Interesting:

https://www.fs.fed.us/rm/pubs/rmrs_rp104.pdf

Excellent paper

Two questions that arise in wound ballistics is whether the bullet heats up sufficiently to sterilize it making it therefore a sterile foreign body if retained in the shooting victim and secondly in the creation of the wound does thermal energy play a role in the wounding process.

On both counts the science suggests no !

Regarding the sterility issue the bullet is not sterilized and therefore has a potential to act a vehicle for pathogens.

Regarding the latter the contact surface and contact time between projectile and living tissue is to short and to small for thermal injury to occur

This does not however take into consideration contact between living tissue and fragments that are hot may come into contact with skin where contact time is prolonged.

Has anyone ever examined an entrance wound and seen evidence that the "hot" bullet seared surface flesh or singed hair if the target was an animal?

Bullet entrance wounds typically show stretching or "streaming" of the tissue cells from friction drag. There may be deposits of lube or powder residue in a ring around the wound and through the wound channel. Thermal injury is usually not apparent unless it is a contact or near contact wound. The projectile also will tend to drag in bits and pieces of whatever it passes through before entering the body such as clothing with clothing fibers found in the wound channel.

The wound is most definitely not sterile.

I have not seen thermal type injury on any bullet wound other than contact that I've examined. Wounds with shell fragments though carry more mass and tend to be hot and can produce some local thermal injury.

Jerry Liles

Well, let me dd something which shows how stupid we can all be sometime.

It was during one of those inspirational moments when we decided to test the penetration of different bullets into a 1 inch steel plate!

I posted the results here years ago.

I have already fired a few rounds, non penetrated completely.

Then I fired a Barnes X 300 grain bullet.

Remember, this is being done in an underground tunnel, 100 yards long.

I heard something whiz by, and as I looked, there was a bullet lying smoldering on the carpet - burnt a hole right through!

I am sure if that bullet hit me I would have suffered serious injury!

Now, do we stop the test, or improvise?

I improvised!

Instead of sitting on the shooting chair and taking the shot, I leaned over, standing, aimed and fired, and at something like 3000 fps, I ran to teh side so anything coming out of teh tunnel will not hit me.

Several bullets came back, all managed to burn a nice hole in our carpet.

Luckily, we use carpet panels, and were able to replace these.

Many years ago I attended a presentation on wound studies following the 1982 Falklands War. I'll spare the details save three notable observations:

1) That was that it was better to fight naked as:

2) When a bullet entered the body at high velocity the temporary cavity it created caused at the same time a vacuum that sucked in any cloth fragments or muck and crap on them into the wound and:

3) The very worst thing to wear was heavy military equipment webbing as a hit by a bullet on that webbing usually always caused a bullet to tumble.

Ah Saeed!

1) The very first man to test the British PIAT was killed when the cartridge at its base came back towards him as the rest of the warhead penetrated its target.

2) In WWI the Germans found that if they pulled then loaded backwards their 8mm FMJ bullets into the cartridge it penetrated the early British tanks better than if used the correct way around.

copper itself is an anti-microbial.

It is diffidently the velocity the kills.

quote:

Originally posted by Lamar:
copper itself is an anti-microbial.

So is silver... does that mean its better to get shot by the Lone Ranger than Tonto?

quote:

So is silver... does that mean its better to get shot by the Lone Ranger than Tonto?

Not if you're a werewolf it isn't!

Very interesting.

I would guess that if you experiencing a bullet hole the least of your worries is infection from the projectile. While the bullet may not have sterilized in flight, the outside world coming in may pose a larger threat for infection...if the tissue damage and bleeding allow the opportunity for infection to become a factor.

Not related to wounds but related to the heat generated:

My club range has shooting lanes past 1000 yards and defense contractors use our range to test small arms (The internet video going around last year of the guided 50 caliber bullets was shot on our range).

One of the defense contractors working on automatic counter fire for aircraft against snipers while landing or taking off, was out at our range and they were tracking the bullets from one of our monthly matches using thermal detection of the bullets as they flew through the air. They were stationed a kilometer away, 90 degrees to the firing line and were able to track my 95 grain, 6mm bullets.

quote:

Originally posted by Quintus:
I would guess that if you experiencing a bullet hole the least of your worries is infection from the projectile. While the bullet may not have sterilized in flight, the outside world coming in may pose a larger threat for infection...if the tissue damage and bleeding allow the opportunity for infection to become a factor.

A lot of wounded game survives some nasty wounds. It's fairly common to find arrowheads, BBs, bullets and sometimes other items in harvested deer.

The specific heat of lead is low, that of water very high, over 30 times higher. So a little bit of hot lead in flesh isn't going to be able to raise the temperature of that flesh (which is mostly water) that it is in contact with very much. Another factor reducing any possible heat damage is that blood circulates, quickly carrying the heat energy from the bullet and distributing it through the body instead of leaving it concentrated in the flesh in contact with the bullet.