How is it that a bullet that is 12.7 mm in diameter can kill somebody with so much more bodily damage than a 20mm rebar rod that is impaled through the body? I see stories of people surviving impalement all the time, but a shot with a .50 cal to the same area almost always results in instant death. Shouldnt the bullet just go through its target because it travels so fast?
In: 546
>How is it
Speed. The bullet, while smaller in diameter and lower in weight, is moving far, far faster than the rebar. That speed means that when the bullet hits, [lots of energy is dumped into the target,](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5J9hCDr21mo&t=228s) creating a temporary wound channel (the big ballooning you see at the beginning) along with a permanent wound channel (what remains after the temporary wound channel collapses) much larger than the actual diameter of the bullet due to how the temporary wound channel stretches, tears, and destroys tissue along the path of the bullet.
For a simple demonstration of this idea, think of the difference between slowly lowering your hand into a pool of water and slapping it as hard as you can. You’re using the same mass and size (only the speed changes) but have two wildly different results.
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