so I weighed two bottles:

An EMPTY Champagne bottle (Bollinger, Extra Quality Very Dry, 1955 Vintage) weighs 953gs/ 2lbs 1 3/4 ozs.

An EMPTY bottle of Grants Whisky weighs 512 gs/ 1lb 2 1/8 ozs.

I would think that being hit over the head with an empty or full bottle of Champagne would, as has already been suggested, cause a serious and possibly fatal dent.

Murder: Joint Enterprise. One of the characters gets killed by an Amaretto bottle. Liqueurs in heavy thick bottles are hard to break.

Depends on where and how one is hit. People have fallen off skis or hit their head on the ice while skating and died. I had a student who fell off the back of a pickup truck - just as it was starting up - hit his head on the pavement and died, and he was a big, sturdy, athletic guy.

I believe an actress died this way a few years ago from a fall when skiing. She didn't die right away; it happened some hours later.

This question may have been answered to your satisfaction already, but I'm a student paramedic here in Aus, and I went and asked one of our tutors who is an intensive care paramedic about your question. Her answer was yes, absolutely, although it is much more likely that the person will fall and hit either their head/spine and suffer complications from that.

Although - looking at the clinical practise guidelines, a blunt force to the head is classified as emergent time critical, which means that there's a significant pattern of injury (in this case the blunt trauma to the head), which in the past has been proven to lead to the degeneration of the pt's stats to the point that their life is in danger. As such, we're supposed to triage the pt to the nearest trauma facility within 30 minutes.

Also, if it's an empty bottle, apparently haemorrhage can be an issue given the broken glass, although that's a bit rarer.

Hope that helps

Hey Chris, it's a timely question.

Most of the time serious injuries are not from what the blow to the head does to bone, unless you are talking about a severe trauma such as a motor vehicle crash or fall from a balcony. Instead, the problem is often what happens to the blood vessels--if one ruptures, it can lead to enough accumulation of blood to compress the brain.

Where the hit landed, how old the recipient is, whether it was a vein or artery that ruptured, and the peculiarities of individual anatomy (among other things) are all relevant. Does it happen? Definitely. Is it common? Not with most blows to the head. Can you easily tell which hits are an issue and which aren't? Not without assessing the person and having the needed training to do so well. Even then, some are missed.

Here's another bottle killing - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-19465414