Heart Video

Mike at ENDO has a neat video up

The Methodology is VERY sound, as ballistics gel is designed to simulate human tissue consistency (Its less dense than bone, more dense than fluid and adipose…it averages out, more on that later) and pig hearts are so similar to humans that we can even to limited transplantation between the species (no word if the patient dines on spareribs and bacon once they recover…but if its OK I’ll picture that, and request I not be informed otherwise!).

I’d say overall this experiment could be predicted in a human. Also I will note that such trauma to the heart would indeed cause catastrophic blood pressure drop (and potentially the damage would be MORE severe if the heart was beating at the time of trauma simply because the muscle tissue would be straining itself against the wound), of course predicting how such trauma would effect a hostile person, and the timeline for said effects. It will almost certainly be fatal.

That being said it doesn’t take THAT much trauma to have a heart catastrophically fail. There are plenty of stories of people meeting their fate when a knife tip or an ice pick find their heart or vascular tissue. Or to quote a great article here. (Well worth the read BTW)

Also, and I may be going out on a limb here, I’m not altogether certain that hardball is necessarily a bad choice for the reasons given above. Look, folks, you don’t have to blow the heart into a million pieces; you’ve just got to hit it, and you don’t have to make the liver look like it just spent 10 minutes in a Cuisinart. Again, you’ve just got to hit it.

Also from the comments over at ENDO Frank made this observation:

It doesn’t count unless there are ribs blocking the heart.

Kinda yes, and kinda no. As I said above Ballistics gel is designed to have an “average” effect on a bullet to what a bullet will find in a person. For example in a heart, the muscle wall is likely a bit tougher than the gel, but the blood-filled ventricles will offer much less resistance than the gel.

Still there are interesting effects caused by variation of tissue density. Stuff like a bullet deflecting off a rib, or deforming on bone and tumbling prematurely. Also a human body is resistant to through-and-through wounds as the mushroomed and much slowed bullet will often encounter much resistance in punching through the skin on the opposite side of the body. (think about cutting a tomato with a dull knife. Sure cutting the tomato isn’t hard to do, but STARTING through that thin, stretchy skin can be a lot of trouble)

The deflection issue is the #1 reason why I’ll always pick a slower, heavier bullet than a lighter faster one. Sure the light fast bullet delivers more energy to the target more efficiently, its also more susceptible to the random chaos that is flight and terminal ballistics.

Of course the key to all of this is make sure to land your hits when it counts, and where it counts, also what’s worth shooting once, is worth shooting twice…and what’s worth shooting twice….

Be safe out there, and all of this is moot if you don’t carry your damn guns!