Scanning the blurb on the back of a roleplaying book in my FLGS, I read the following endorsement: "If a role playing game is a gun, then a monster book is the ammunition. If that's the case, then Tome of Horrors is a case of hollow point, explosive shells!"

I didn't think hollowpoints could be explosive. I mean, they're hollow, right? You can have hollowpoints, and you can have explosive, but you can't have both. Correct?

Of course, I know internal-combustion engines, and nothing about firearms, so I'm likely wrong. . . .

Hollowpoints tend to fragment on impact (more than regular rounds at least, IIRC), which could be what they meant by 'explosive'.

Can a bullet actually be packed with explosives in the first place?

You're right - you can't get both.

A "hollow point" has just that, a hollow tip that is designed to fragment upon impact, basically delivering highly localized shrapnel to the target, thereby making a bigger mess of the target.

By comparison, an "explosive" bullet carries an explosive charge in the tip.

That being said, I'm trying to confirm my facts on the explosive bullet and find a diagram of both.

-Siege

Edit: Hollow point diagram

#1 is the hollow tip, giving the bullet it's name
#3 is the gunpowder used to propel the bullet
#4 is the brass casing containing all the ingredients
#5 is the primer used to ignire the gunpowder, kicking the whole thing off

Siege is correct.

Basically, the writers had no idea what they were talking about and crammed two deadly-soundin' gun words together. Hardly a first, much less a first around here.

Journal of Pathology, exploding bullets

While an interesting read all around, the paragraph dealing with this thread is found here:

It's not that you technically can't have hollow-point exploding bullets - hell, we're getting to the point where they can make personal weapons firing programmable delay, distance and proximity fused rounds, so this would be child's play - it's just that no one is going to bother, because it wouldn't make the explosive round do any more damage.

>>>"The latest from Ares Arms--high explosive, frangible, hollow point, capsul, armor-piercing, stun rounds! Is your home safe? Now in a variety of designer colors..."<<<

Possible... and serving no useful purpose.

Heh. You always have the "well it could happen because of magic technological improvements".

Although I submit, based on today's standards, it doesn't exist and while it could be made to conform to both criteria, having both a hollow point and explosive properties, the performance of said round would be questionable at best.

<insert magical technology here>

Poof, in 2063 it works.

-Siege

Hollowpoints are ideal for homemade explosive bullets simply because it is easier to fill in an existing cavity than it is to make a new one. But, they wouldn't technicaly be hollowpoints after the procudure.

No, new book.

So Tome of Horrors is a crate full of new creatures, all possibles, but serving no useful purposes ?

The Tomb of Horrors is a classic old-school game module. I believe the book I saw was the "Tome" of horrors, obviously a play on that previous work.

Anyway, I thought I'd have some fun with the kiddies on the D&D forums who not only hate things old-school but despise any system that isn't D20. I popped in with this remark about how hollowpoints can't also be explosive (based on what you folks told me in the above messages), and they became rather . . . bitter.

At any rate, thanks for the heads-up concerning ammo. I knew I could count on you. (For the most part I just lurk in these forums, but every so often it's fun to partake. And most of you are so kind. MOST of you, anyway . . .)

Cheers!

Slight correction here...

Hollow point bullets are not designed to fragment (break apart), rather they are designed to expand (or "mushroom") through hydraulic action, creating a wound cavity that is up to about twice the diameter of the unexpanded bullet. Upon impact with a semi-liquid medium, the cavity in the nose of the bullet is filled with said medium. This creates pressure against the walls of the cavity, causing the bullet material around the cavity to fold out, increasing the bullet's diameter. A jacket around the bullet material controls the rate at which the bullet expands. Thicker jacket, slower rate of expansion.

The general idea is bigger hole, more tissue disruption, more bleeding. This action creates more surface area and thus more drag as the bullet passes through the target, allowing the bullet to expend more energy inside of the target while also reducing the chances of overpenetration.

Below are some links regarding hollowpoint ammunition. The first is a link the the patent for Winchester's "Black Talon" bullet, which was discontinued in the mid 90's because it sounded really scary and made some people cry. The second is test information regarding several .40 S&W hollowpoint bullet loads.

US 5208424
http://www.gun-tests.com/newspics/pdfs/1-4-40ammo.pdf

For the record, it should be possible to make an explosive hollowpoint bullet, but as has already been mentioned, there wouldn't be a lot of point in it as the principles involved are not compatible. One expands, the other fragments. There's not a lot of point in engineering a bullet to expand if it's just going to blow up anyway. The increase in effectiveness (if there were any) versus the increase in cost would also make such a bullet cost-restrictive. Hollow points bullets are good because they are effective as well as inexpensive to manufacture.

Heh.

What? You guys never saw Jaws II?

Its all about the hydrokinetic effect.

<cough>busllhit</cough>

Hydrostatic, silly. Why, everyone knows that.

The Black Talon was discontinued for civilian consumption, but I believe it's still available for LE purchase under the "Ranger" or "SXT" name.

The Talons got a bad rap for a variety of reasons - most of which claimed to have been debunked.

Raygun could shed more light on the specifics if you're curious.

-Siege

Edit: Intense ammo discussions for the more gun-minded

Siege: Unfortunately many there seem to believe in the "street stopper" bullshit. Reading through the articles here and the relevant articles in the Tactical Briefs here will probably tell you a lot more about what to look for in a 9mm round.

While there might be a lot of interesting discussion going on in such a forum, the sheer amount of "get really light really fast 1337 bullets cor-bon r0x0r!" messages really turns me off. Not to mention the "Hydrostatic Shock" messages...

If I hear one more person talk about a "double tap", I think I'm going to have to stab them. Honestly, is that the clueless buzzword for the gun aficionados or something?

~J

You have just as many people who buy into the gun mythos as you do people who swallow the anti-gun mythos.

The "double tap" has been rabidly embraced by the gun nut, ex-spec ops wanna-bees. These are the same nuts carrying handguns when volunteers go looking for missing people - mind you, in areas where dangerous wildlife isn't an issue.

As Aust has pointed out, just as many gun nuts buy into the "ultimate manstopper", enough to drive up prices on old boxes of ammo but without researching the practicality and effectiveness of the ammo itself.

Personally, my home weapon is a .45 - I might consider adjusting to a .40 S&W round, but not in the near future. And with a .45, solid lead or not, you tend not to get flesh wounds.

I posted the link because in some respects I found it amusing to have so many different opinions on so many nuances of ammunition - not unlike the pages and pages of arguments on Dumpshock.

-Siege

While I don't really suspect you feel otherwise, I do have to say that it's not inherently psychotic to carry a weapon when wandering into the wilderness to find someone. Just because you expect nothing to happen is no reason to not be reasonable prepared for who knows what. Now, naturally, the people who carry because they think they're getting ready for an action movie are crazy, but it's an issue of mentality, not the action itself.

Yes, firing more than once may be useful (hell, why not fire three times while you're at it? Personally, if I was in a fight against a single person and wasn't able to reliably gauge their status I'd probably empty the clip. This is assuming that I had reason to believe there weren't other people after me, but in a lot of cases that's reasonable), but it hardly merits a separate name or designation as a "technique".

~J

You could always coin your own phrase for "empty the clip" or steal one from somewhere...

Like, 1)Empty the clip 2)Burn the clip or even 3) Pull the trigger 'till it goes "click"

And it sounds cooler.

I "clicked the magazine."

As for reasonable precautions - it wasn't wilderness. It was light woods and grassy areas in and around a smallish town.

Firing a handgun or any weapon in that area would have been an instant criminal charge for discharging a weapon in city limits.

I'll grant you, wading through a swamp with gators or moving through an area popular with mountain lions is one thing - the only thing we were likely to find was a cranky poodle.

And with all the search parties tramping through the underbrush, odds of some idiot capping a searcher were substantial.

-Siege

Just a side note: Is it true that the "Black Talon" is in fact legal in South Africa? It's just that i have a friend that say's that he has some for his Glock 17.

Well fuck, considering that the Black Talons are perfectly legal even in the US, I'd be extremely surprised if the "Black Talon" trademark was outlawed anywhere. This article has some interesting but not too technical or detailed information on the Black Talon and its descendants. The point is that "Black Talon" doesn't even seem to be outlawed, Winchester simply discontinued it, for reasons Raygun already discussed at necessary length.

hm. i'm going to revert into "don't know crap about guns" mode for a moment, and ponder the possibilities of mushrooming fragments. say, design a round that, upon impact, splits into two or three pieces, each of which mushroom. you could hotload the round in order to give the fragments extra oomph--since splitting the round effectively splits the kinetic energy of each round, lessening the chances of overpenetration, you can boost the round further without worrying about delivering the full energy of the round to the target.

right?

It seems to me you could get the exact same effect easier by designing a bullet that simply expands enough to keep the penetration at the preferable level at the expected velocities.

Ie instead of having to design a bullet that breaks up into several expanding fragments with separate (although rather close to the original in direction) wound channels, you'd simply design a bullet that expands more. Instead of a .50AE that breaks into 3 115gr 9mm JHP-like fragments, you could get a .50AE JHP that expands to 1.5" for one cavernous wound channel.

Neither is likely to appear very soon IRL, but I'd expect the latter to be easier and cheaper to manufacture as materials tech advances.

Expanding fragments probably wouldn't do anything more impressive than a controlled fragmentation would. On that note, the same guy who developed one of the most popular hollowpoint bullets thus far, Tom Burczynski who made Federal's Hydra-Shok (and another cool one called Expanding Full Metal Jacket), also created a pre-fragmented hollow point bullet marketed by Triton as Quik-Shok. Basically, it's a hollow point bullet that, instead of expanding, is designed to fragment into three pieces (plus jacket) on contact with the target, making three separate wound channels.

It seems like, from a RL perspective, you have to find a compromise between armor penetration, and eliminating over-penetration. Hollow points and/or fragmenting rounds are only more effective if you can assume that the target is unarmored. A hollow point bullet would be much more likely to be stopped by a protective vest than a standard one, though. (Personally, I think SR rules do a horrible job of simulating reality in this respect, but that's just me.)

So say someone wanted to maximize overpenetration while still hopefully dealing a decent amount of damage to each person hit. What would one do?

Application: trying to take down a roomful of people quickly by ensuring that the people closer to the firer don't act as shields for those behind.

~J

That's quite an understatement.