imported post
Decoligny wrote:
Gator5713 wrote:
There have been a few reports over the years of people being injured and even killed by bullets supposed to have been carelessly fired into the air. My belief as to why there are not more reports of this is that most of these bullets simply don't hit anybody. I have had one of these bullets leave a nice dent in the bed of my old pickup before, so I have no doubt that they could be fatal. On a somewhat related note, I have been hit many times by 'shot' from shotguns while bird hunting with no injuries whatsoever... (no, I haven't been hunting with Dick Chaney)
I think it is probably pretty rare for someone to be able toshoot a perfect 90 degrees from the groundvertical shot. It would probably be safe to assume that the further away from true vertical you get, the more of the initial energy from the powder remains with the bullet. There would be some angle where neary every shot fired would be potentially lethal if it hit someones head, maybe 45 degrees (absolute wild a$s guess).
I believe that the issue is the horizontal and verticalvelocity.
Let's assume there is no wind. and you're firing a bullet at 1000 fps. The only forces that can work on the bullet are gravity and air resistance.
If you fire the bullet straight up (vertically),Gravity and air resistance will overcome the velocity, and it will fall back towards the ground, eventually obtaining terminal velocity (I think someone said 300fps?) on the way back down.
Take the other extreme, and fire it perfectly horizontally. Although gravity will be pulling the bullet down towards the ground, the only factor actually slowing the bullet will be air resistance.
So I would think, if you fire a bullet at say, a 80 degree angle (10 degrees from straight up), you're going to have the bullet moving at say, 800 FPS vertically, and 150 FPS horizontally (I'm not doing any math, I'm just guesstimating). Gravity is pulling the bullet down, but the only thing slowing the horizontal movement is wind resistance. When the bullet strikes the ground, it will be travelling at terminal velocity (300fps down) but probably still close to the original horizontal velocity (maybe 70-80 fps?)
Take a 70 degree angle, the bullet is travelling up at maybe 600 fps, but horizontally at 300fps. when it comes down, it will be coming down at 300fps, but still horizontally at over 200fps, so somewhere around 400-500 fps total velocity.
I'm just guesstimating all this stuff, but it makes sense to me. I wouldn't expect a bullet to lose much horizontal velocity when fired upwards at an angle, because the only thing slowing it down horizontally is air resistance, while gravity has a greater affect on the vertical velocity.
...Orygunner...