Eli5 If you shoot a bullet into the air how does it gain enough velocity on the way down to kill someone?

Question

Eli5 If you shoot a bullet into the air how does it gain enough velocity on the way down to kill someone?

In: 5

Answer 1

It doesn’t. If you shoot a bullet perfectly straight up into the air, then it will reach its maximum height, then fall at terminal velocity, which would hurt like hell but not injure you.

The problem is that firing completely vertically is borderline impossible for an unassisted human. So instead of going straight up, stopping, then falling, it follows an arc and maintains a lot of horizontal speed.

So it isn’t that the bullet gains enough velocity to kill someone, it’s that if fired at even a slight angle, it retains enough of its initial velocity to still kill someone.