Could this problem also be affecting civilian gun enthusiasts? Or is the order of magnitude of the exposure just wildly lower compared to the military, even in the most enthusiastic?
And then if you have a chance to be around some small artillery, do that too. It’s hard to describe the difference.
(“You” here is used to address HN in general, not you personally)
“Great question, did you know if you zig and zag you become impervious to bullet :)”
Still snarky, but there is a point.
I suppose I can imagine that GP said that you can feel the difference between levels of brain damage incurred (they did not), but even if that were the case then why would you encourage someone to expose themselves to artillery if you thought the damage was more than zero?
“The damage from both is different but also zero if you zig zag check mate 8-)”
There are several orders of magnitude difference between a 9mm handgun and a small artillery round. The difference is in terms of concussive force.
If you shoot a handgun with earplugs in, you hear a pop that sounds kind of like dropping a small ball bearing on a wood floor. You feel a shock in your wrists and a bit in your elbows, like high-fiving someone.
Now, you stand a few yards from artillery - and I’m talking Korean war artillery, not modern stuff. Also not talking about reenactment stuff; they usually just put a bit of black powder in there. I’m talking about small tow-behind artillery that you’d see at the Big Sandy Shoot (Google it).
You _feel_ the sound before you hear it. You’ll look for some shooting muffs to put on _over_ your earplugs. The concussive force comes through the ground, through the air, moves through your head and stimulates your eardrums from the backside. You feel your guts vibrate a bit. It feels like the ground moved under you, like you’re landing after jumping in the air.
And _that_ is an order of magnitude or so below what we’re talking about with SEALs here - those guys are placing explosive with a sticky backing on doors, and torching it off from not very far away. There’s stories from them of not being able to get physically “far enough” from a charge, and having to detonate it anyway because you’re in a freaking war zone. When a SEAL says “oh, this is going to fucking suck” before pushing a button, you know it’s real.
> Could this problem also be affecting civilian gun enthusiasts?
Since you are clear that you do not think that civilian gun enthusiasts could be affected because they
> shoot a handgun with earplugs in
I thank you for your service for sharing your advice on how to become invulnerable to gun fire. Without that I might have doubted your expertise on this issue of brain damage from concussive force
Aside from the cavalier “I know something you don’t” there was nothing of any value posted.
Intrigued, I got some info from wikihow.
> If you are a fast runner or have bad knees, run in a straight line away from the attacker towards cover. The faster you can get away, the fewer shots they will be able to fire.
>If you are a slower runner and do not have knee trouble, a zig-zag run may be a better option. You may still be hit in this case, but the chances of being hit in a vital area may be reduced.
It’s so, so hard for any amateur to hit a target that is moving radially in a polar coordinate system centered on them, at all. I’d bet your average shooter who makes the news can’t put 7/10 shots in a stationary silhouette at 10yd. It’s harder than you’d think.
Yeah. Researchers would have liked to interview them, but all the people who zig-zagged in favor of running as fast as they could are dead.
Fictional, but based on a real event.
Isn't that the easiest possible way because they remain on a constant bearing?
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caltech%E2%80%93MIT_rivalry#20... [1] (which is, admittedly, pretty small)
Yeah, there's a very big difference. I mean a BIG DIFFERENCE
I hope they never invent a gun that fires more than once per trigger pull, then you would be able to just sweep it around in the general direction of Invincible Mr. Zig
Idk if i would trust my life with that. What if they just spray a bunch of bullets in the general direction I am? Also what is the minimum distance where this tactic becomes effective? I just can’t imagine that zigzagging helps that much when you are 2 meters away from the shooter. And then there is the question of what is the typical distance between the shooter and the victim in most gun violence scenarios. Would not be surprised if that is inside the “zigzag helps you” distance.
Besides… how would going to a range and shooting guns help one learn this information? It feels what you really would need is someone practicing running away from someone with murderous intent to get an intuitive understanding of what you are claiming. And of course people are reluctant to practice that.
From what I understand, real soldiers generally don't spray bullets like you see in movies or video games unless they are in a defensive machine gun nest or on some sort of vehicle. Ammo is an extremely finite and precious resource on the battlefield. You can't carry much with you, and you don't necessarily know when you can resupply, so every shot has to count. If you spray bullets you'll be out within seconds and then you're on a battlefield unarmed. Not good.
> And then there is the question of what is the typical distance between the shooter and the victim in most gun violence scenarios.
In a war? Can be quite high.
> how would going to a range and shooting guns help one learn this information?
Ranges have moving targets, you try to hit them and observe that it's hard.
If you ever saw any combat video, soldiers often fire a LOT, experienced or not (experienced just tend to hit more often). Maybe not a full auto, but nobody thinks in '1 bullet per enemy' mentality, self-preservation makes you overdo it, and they train you to not save on ammo unless you are cut off from supplies.
> U.S. forces have expended at least 250,000 small-caliber bullets for every insurgent killed in the present wars
Think about that number for a second. Technically, 1000 fully equipped NATO soldiers fire all their carried ammo per 1 single dead enemy. Life ain't Call of Duty.
>U.S. forces have expended at least 250,000 small-caliber bullets for every insurgent killed in the present wars
Right, but it is that high because of the machine gun nests and vehicles.
Why does this matter? Hearing loss is often a causative factor with depression, social isolation, anxiety and early onset dementia.
Fear and anxiety drive a lot of the behavior that gun merchants leverage to sell guns. It’s a vicious cycle.
Doing something is a stressful situation (combat zone) is infinitely more likely to lead to stress-related disorders than doing it in a safe, controlled environment (shooting range)
No?
> came home plagued by hallucinations and psychosis
I have some hearing damage (which I actually think is from somewhere else - we've always been anal about protection). Other than that, no other issues to report with myself nor my family/friends who participated with me in this hobby. Small calibre gunfire does not have a big enough shock/impact to really affect bystanders. Interestingly, I dislike shooting in an indoor range, because so much of the shot is radiated back to the shooter and bystanders. Where in an open air range that impact goes up in the air and away.
Risk of lead exposure is very real though. A friend almost passed away due to too much shooting in an indoor range with poor ventilation. After some serious negative personality changes and other related symptoms he was finally diagnosed with nearly acute lead poisoning. Lead bullets basically vapourised when they hit the backstop, so the dust that's kicked up is very nasty.
There is safe ammunition these days, but it costs more. Swiss make their military ammo lead-free (they have cca same ammo as US/NATO but bullets are most effective with different barrel twist compared to NATO ones, I think 1:7 vs 1:10), but both can fire each other's rounds safely.
Safe ammo is essentially just back of the bullet covering lead core (if present at all), but for some reason most manufacturers don't do it by default. Some stuff doesn't have lead core at all, but then desired weight needs to be achieved via other substances and is priced accordingly.
The US military has been switching to lead-free ammo, too, starting about 10 years ago.
I use solid brass ammo on one of my larger caliber rifles, but not the others. Guns can be very finicky about their bullets, and not all like solid brass ammo which results in weird accuracy issues.
Unfortunately at my public range it seems like there is always one guy with a muzzle brake and he ends up setting up beside me.
Handguns and rifles make loud popping noises. Exploding artillery shells are concussive bombs that produce brain rattling blasts.
one of the major problems with such weapons is that although the support crew can shield themselves, often the firing soldier cannot due to operation of the weapon.
[0]: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/26/us/military-brain-injury-...
It seems the WW1 doctors got it right the first time.
The concern itself was right to have, but I don't think the concern has ever gone away.
So I don't characterize that as very "right the first time".
Not at all. It might be a cause, but tons of PTSD has nothing to do with concussive trauma, so much so that the other cases overwhelmed the correlating cases when they investigated the causation.
PTSD is a different thing from TBI/CTE, overlap or not. The diagnosis for PTSD was called shell shock. They did not have it right in a general sense.
there is no good way to protect from concussive blasts aside from avoidance and shelter.
fwiw most DoD studies have found that concussive blasts that seem to be damaging to personnel start at around the AT4/Carl Gustaf range of large shoulder-fired almost-artillery -- understandably since they're large and mostly open-air combustion driven.[0]
[0]: https://www.militarytimes.com/news/your-military/2018/05/01/...
It reminds me of the other side, the receiving end: shell shock in WW1.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shell_shock
I think the key here is to explore all options, not limiting yourself to the obvious.
Steel Industry: In the steel mills people reported similarities 100-60 years ago. I remember talking to workers and their problems after being exposed to huge mechanical machines that form steel. Usually they are extremely loud, feel like a permanent earthquake, dusty and toxic air, hot temperatures and high risk for life threatening events.
I see some similarities here between steel worker’s mental impact and military. It is fair to say that some conditions are not really helping you as an individual “unlocking your full potential”. Some conditions are simply very detrimental to your health.
Exposure to lead is a much larger risk for gun enthusiasts from my point of view.
I've shot .357 magnum and shotguns in there. It's loud, yes. I wear ear plugs and ear muffs when doing that.
But not by any means do they rattle my brain, and I can't imagine it's anything close to what you see around an artillery when firing.
I mean look at the ground towards the camera in this[1] shot, clearly a powerful shock wave going out in all directions.
Don't read into it too much, though. This isn't snark or passive aggression, just genuine interest.
Sports shooters who shoot larger calibers, ie a 7.62 NATO or higher in terms of sound energy, are typically shooting relatively few rounds at a time. Those who shoot a lot of rounds typically shoot smaller calibers.
Now, I think you might have a point when it comes to competitive practical/dynamic shooters[1], who shoot open division with hot .40 super loads or similar. Especially those, like in my club, who train a lot in indoor ranges.
However these would make up a relatively small percentage of the overall recreational shooters out there I imagine.
Don't know about micro-TBIs but it sure fucked up my hearing.
On the other hand, artillery and rockets are extremely loud. If you want to look it up and start comparing things, keep in mind that every 3 decibels represents a doubling in pressure, so a howitzer having twenty or thirty decibels on a handgun is actually saying a lot.
It’s possible small arms fire doesn’t make big enough shockwaves. To cause the effects. I’d hypothesize it’s the larger blasts… perhaps even a frequency component to it? Blasts from a fast explosive like C4 could do more damage than slower shockwaves like mortar or artillery shots.
Idk. Interesting subject.
To someone familiar with the subject matter, “shooting guns gives you brain damage” is an absurd, incorrect idea that one feels obligated to voice an objection to, in order to perhaps slow the spread of misinformation.
However
I’ve personally met a gun enthusiast that collected elephant guns [1] and shot barrels filled with tannerite [2] for fun. He was also… not all there. So who knows? ¯\_(ツ)_/
As an aside I entreat everyone not to entertain confident proclamations about secondary damage from weapons from someone that claims that they can avoid primary damage (bullets) by the proper tactical battlefield execution of a Sesame Street dance. [3][4]
1 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elephant_gun
2 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tannerite
* to quit with the games, relatively moderm firearms are 1700-1800's tech, with things like 3D printing banning them is as nonsensical as banning alcohol. Its just too easy to make.