The Life Cycle Of A Bullet
Cartridges are all mass-produced contrivances. However,
some individual examples can be incredibly important.
You resented buying it. 9mm blasting bullets run less than $300 per kiloround. In this case, you read a few online reviews and then forked over nearly 40 bucks for a box of 50. This was the good stuff. At least you would never have to shoot it.
The bullet weighs 124 grains. That’s about 8 grams. It was born in the SIG SAUER ammo plant outside Little Rock, Arkansas. The cases are nickel-plated for long life, and the bullets incorporate more raw technology than the moon landings.
Once you get home, you load your carry magazine to capacity with the shiny silver cartridges. You then lock the magazine in the butt of your pistol and slide it into the gun safe. You don’t plan to think of them ever again.
And you don’t … for nearly five years. You shoot the pistol regularly as any responsible concealed carrier should. However, in each case, you just set the magazine with the good stuff aside while you blast away with cheap ball. You clean your pistol from time to time, but not that magazine. That top round gets loaded and unloaded a dozen times or more during that time. Along the way, it is also exposed to temperature extremes and salty man sweat. Throughout it all, you don’t give that bullet a conscious thought. And then it happens …
Showtime
The details don’t actually matter. The gun is out and up without conscious thought. Things are moving very quickly now. You started out tired, distracted and self-absorbed. Now, thanks to a massive jolt of epinephrine, you are thoroughly switched on. In an instant, your lizard brain makes the decision. Present, front sight and press. Your finger indexes from the side of the frame to the trigger, automatically depresses the safety and applies the requisite 5.5 pounds of pressure necessary to retract the striker and impact the primer. Here is where the real fun begins.
The primer face is fairly soft and deforms readily in response to the impact of the firing pin. A tiny bit of shock-sensitive primer material consisting of a proprietary mixture of Lead styphnate, Barium nitrate, Antimony sulfide and Tetrazene is compressed between the primer face and the anvil of the primer. Mechanical deformation produces a subsequent rapid increase in pressure and raises the temperature of the material past its flashpoint. The resulting jet of hot plasma blasts through the flash hole in the base of the cartridge and ignites the powder within.
The low-flash gunpowder contains its own oxidizer, so it burns independently of outside air. Underwater, outer space or sealed within a vacuum chamber — it doesn’t care. This rapid chemical reaction instantly releases a large volume of hot, high-pressure gas. The steel chamber of the weapon encompasses the soft cartridge case to create a pressure vessel. All that chaos has to go someplace. The bullet subsequently accelerates from zero to 1,100 feet per second in 3.39 inches, being subjected to an accelerative force some 66,500 times that of gravity.
Your barrel’s twist rate is one turn in 9.84 inches. That results in a single revolution every 0.82 feet. If my math is correct, at 1,100 fps, that bullet is now spinning at roughly 80,000 rpm at the muzzle.
Modern defensive bullets like this SIG V-Crown are meticulously
designed to perform predictably when called upon to serve.
Time to Go to Work
Our sole inorganic barrier is a simple t-shirt. Everybody wears t-shirts, and that is what stood between you and the man who was trying to kill you this particular day. The bullet does not slow down as it punches through the thin cloth, taking a perfectly circular disk of cotton along with it. Now things get really interesting.
Skin is the largest organ in the human body. Its primary function is to delineate that critical interface between you and the rest of the world. The skin contains thousands of miles of nerves and blood vessels as well as countless hair follicles and apocrine sweat glands. All that miraculous stuff synergistically works to help regulate your body temperature, prevent contamination and inhibit infection. Skin is exceptionally pliable and tough. It is about to fail catastrophically.
Ammunition companies kill untold tons of this stuff to ensure
that their products do exactly what they are supposed to do.
All Over But the Crying …
Up until this point, the bullet’s path has been orderly and predictable. That’s all about to change. The gaping hollowpoint cuts through the skin like a hole saw. Then, things get messy.
Human males are about 60% water. Women are more like 55%. 93.2% of America’s incarcerated population is male. Your target is most likely a guy.
Liquids are incompressible. That means pressure at one point is transmitted in real-time to other contiguous fluids. That’s how the brakes work on your car. In this case, hydraulic pressure suddenly spikes, forcing the relatively soft lead bullet core outward against the jacket, fracturing it along predetermined failure points. The bullet opens like the petals of a flower. As this is a bonded projectile, the jacket and core remain intact as a single unit. One rib veritably explodes on entry, thoroughly destabilizing the projectile. Then, the bullet begins to seriously yaw and tumble … at 80,000 rpm. The results are predictably ghastly.
The bullet’s increased surface area now facilitates hydraulic breaking, bleeding energy as it slows. Razor sharp edges slice through lung tissue and heart muscle as effortlessly as might Ginsu knives. The dying bullet saws through the right ventricle before spending itself in the erector spinae, the long strap muscles of the back.
The typical adult human carries five liters of blood. Lose one liter of that, and you’re unconscious. Two liters is fatal. That first liter spills into the chest cavity in seconds. Blood pressure plummets precipitously, starving the brain of oxygen. The heart tries to compensate, but there is now a hole through the main pumping chamber the size of a quarter. Your assailant is unconscious in seconds and brain-dead in minutes. Everything in this tragic, complex chain of events was performed exactly, precisely as designed.
The shot was righteous, so there was no need for an autopsy. Retrieving the spent bullet would be both messy and superfluous. They bury it with him. His family wails about what a good kid he was — simply misguided, unfortunate and misunderstood. However, you get to live to see your grandchildren finish college. And that was the point all along.
