Gunshot wounds...

gwendy85 said:

Questions are,

Is it right to assume this is in long-range? Or is it short range?

Any permanent damage that this might cause?

Where should the bullet hit?

Is it possible to be hit near the heart but survive?

Click to expand...

Gwendy -

I'm not familiar with the Nambu, but I think I can answer your questions.

First, to your general question: yes, someone could be shot with a pistol and pass out a few minutes later. There is not a specific type of pistol that does this; It's more a matter of blood loss and shock. The docs on this board can explain the process better than I can, but basically as the body loses blood, the victim loses energy (from oxygen deprivation to the muscles) until he passes out. Shock sets in when the brain starts shutting down non-essential systems to keep the essential ones working.

To answer your specific questions:
Long-range vs. short-range: If he's shot with a pistol, it's pretty much automatically a short-range shot. Shooting a pistol accurately at distances greater than about 30 meters is difficult on a range; in combat conditions it would be dang near impossible. A pistol shot that hit him beyond this distance would also hit with a lot less energy than it would from up close. If you're shooting from more than 15-20 meters out, you really want to use a rifle.

Permanent damage really depends on where he is hit, with what caliber bullet, at what range, and could range from scarring, to diminished range of motion in a limb, to diminished capacity of an organ (liver, intestines, stomach, etc.), to paralysis, to loss of a limb--the variety of possibilities is pretty much endless.

As to where the bullet should hit him--it sounds like he has people around him, but you want them not to know he's shot until he keels over. This really depends on several factors, like what he's wearing and what the climate is. If it's cold and he has a lot of dark-colored clothes on, the clothing could conceal the bleeding until he has lost enough blood to pass out. If not, you need a chest wound, something that will bleed more internally than externally, preferably that he can cover up so the folks around him don't know it's there. I might recommend something from the side, entering the chest below the armpit; he can cover it with his arm, and external blood loss would appear minimal while internal could easily become life-threatening.

As to whether people can survive gunshot wounds near the heart: absolutely, but there are so many variables I can't do the answer justice. The short answer is: if the heart, or any of the major veins or arteries that connect to it, is breached, the victim will bleed to death very, very quickly (maybe as fast as a minute, depending on the size of the hole). If not, he may be able to survive long enough for medical care to reach him.

There's what I know. Let's see what the docs say now.

HN

The blood loss and shock is a sure bet. Particularly since he was already beaten severely.

Yeah, and remember everyone is different.

My uncle, for example, was pulling a shotgun out of his car, loaded, safety off (I can hear the universal cringe) it went off.

It shot him through the chest, there are still pieces of the scattershot in his heart. They are made out of led so he is still getting lead damage from it nearly forty years after the incident.

Some lodged into his spine. They did not cause immediate damage but as they are made out of lead they are also causing damage there. He is now in a wheel chair but it took about twenty years before he started feeling the aftermath.

The hole in his chest was so big they could have stuck a dinner glass in the hole and it wouldn't have touched the sides.

They lived about fifty miles from the nearest hospital, there were no lifeflight helecopters around, they had to drive it on unpaved roads in an old truck whose highest speed was 40 miles an hour at top.

Physically he shouldn't have lived, let alone suffered so little. It took a piece of his heart and yet he lived and stayed awake for nearly two hours until they could reach the hospital.

Now that I have that example out, each and every person is different. Some wouldn't have lasted five minutes with that wound.

I do think your senario is pretty accurate, if he had tightly binding clothes he may last longer before passing out, some wouldn't pass out but merely go into shock, some shock is deeper than others.

Where it hits depends on the damage and to what. The kidneys are surprisingly forgiving and you can live without one of them. The liver can lose 75% of its mass before it stops functioning. The stomach can be repaired and you can lose a section of your intestines. Your lungs you can lose pieces of but you are going to feel that one for the rest of your life. If you have a lung shot it's called a sucking chest wound. They aren't pretty and whichever lung is damaged can fill up with blood pretty quickly and you can drown in your own blood.

Heart can be hit but it depends on where, how damaging, and such on whether or not you live. Anywhere in the spine can cause partial to full paralysis. Some of it can be fixed by taking pressure off the spine and reducing nerve damage, some is irreversible.

In the neck, you can survive this but action must be immediate. In the leg and arms you have to watch out for major arteries, if you hit one, chances are if you survive you are going to lose it, especially back then.

In the head, if it's a graze you can certainly bleed a lot and live, if it doesn't penetrate the skull you can do pretty well, there was one guy in world war II that was hit through the cheeks, it broke off several teeth and nearly severed his tongue, the medic was able to save him and he wound up with dimples as recourse. The tongue is a resiliant organ with fast healing, most punctures can be healed within 24 hours or at least sealed. Ears, you can lose ears, or cut them. If it penetrates the skull and somehow manages to make it's way to an unvital section, you can live through that, remember it was the removal of the bullet that killed Lincoln, not the bullet itself. Then you have to watch for brainswelling, in which liquid is trapped between the brain and the skull and presses against the brain, they then have to relieve it to prevent death and damage.

And then you have everything in between so it's really what you want it to be like.

I've been doing medical transcription for quite a long time and over the last couple of years have been transcribing for hospitals in Denver, Colorado and environs who take in a lot of gunshot wound cases. I've also done a lot of shooting in my life and handled various types of guns. (Most recently shot an M16-- tell me THAT wasn't fun! It kept jamming, though. ) Anyway, if you have a specific question about gunshot wounds please feel free to message me-- if I put everything I know about guns and being shot (or shot AT) into one post it would be a travesty that scarcely anyone (except perhaps my friends at the Bureau) would want to read.

My most recent personal experience with gunshot injury was a bit more than a year ago, when-- out wandering in some fields when I should have been working-- I happened upon an unfortunate man who had committed suicide by shooting himself in the chest. (Yes, he was quite dead.) I put the experience in my blog and you wouldn't believe how many people thought I was, er, pullin their legs. (The story got really weird when the man's mom called me about a month and a half later...)

What the other respondents are saying in this thread is quite true-- a person can have a relatively minor injury and pass out immediately, or conversely have a grievous injury or be mangled quite horribly and not only live, but seem to take it relatively in stride.

I hope this was helpful!

I hope I'm not buttingin here but I have a similar question and this might just be the opportunity to ask it.

This character, a huge, strong man, gets hit at short range. He falls, and the shooter (an inexperenced woman) thinks he;s dead.

But he's not. Some time later - half an hour, an hour - later, after having been found by someone and given first aid, he's back on his feet again and after the woman.

Can anyone explain WHAT exactly happened??? Where he got hit, why she thought he was dead, how soon he recovered, etc? I hope the scenario is not impossible, but in them ovies people get shot and still go on for ages. (I won't have to describe it in detail in the story, but I need to know myself. I may just hint at what happens inthe writing.)

aruna said:

I hope I'm not buttingin here but I have a similar question and this might just be the opportunity to ask it.

This character, a huge, strong man, gets hit at short range. He falls, and the shooter (an inexperenced woman) thinks he;s dead.

But he's not. Some time later - half an hour, an hour - later, after having been found by someone and given first aid, he's back on his feet again and after the woman.

Can anyone explain WHAT exactly happened??? Where he got hit, why she thought he was dead, how soon he recovered, etc? I hope the scenario is not impossible, but in them ovies people get shot and still go on for ages. (I won't have to describe it in detail in the story, but I need to know myself. I may just hint at what happens inthe writing.)

Click to expand...

Have him faking the extent of the injury.

A shoulder or side wound missing all major organs.

There are instances where people were shot in the head, passed out due to loss of blood, low heart rate, so low paramedics couldn't detect it, assume their dead, body bag them, then the person wakes up in the body bag able to move around and such on their own without treatment as the wound clotted up and the blood supply returned.

Police officers in California had to change their hand guns from 9 mil to a larger caliber because the 9 mil just wouldn't bring down the bigger guys, they could empty an entire clip and the guys would keep on coming.

If she has a small caliber bullet, he is a big guy as you say, she doesn't hit him anywhere vital, it's absolutely possible he would go down then get back up. I would have a reason for him to go down, like if someone came to her rescue, someone he believed may be capable of stopping him, so he would fake it until they left, then he would bandage up and go after her.

As they said no two gunshot wounds are the same.

One of my dear friends tried to kill herself by shooting herself in the chest. It came within a half a millimeter of puncturing her lungs and her heart. It missed her bones and everything and lodged in soft tissue. To get the bullet out they had to break three of her ribs to gain access, and the scar and damage from the surgery was worse than the actual bullet, however they couldn't leave it in there because there was a risk of it shifting and hitting her artery.

That was point blank. Write it believable, truth is certainly stranger than fiction, the higher fitness level the person has the higher survival rate they will have. Some bullets mushroom and spin, so you will want to check out types of tips. Lead tips are soft, they mushroom out spin cause the most types of damage. Full metal jackets are through and through in general, they are hard and are designed for penetration. There are some bullets that have a wobbly spin, they are also very damaging. So the type of bullet has as much effect on the types of wounds as the area it enters.

Another possibility for Aruna's character is a through and through in a skin area, the skin at the top of the shoulder, the skin under the arm, the skin around the waste, the skin and muscle through the leg. All of these would have enough blood and proximity, especially if he wasn't moving to appear dead, and if she was in a hurry to get out of there, she wouldn't exactly check for a pulse.

Gwendy,

The people surrounding him would hear the gunshot and would see the jolt in his body. When you see someone shot there is no wondering if they were really shot. You could have the doctor explain when he woke up how close it was, how lucky he was. No audience is going to contend that unless you riddle his body with bullets.

But then there is 50 cent (the rapper) who was shot like 12 times, several of which were in his head and he suffered no permanent damage.

That is hilarious actually, a fictional similar account would be awesome.

Thanks to both of you, I think I can visualise it now. A through and through wound sounds good, but would he fall from that?

He could hit his head on an iron bedstead, lies there dead-like. The two women (at the time he is threatening another woman, the one with the gun rescues her) escape, the guy lies there for a while bleeding till someone comes and helps him, a whilelater he's good as ever.

aruna said:

Thanks to both of you, I think I can visualise it now. A through and through wound sounds good, but would he fall from that?

He could hit his head on an iron bedstead, lies there dead-like. The two women (at the time he is threatening another woman, the one with the gun rescues her) escape, the guy lies there for a while bleeding till someone comes and helps him, a whilelater he's good as ever.

Click to expand...

As you said there are two of them, couldn't one creep up behind him and hit him over the head while they run for it, leaving him there, hopefully bleeding to death in their minds?

ETA, also if she were to run out of bullets, he was still coming toward her, perfect reason for the other one to knock him out and both of them to run for it and not make sure he is good and dead.

You can never be sure whether you're going to see a lot of blood with a gunshot wound-- blood's usually NOT the determining factor of knowing whether someone has been hit. The REAL determining factor as far as onlookers are concerned is that if someone is hit by a bullet that person almost always falls, and moreover looks like someone has grabbed him by whatever part of the body he's been hit in and given him a hard yank; if one is standing close enough, there may be an accompanying "WHAP" sort of sound as the bullet hits skin and/or bone.

If the guy who got hit has military or martial arts training, he may not fall, but it will still look as though someone yanked or struck him.

There's not always a whole lot of blood-- that entirely depends on what part of the body was hit and if the bullet severed any large blood vessels. The stuff they show in movies, with people getting shot and blood spraying all over the place, is mostly for effect. It's not always, or even usually, like that.

Getting struck by a bullet feels like, as Ernest Hemingway so aptly described, getting hit with a baseball bat. At first it's just a shock-- and again, there may not be a lot of blood.

A gunshot wound doesn't hurt much for the first minute or so, and then it starts to sting, then burn, then swell up. If you're still conscious by that point you will be in a lot of pain, like a heavy throbbing/aching. If you've ever hit your thumb hard with a hammer, multiply that by about 100, and you'll have an idea of how it feels.

If the bullet went through an arm or leg, there will be a lot more blood where it came out then where it went in.

And again: If your character who gets shot has military training, then chances are good he's not just going to shriek and fall to the ground upon being shot. So, maybe only a couple of people know it, right? Then maybe after a few minutes someone notices some blood.

People who are victims of accidental shootings often have the extra problem of no one around them knowing exactly what happened until it's almost too late-- to an onlooker the person just seems to fall limply to the ground. It sometimes takes many minutes for it to become obvious that the victim has been shot.