| From: | Chris Yang <cyang@*****.UBC.CA> |
|---|---|
| Subject: | Tumbling Bullets and Bullet Damage |
| Date: | Mon, 6 Dec 1993 19:46:33 -0800 |
new messages is never a lot of fun... =(
M16 tumbling bullets. Keep in mind that everything I say here is my
own humble opinion and not to be taken as THE truth; although it does
seem to make a lot of sense to me. Tumbling of bullets is not something
caused by the M16 as some magical mystical trait. It's my understanding
that the rifling in the barrel is at fault. An article I read states that
for a specific bullet weight there is a matching rifling twist.
Proper rifling gives you good accuracy and no tumbling. The tumbling
bullets used by the US Military were devloped to contravene Geneva
Conventions banning soft point bullets in war. Their tumbling round
simply moves the centre of gravity to the rear; the result being a bullet
which floats a little bit like a thrown football. When striking a surface
it then begins tumbling causing massive tissue trauma. Accuracy sucks,
but is not as important in close combat anti-personnel skirmishes as it
is while sniping. Note: My players have their armourer custom design
their ammo. The sniper in the group pays up to 50Y per cartridge
to ensure accuracy at extreme and disgusting ranges (up to 2km from his
Barret light 50).
Bullet Damage.
Somebody mentioned a .45 knocking you back after ripping your thumb off.
No offense intended but that is not likely. Newton said something about
equal and opposite reactions, right? The shooter doesn't fall over,
why should the target?
Don't forget to take cross sectional area and torque into account.
Real gunfight stats comparing the .45 to the 9mm (.356) show a higher
per centage of one shot stops for the .45 even though the increased
velocity of the 9mm would lead you to believe it should have a higher
one shot stop. So kinetic energy is not the only culprit.
As for the myth of bullets coming out the size of dinner plates,
don;t believe it. Expansion is rarely to more than double the initial
calibre. Analysis of ballistic gels shows huge cavities, however.
Huge cloud shape cavities which twist round and round the path of the
bullet; the result of shock waves created by the spinning projectile.
To be honest, I don;t know how much each factor contributes to wound
damage, and doubtless there are some that I have missed. Several of
the people I play Srun with, though, have had experience with real
guns and laugh at some of the ideas put out by numerous game systems.
We'd probably be playing Phoenix Command if it didn't take so damn
long to do a 4 second combat, but SRun works with very little rules
butchering.
I'm going to stop rambling now.
Chris
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Chris Yang cyang@*****.ubc.ca
University of British Columbia cyang@******.botany.ubc.ca
Dept of Botany
