dunno man, to wild and errant a photo op....picture if you will a sound edit, a poof of dust on the ground, and a string tied to a hat..."Nope, no more iron."....don't believe the eyes...have had a ricochet go past and behind though.....

Everything on the Internet is real. Whats more, it's all live. I think everytime you push play this guy gets shot in the noggin again.

He seems awful upbeat for someone that just got shot in the head. lol.

didn't they use that sound effect in star wars ??

what's more likely, rednecks shootin something and getting a ricochet in the head, or rednecks planning and producing a convincing video of the same thing happening?

Deathcow for the LOL!

I'll bet a few ballistics calculations would bury this trash.

Was that a Barrett .50 cal he fired?

I'll bet a few ballistics calculations would bury this trash.

Fake this, trash that, ballistic calculations blah blah blah...you people are LAZY. This isn't Youtube, folks, do the math if you're gonna complain so much.

First of all, a quick Googling reveals this gem:
"6-27-07: BOOM HEADSHOT! This is amazing. Willie, the father of Tina, who made the sandbag rests fires a .50BMG, an Armalite AR-50 and it ricochets off of a steel plate that it should have easily penetrated. The bullet comes straight back and hits him in the head. You can see it hit the dirt about 15 feet in front on him before it clobbers him. Luckily he was uninjured. He's a bit sore today, but otherwise fine. Lucky lucky bastard. He has been advised to buy lottery tickets while he still has so much luck. I don't know about the timing, but you can hear the hit on the steel plate. Time that till the impact on Willie's head... how fast is that 750 grain slug traveling? The range is 100 yards. Amazing."

The time from the sound of the shot to the sound of the impact of the bullet on the target is used to calculate for the initial velocity (sound delay over distance accounted for). The speed of the projectile (I'm not ruling out the possibility of a piece of the target being the ricochet, not the bullet) on ricochet to the ground is taken from the time from the sound of the impact of the bullet on the target to the sound of the impact on the ground. The speed of the projectile on ricochet to the earmuff is taken from the time from the impact on the ground to the impact on the earmuff. (This last impact makes a rather significant change in energy loss.)

For the sake of better accuracy, I assumed that the range was NOT 100 yards and calculated distance instead assuming that the gun was an Armalite AR-50 (.50 BMG), 750 grain slug, and that certain ballistic statistics on the gun were reasonably accurate, and that the ricochet did not return straight back, then compared the expected and actual times between the round being fired, the impact on target, impact on dirt, and then impact on person.

Keep in mind that I am no expert on large-caliber rifles and these calculations are the result of about 5 minutes of thinking, but unless you're willing to properly time the sounds on a video editor, incorporate angling for the energy transfer calculations and cross-reference ballistics info on the AR-50, I'm the best you're gonna get, so piss off.

Bullet weight: 750 gr
Average muzzle velocity: 2620 ft/s
Average energy: 11420 ft*lbf

Distance to target: 362 ft
Muzzle velocity of shot: 2603 ft/s
Velocity of the projectile on impact to the ground: 271 ft/s
Velocity of the projectile on impact to the earmuff: 210 ft/s

Conclusion: Very possible, especially assuming the target was steel, as I quoted above, but contrary to what the guy in the video said.

For reference sake, this is less than the speed an average paintball will hit you at (I think 250-300 ft/s). In all likelihood, though, the projectile had enough speed and energy and pointy bits to seriously mess this guy up if he'd been hit straight on. Maybe there'd be enough pressure to penetrate, maybe not, but I'd bet he'd have a broken bone or two at the very least.

On a final note, ricochets do happen with metal targets, and not completely rarely either, thus the rules of gun safety. This guy should NOT have been shooting at a steel/iron target with a .50 caliber rifle at such a close distance (I've heard that .50 cals can hit targets a mile and a half out), although it seems like he was smart enough to be wearing eye protection. He made the assumption that the round would penetrate the target, and we've all heard what happens when you assume. Hell, I can't even think of a reason to OWN a .50 caliber, past a psychoanalysis to make Freud weep or dreams of zombie pandemics.

Anyways, lucky guy, one-in-a-million-chance, remember gun safety, and you're welcome.

Upvote for rembar.

I was ready to skip this till I read rembar's great analysis. I'm sure the target was steel. In a the eastern mid-west at least 'iron' is used generically to mean any ferrous metal and I'd bet that's how the guy in the video was talking.

damn, rembar--another reason I love this site.

Another upvote for rembar.

My buddies and I shoot steel all the time. We shoot close range with pistols, and get some splatter bouncing back on us. For a little .223 round, we put those out at 100 yards, to be safe. We also use soft bullets so they expend their energy on the target, and won't bounce back too far.

Rifter, I don't want to be mean, but please reconsider your course of action. Softer bullets and lower power make shooting steel MORE dangerous, not less. You should also not have received splatter or ricochet more times than you can count on one hand, because that means your target is either poor quality/damaged, your target is set up improperly, or you're standing too close, or some combination of the three.

And besides, why the need to shoot steel, especially at close range, when you're not competing? I never understood the appeal.

I believe the appeal is the simple satisfying "ping" that indicates a round on target. However, there are plenty of products that are designed to do that without the risk of undesirable lead-face interactions.
I've only had fragments splash back on me once (back in my younger days), when shooting a .22 semi-auto into a railroad tie at about 50 yards. Eventually (after a couple hundred rounds or so), the area behind the target became a mass of lead and started coming back at me.

triple upvote for rembar... that's kinda why I posted this. Guns are not toys. (but the sound was really cool anyway)

looks like the round ricoheted up in the air then came down and bounced off the ground. lucky guy.

B.S.!! I posted this same rembar factoid stuff THE FIRST TIME CRAPPY RETARDED VIDEO HIT THE QUEUE!

Use your wee little pee brains and count "Mississippi's" in this video. You think he can put the trigger and wait 2 seconds before the bullet magically hits the "dirt" and ricochets 90 degress right at dudes head. You find it odd the camera isn't setup on shooter AND target? You find it odd the dirt puff is perfectly framed to capture the BOOM headshot.

yeah it looks suspicious and could be fake but also it does actually happen in real life kthxbye

Yeah my nuts it's fake, there is no way to accurately fake this video with the quality of tools available to these rednecks.

Put simply, I work in CGI, and the amount of effort it would take to make this movie properly (including the inner padding of the headphones that come flying out on impact) is prohibitive in the extreme.

JD, get over it mate, it happened, and was filmed.

P.S. nice one rembar

Had that happen with a BB gun when I filled a one liter bottle with water and food coloring to make it "bleed"... dumb 10 year old. Nothing like watching an object coming dead center to your head back at you. Seemed like slo-motion as I recall.

the target appears to be about 200m away (give or take 50m). sound is 330m/s . how long after the 'bang' would you hear the 'ping' of a bullet hitting the target?

call it 600 feet and 1000 fps in imperial.

bullet speed is probably 3 times as fast over that distance - if you want to factor that in.

apart from that schoolboy error, it's a pretty good hoax!

Thermalcat...are you serious? Really? Did you just skip over all the comments, or actively choosing to ignore them?

So, you're trying to eyeball target distance over a crappy quality video? Hell, I'm not even convinced the target is even shown in the video.

Apart from that schoolboy error, it's a pretty good attempt at making a calculation!

Ok let's assume the target is somewhere way up on the hill side, not the black square frame right about 50m away. (See the tire tracks, and guage distance by that)

Ok, so let's say the target is off frame, or somehow magically is 200m away. You bullet leaves 2000-3000 ft/s. so watch it in mute (or the original video, not this re-doctored one). Count the seconds from muzzle flash to ground impact.

There is no... no... way this works out unless the target is far, far away. Now, if you are going to play this game with post-target ricochet, well guess what, your "271 ft/s" would never make it back to the guy. 32ft/s/s and all that... punch it into your little formula.. unless the richochet comes back up in the air like 10 degrees above horizon.

I'm saying a bullet that might slow to average of 1500 ft/s can't work out here. You can say that the majority of the time is spent from metal plate travel back to shooter.. But unless it maintained 800ft/s, it would drop too much. So maybe it skipped off the ground a bunch of times? Certainly he would have no head if it was 50 cal. It doesn't look and feel fake to you?

JD, I think you're misunderstanding me. The ricochet is not coming back straight at all. In fact, it definitely isn't, seeing as how it skips off the ground once and then hits the guy. 32/ft/s/s and all that, as you said. (Actually, not really, it's that plus the high angle of ricochet for the bullet.) That is exactly how I punched it into my little formula, because the assumption is that the ricochet is returning in an arc (thus the extra time traveled), not a straight line.

With all due respect, this video doesn't feel fake to me, nor would I expect it to feel fake to anybody who shoots regularly. Hell, this video could be fake for all I know, but the events could definitely happen in real life. As for the .50 cal round, you're mistaking caliber for damage potential. Without enough energy lending itself to piercing power, a .50 cal will just make a larger bruise. I've personally seen a guy take a .45 ricochet on his arm and had it bounce off. Heck, people would be dying from Simunition rounds if they had more velocity.

Regarding the "controversy" over whether this is legitimate or not: The obvious response video which I'm not talented enough to make is a loop cut between a slow-motion shot of the three seconds following impact and Kevin Costner in J.F.K.: "Back...and to the left..."

Anyway, one issue is that muzzle velocity is -almost- completely irrelevant, since it's impossible to know how much kinetic energy the round would bleed off by striking the target. (This assumes it was the round itself which came back - a reasonable assumption, given the whistle presumably resulting from a fin-shaped chunk of flattened lead.) One -could- potentially use muzzle velocity to dispute the veracity of the video based on the time between muzzle flash and *ping*, but I suspect that given the speed of sound one would find that the interval is consistent with a reasonable target distance and muzzle velocity.
A critical piece of more easily estimated evidence is the amount of time the object takes to traverse the distance between the ground puff and the headphones. One could possibly work backward from this velocity to determine whether or not timing of the event is reasonable.

The only way to prove once and for all if this is fake is to recreate it with pigeons.

Like this
http://www.videosift.com/video/Salton-Sea-Kennedy-Assassination-Recreated-with-Pigeons

Reverend (should I be calling you Father?), I'm serious when I say that's exactly the calculations that I performed above, and I feel like the numbers all seem to work out.

yah, i would buy an enormously powerful sniper rifle and then shoot at 50m targets!!!! hahahah as IF!!!

imagine these guys in the bar later... "we shot a piece of metal 50m away! yeeehaaaaw!!!!"

Nah, i think the target was far, far away.

In fact, the totally incredible thing about this thread is that people are prepared to assert that these guys bought this rifle and video camera in order to make a fake ricochet off a close target! You are so keen to call fake that you'll believe anything! I refer you to Alex Jones and the 911 "truth" movement... off you go...

You are all attacking this video from the wrong angle.
There is simply no way to recreate the effects of a bullet hitting someone in the earmuffs(whatever they are called) and duplicate this effect so well in 3d(cgi), it's just unpossible.
I don't care about the bullet physics, or what you think you can see in the distance.
It's not faked, end of story.

like choggie says, piece of string and a couple of rehearsals. you don't need cgi.

i agree it is not cgi, that would be total overkill, like using a darkside sniper rifle to shoot a small piece of metal for no reason.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'darwin, guns, safety, laws of physics' to 'darwin, guns, safety, laws of physics, ricochet, bullet' - edited by twiddles

NEXT TIME REGISTER YOUR SOFTWARE! >:[

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