Which one is it?

What happens when a high velocity round that has yet to expend any of its energy enters soft tissue or gel is that it carries on along its main vector of travel. Bullets don’t magically adopt new physics because, hey, that’s what happens. This is Newtonian physics. For a bullet, any bullet to deflect off of its path of travel a force has to act on it.

We can calculate these forces and for a 30 degree deflection down into Charlie’s body from a 10 degree initial angle, with a .30-06 round traveling at an estimated 2500 ft/s (best we can do, conservatively, until we see the actual recovered bullet and match that to a specific load) there would have to be ~12,000 pounds of force applied.

A sufficient steel plate could do that, but not a human neck hit in the softest of the soft spots. That bullet would have carried on without any meaningful deflection for more than the width of Charlie’s neck.

I think what you and your experience are possibly conflating here is the terminal behavior of bullets that have already lost the majority of their initial energy with the initial behavior of a bullet that is carrying all of its on-target energy.

Under terminal conditions, with the bullet having lost the majority of its energy, it is now much more likely to do goofy things and deflect because there’s a lot less energy along its vector of travel. Smaller forces like a rib, or fascia plane can now have a much more pronounced influence on a slower, low-energy projectile.

So it’s really best to decompose the goofy things bullets can do into three components: the initial energy upon initially striking a body, its mid-range travel, and its terminal travel. I have ZERO examples of high-energy bullets deflecting meaningfully in gel or meat (some people shoot pork roasts, for example) or watermelons during their initial phase. If you’ve got some data, I’m all ears.

Nathan Spearing

@thespearing

Replying to @chrismartenson

I watched the whole video. I’m not a “gun culture” guy but I have killed people on the battlefield and have directly treated people who have been shot.

Martenson: “High-speed bullets typically don’t “bounce” off of steel or titanium plates. They shatter. Lower speed can, but that’s not what we’re discussing here.”

What happens when a high velocity round that has yet to expend any of its energy enters soft tissue or gel is that it carries on along its main vector of travel. Bullets don’t magically adopt new physics because, hey, that’s what happens. This is Newtonian physics. IN order for a bullet, any bullet to deflect off of its path of travel a force has to act on it. We can calutalce these forces and for a 30 degree deflection down into Charlie’s body from a 10 degree initial angle, with a .30-06 round traveling at an estimated 2500 ft/s (best we can do, conservatively, until we see the actual recovered bullet and match that to a specific load) there would have to be ~12,000 pounds of force applied.

A sufficient steel plate could do that, but not a human neck hit in the softest of the soft spots. That bullet would have carried on without any meaningful deflection for more than the width of Charlie’s neck. I think what you and your experience is possibly confusing here is the terminal behavior of bullets that have already lost the majority of their initial energy. Under the terminal conditions, with the bullet having lost the majority of its energy it is now much more likely to do goofy things and deflect because there’s a lot less energy along its vector of travel.

So it’s really best to decompose the goofy things bullets can do into three components: the initial energy upon initially striking a body, its mid-range travel, and its terminal travel. I have ZERO examples of high-energy bullets deflecting meaningfully in gel or meat (some people shoot pork roasts, for example) or watermelons during their initial phase. If you’ve got some data, I’m all ears.