Brand name firearms, do you play around with them? Options

[otomik]

[Nikoli]

I dunno, if I saw a guy using sodium bullets, I'd just have to light a fire ans set off the sprinklers

[Arethusa]

If the sodium were enclosed in a frangible jacket, I'd say it could be relatively safe. Relatively waterproof while still essentially explosive and frangible inside the body.

[Nikoli]

But it might shake the shooter for just a moment. Besides, would you risk a mis-fire when shooting in the rain while loading out sodium bullets?

[Austere Emancipa...]

The amount of sodium would be very small, though. And you don't really want an incendiary effect, because that can close blood vessels instead of promoting bleeding -- or if you want incendiary, you want lots of it to burn right into tissue. I don't really see a 0.125cm^3, 0.12g / 0.18gr sodium piece doing significant tissue damage through explosion.

Enclosing it in the jacket would cause it to be rather unrealiable, too. It could get buried inside the bullet on a hit, only warming up the bullet around it or not even igniting at all.

A bullet specifically designed for this would be required anyway.

[otomik]

on contact with water sodium produces Sodium Hydroxide (aka caustic soda, aka lye) and Hydrogen gas. Might see lots of chemical burns and poisoning as well as secondary explosions from the hydrogen gas.

[Nikoli]

That sodium bullet justr keeps getting better...

[otomik]

[Austere Emancipa...]

.40, half the diameter cubed. Basically threw it out of my ass, though. If you lengthen the HP to a full ogive, you could get twice or thrice that in there, easy, but that would still require specifically designed bullets as a modification of JHPs. There's no way you'd get over a gram / 1.5 grains of sodium -- 1cm^3 -- unless you specifically design the bullet to do just that, and made the bullet much lighter in the process.

[Edit]w00t! I typoed based on the pronunciation of a word. I think that's a good sign...[/Edit]

[Arethusa]

I can really see it as feasible with a thin frangible jacket in .45 (maybe .50GI, assuming it ever catches on). It'll have some ballistics issues, but I don't think they'd make it unworkable.

[edit]

I should note that the sodium should be powdered and packed inside the jacket for maximum surface area upon fragmentation.

This post has been edited by Arethusa: Jun 1 2004, 06:17 PM

[Nikoli]

It would make for a good assassination round though. a light sodium shell would take any hope of ballistic patterns with them as it burned away

[Austere Emancipa...]

Feasible = Possible, certainly. Feasible = Useful, doubtful. The advantage is hardly significant, but the additional manufacturing and storing problems are. Nothing wrong with it for special effect, though, which was the original point, I assume.

[Raygun]

If a sodium-based explosive bullet were really feasable, someone would have done it by now. Of course, the 1899 Hague Convention nixes the entire concept for military purposes. Anyway, I think the idea sounds better on paper than it would work in reality.

[Snow_Fox]

True,it sounds really good on paper but the logistics are a nightmare-never mind the time you fire it, you'd have to keep the bullets away from humitidy at all times. It would just be a pain to do all the time.

[Arethusa]

Honestly, I'm not eve sure it sounds that great on paper. You've got a light weight, ballistically limited round (same type of problems a Glaser has) that can't penetrate anything and is only limitedly explosive in a moist medium. Yeah, it'll do somewhat (unreliably) nasty things to an unarmored target, but nothing else. It really isn't all that practical, even in theory. So, feasible, but not really at all worthwhile, I imagine.

[otomik]

[Entropy Kid]

A bit unfortunate, but it's the response I expected to get. It was a more a feasibility (meaning possible AND useful) as well as a "would anyone bother" question(s) than anything else. Rather than massive bleeding wounds (as in the show) I imagined the bullets would do most of their damage from hydrostatic shock/hydrodynamic shockwaves (or whatever name that was agreed upon for the phenomenon). I admit to not reading that thread very carefully (only skimmed really) when it was active so the very foundation of my idea might be flawed.

The only reason I brought up anime was to cite my sources. That was also the reason for the disclaimer comments, since I understood basing a realistic (don't know if that's the right word) weapon design off of anything fictional was problematic, and I didn't want it to be a anime bad vs. anime good argument.

So, is it accurate to say that modern and future ammunition (esp. small arms) development, barring some unforeseen radical new design, is/will be all about AP?

I don't have SOTA2063, so again could be wrong, but I'm a bit surprised there hasn't been any more development of non-projectile type (laser, microwave, whatever) weapons. It seems like lasers haven't changed much since the Street Samurai Catalog. Then again, I can understand them not wanting to turn the setting into Star Wars.

[otomik]

[Crusher Bob]

You can get shock effect when the temporary cavity of the bullet intersects a full bladder or water-full intestines. Though the intestines will stretch pretty well... Also, the liver is rther in-elastic, so any bullet hitting the liver is likely to damage a large part of it and lead to a major internal bleed. Thankfully, if you live, the liver is quite robust, and can put itself back together from a few pieces... On the other hand, it's quite easy to bleed out through a busted liver.

[mcb]

The speed of sound in fresh water (as pointed out the body is a very large % H20) is ~1480m/s (4855fps). This velocity goes up as you more things to the water, ie dissolved salt, cellulose, calcium etc. So its safe to assume that generating a super sonic shock wave in the human body the shock wave would be above 5000fps. Whether or not a bullet impact could generate these shock wave is certainly arguable. The transition from one medium to another (ie air to flesh) could certainly generate such high transient velocities in the medium, but it is clear that the bullet itself, once it enters the body, is no longer going super sonic in its new medium.

Rambling
mcb

[Austere Emancipa...]

Yup, what mcb said. The only way to reliably get a shock wave in human tissue would be to have some kind of insane ultramagnum saboted reverse ogive round, and the effectiveness of that is questionable. What Crusher Bob described is technically just a pressure wave, not a shock wave.

I suppose an explosion inside human tissue could cause pressure waves, or even shock waves, powerful enough to disrupt tissue. But more importantly the explosion would cause a rather large permanent cavity, largely because of the shrapnel. Pressure waves from high-speed projectiles do have a habit of completely busting organs that are relatively inelastic and consist largely of liquid. So basically just replace "shock effect" with "pressure wave" in Crusher Bob's msg, and it's technically correct.

[Crusher Bob]

Well, first I neck down 50 BMG to fire a 6mm 70 grain projectile. We'll use some propellant other than smokeless powder that has a higher gas expansion speeds, and we'll see what develops...

Or we could just shoot you with 50 BMG for a faction of the price :D.

[mcb]

Actually you could probably use regular smokeless powder to achieve velocities over 5000fps if you can figure out how to evacuate the air out of the barrel ahead of the projectile. One of the biggest limitations to projectile speed is pushing that column of air ahead of the bullet while it is in the barrel. It does not seem like it would be that big of deal but the head loss pushing that air down the barrel is fairly significant. You can get several hundred to a bit over one thousand fps faster (depending on the cartridge) by simply evacuating the air from the barrel ahead of the bullet without changing the ammunition at all. The problem as you get over 4000fps is that the RPMs on the bullet start to get so high that the internal stresses will start spinning a regular copper jacketed bullet apart. One solution is going with all copper bullets like the Barnes X bullet or similar projectiles but then you do loose some BC due to the lower density. At present a bit over 4000fps is about the limit for modern rifle cartridges and even at that barrel erosion puts barrel life down in the 2000 – 4000 round life span before throat erosion become bad.

[Austere Emancipa...]

Well fuck the barrel and use a solid tungsten projectile. ;)

[Arethusa]

No, obvious solution is to go smoothbore with a bore evacuator and a solid depleted uranium projectile. Wait a minute, this is starting to sound familiar...