If this turns out to be real, a direct shot to the left carotid artery. Theoretically could be survivable but not without serious deficit and stroke. Agree likely fatal.
He lost conscious immediately which is not explainable with blood loss alone that fast - which may indicate that there was a higher impact from the shot.
It's not a case of losing blood, it's a case of failing to move blood to the right place. If the shot took out the carotid, then (nearly) 50% of the blood supply to his brain is gone because of a piping failure. That can absolutely cause instantaneous loss of consciousness, no direct brain trauma necessary.
This is very different than bleeding from, say, a major artery in a leg. In that case the issue isn't loss of piping to the brain, it's losing blood until the total blood volume in the body isn't sufficient to maintain a workable blood pressure, and yes that can take multiple minutes before a person loses consciousness.
I am a physician, so I can say this with a high degree of confidence.
That snippet is referring to the circle of Willis*, which is a "backup" circuit that can route around a blockage to the blood flow to the brain on one side.
The thing is the circle of Willis is tiny and near vestigial (there is a substantial fraction of the population where it doesn't even make a full circuit), whereas the carotid is one of the largest blood vessels in the body. The circle of Willis isn't nearly large enough to reroute all that flow. It has to be made bigger over time
through a process called collateralization, and that's a process that happens over months to years, not minutes or seconds.
In short, the circle of Willis will save you from years of high cholesterol that lead to a huge cholesterol plaque completely blocking off one of your carotids. It won't save you from your carotid being severed by a bullet.
*And some other tinier vessels, but mainly the circle of Willis
Not a physician, medical examiner, or the like. But a paramedic who has attended more than one fatality shooting. My educated wild ass guess is that hitting the neck with a high-velocity rifle would cause the shockwaves of the impact to be very, very close to the brainstem and to have a significant effect on it.
[Graphic description] What kind of gun could that have been? Incredible amount of kinetic energy—you can actually see a hydraulic pressure wave oscillating through his entire chest. This was obviously fatal, if anyone wasn't sure. Probably died instantly, given the neurological "fencing" response (suggests spinal cord was hit—never mind the artery, he was already dead).
Really any kind of deer hunting rifle will do that. Any .30 cal or larger rifle is going to cause catastrophic damage to almost everything within atleast an inch of the bullets path, and massive bruising to 4 inches out around it, and that wound area only goes up as you go up through .30 cal bullet sizes. You have to go down into medium and lower handgun calibers for bullet wounds to start becoming mostly localized to the hole itself
Ironically the prevalence of AR-15s has made people underestimate the amount of power and damage that most deer hunting rifles possess. 5.56 is like the bare minimum you can get away with to reliably disable or mortally wound a human or similarly sized animal, which is why the military used it because it saves weight so soldiers can carry more of it even if they have to hike 20 miles to their objective. Most hunting rifles are serious overkill for killing their target because hunters want instant take downs, not an animal that is able to stand up and get an adrenaline boost and sprint away if even for just 15 seconds into the brush because the shot was a half inch to the left. .30_06, a common deer round and used in the M1 Garand of WWII, is just under twice the muzzle energy of 5.56.
Go watch high speed footage of anyone shooting a gun at ballistic gel (ballistic gel is a material selected for having a similar density and fluid dynamics behavior to mammalian flesh.)
A lot of the damage of a bullet is this concussive damage, not the piercing damage. Hollywood has been lying to you (apparently real gun experts hate the movie “shoulder shot” because there’s a lot of things to damage there, especially once you take the concussive force into consideration).
For those who are on the fence, don’t watch it. I just did and I regret it. Suffice it to say that the blood loss alone will be critical condition at the very best.
There are many different kinds of ammunition design. Some pierce and punch holes, some fragment and tumble, some balloon and expand, some cause large tears and cavities.
Ballistic science is actually a fairly complicated rabbit hole
Any hunting rifle round will do this as well, except the smallest calibers like .22 LR that are meant for hunting squirrels and the like.
But also, no, the smaller rounds don't have a "tendency to bounce around in the body". It sounds like you're referring to the phenomenon known as tumbling, where the wound track ends up being curved because the bullet loses stability as it hits. This happens because bullets are heavier at the base and thus unstable; while in air, they are stabilized by rotation imparted on them by the rifling, but once they hit anything dense (like, well, human body) it would take a lot more spinning to keep them stable, so all bullets do that. It does not involve any bouncing, however.
Light and fast bullets like 5.56 are particularly unstable and will do it faster, though. But even then, for 5.56, the primary damage mechanism is from bullet fragmentation: between the bullet being fairly long and thin, and high velocity of impact, the bullet literally gets torn apart, but the resulting pieces still retain most of kinetic energy. Except now, each piece, being irregular, travels on its own random trajectory, creating numerous small wound channels in strong proximity, which then collapse into one large wound cavity. But, again, this is mostly a function of bullet velocity and construction (e.g. presence or absence of cannelure), not caliber as such.
Yes. People should have the choice to watch and understand what political violence. This is a powerful video and one that I don’t recommend everyone watch (that is a personal choice). If you are a person who has chosen to cheer on political violence, then I do suggest you watch. It’s is important to have a clear understanding of what that entails and the realities of that choice.
Fair points. I guess some level of uneasiness can be a good thing for some folks.
But I also recognize it can possibly trigger anxiety (overwhelming, in some cases) for some folks, even if you don't realize that it might (until it's too late).
Not suggesting we turn to censorship. But at the same time, I guess I'm mostly looking out for folks that may not be aware of the effects it could possibly have (e.g. naive and/or not taking warnings seriously enough).
Others are watching and expressing interest. I have similarly chosen not to watch the video, which is the responsible choice for me if I think I will find it disturbing (I probably will).
There are handungs used for defense against brown bears, look at 10mm, or even 500 mag, 454 casull, you can shoot this from a handgun. It's very unlikely to be the case here but you wouldn't be able to tell just from the damages