This thread's a rather interesting discussion. I've also heard that the reason you see people sustaining many shots before keeling over in westerns is not because they were tougher, but because bullets were somewhat weaker. But then again, this is probably also another myth. I guess it's hard to judge things like this when no records were kept in those days.
There are good records, especially from the army. The propellant in those days, black powder, was much less powerful than modern smokeless powders. They did, however, use heavier bullets which made up somewhat for the reduced velocity. Plus the bullets were round-nosed soft lead, not so great for accuracy and velocity but good for dumping a load of kinetic energy into the target quickly. You couldn't "absorb" more hits back then than you can today. The US Army chose .45 for its handgun caliber because it was better at stopping a horse, while the Navy, just interested in shooting people, got by with .36 caliber. The more popular civilian .44-40 round was close to the army .45 in performance, which gives an idea of typical firepower in the Old West.
^Right. Dying instantly is a conceit of fiction to make death look cleaner. In reality, the vast majority of bullet wounds or stab wounds can be survived if you get medical care before bleeding out, unless they're in a vital area. Heck, some people even survive being shot in the head, albeit with some brain damage.
Handgun-caliber wounds, yes. Centerfire rifle calibers are a higher level of magnitude, they will cause massive tissue damage with much more significant hemorrhage and shock. A head wound from a round like that is almost always fatal, the world had a shocking exposure to this in 1963. In WW1 when high-powered battle rifle ammunition had become commonplace, army surgeons began to treat a lot of "shrapnel" wounds caused by bone fragments and teeth exploding out of nearby soldiers.
But there are plenty of places where even a small-caliber shot can kill; many, many people have been killed in their tracks with the .22 LR cartridge, which casing and all is not much bigger than a cold pill capsule.
(Though I'm told that a really big sniper round has so much kinetic energy that even getting grazed by it will induce sufficient hydraulic shock in the bloodstream to rupture the heart. I'm not sure how accurate that is, though.)
I've also heard that a shot to the heart can "liquefy" the brain by hydrostatic shock traveling through the vascular system. I don't know about that, but I can believe it causing instant unconsciousness. After Gary Gilmore was executed by firing squad in 1977, less than half of his shredded heart could be found by the ME. That sudden shock and drop in blood pressure would knock you out pretty fast, I'd think.
In the Old West, I'd imagine the majority of shooting-related deaths were actually due to infection after the fact.
There were plenty of deaths from the bullet wounds themselves, but infection was definitely a major concern, which is why gunshot wounds to the extremities were often treated by amputation.
By Newton's Third Law, the action and reaction are the same, so the force hitting the victim would be equal to the recoil force experienced by the person holding the gun. If the victim were thrown back a dozen feet through the nearest plate glass window, then the shooter would be as well. True, a powerful shotgun blast can knock someone over, and can knock the shooter over if they don't brace themselves first, but that's just knocking someone down, not sending them flying.
In earlier Westerns and action movies, this was shown realistically: actors pretending to be shot would convulse in pain or shock and then fall down. But later movies started to exaggerate things more and more, and stunt performers and special effects artists wanted to show off more, so falling down/backward got inflated into flying backward.
Yes, exactly. People often fall down when shot; this phenomenon has been studied but the reasons are not clearly understood. It may be more mental than physiological but it's certainly not just plain physics, and being flung through the air is just fantasy.
Justin
I did watch some early John Wayne westerns and did observe that things were not as exaggerated as they were later on during the peak of westerns. Also good point on the infection, Christopher, considering medical care wasn't always easily available and very much "Fringe". I'm sure many have shrugged wounds off only to later suffer for not having it taken care of. And likely dying instantly ties into them not wanting to show blood.
