Getz wrote:
Logic wrote:
The average .45 slug travels at 950 FPS (Feet per second, and I assume that's around what Jon uses because it packs a punch and is ideal mid-range kills). If I used my calculator right that's 647.272727272727etc miles an hour. That times 20 is 12954 miles an hour.
That's a fast fucking bullet.
No shit dude - that's about 20 times the speed of sound...
Sadly, much as it's fun to indulge in fantasies of bullets punching through yards thick steel, there's no getting around the fact that it's just a lead bullet, so it would splatter rather than the armour...
Additionally, the air resistance would probably melt the bullet...
That said, being hit by a molten slug of lead travelling about six times faster than an SR71 Blackbird at full chat doesn't sound much fun - the hydrostatic shock alone woul probably cause a human body to disintigrate rather messily...
Right, that's my quota of catgirls dead... Back to lurking.
At that velocity and kinetic energy, what the projectile is made out of really doesn't matter, as long as it's intact when it gets to the target. While "yards thick" might be a bit much to penetrate, steel and most other solids act like liquid when there's that much energy involved in the impact. The test targets for the experimental railguns are several inches thick, and the area around the impact looks like someone dropped a rock into a pond and froze the splash in mid-instant. And the test rounds they're firing are often largely plastic. So, no, the lead bullet doesn't splatter.
As for hydrostatic shock, while the theory probably does not actually apply to any bullet ever fired in real life, consider that for the hypothetical Mach 20 bullet in question, it might come into play.
I am a trained killer...of cat girls.