I understand how someone would die if they get shot in the head, but if someone receives a bullet in the abdomen, unless it hits the heart, how does one die within seconds? I don’t think it can be hemorrhage so there must be another reason
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There’s a lot of important things in your abdomen like your spine, liver, kidneys, and some significant blood vessels. An injury to, for example, the aorta is acutely life threatening. A ruptured aorta is going to result in a sudden and dramatic loss of blood pressure followed by almost immediate unconsciousness and death within minutes.
There is some debate about this. The logic is like this: the body is mostly water. Water is incompressible, more or less. The force of a bullet’s impact therefore rapidly spreads through the body. Some researchers believe this can cause distant injury, like popping small blood vessels in the brain and causing cerebral hemorrhage or otherwise destroying important neurons. That can kill pretty quickly. If it can happen, it definitely doesn’t happen every time, but there are cases in medical literature that support the hypothesis. I got this from https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrostatic_shock
Unlike in the movies, you don’t die within seconds.
While a bullet is rather small and light, it has a lot of kinetic (movement) energy due to its speed. When it hits you, and while going through you, it creates massive shock waves, similar to a really big stone hitting water. This can disrupt, or even shred, organs not directly in the path of the bullet, like the lungs or the heart.
A hit in the intestines could be survivable, same with the kidneys (you can survive with only 1 kidney) or the liver (given a fast transplant), but the clock is ticking, *fast*.
Because [look at the size of the wound](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fX4ODh1g4eM). Bullets do damage because of their speed, not because of their size or weight, and the damaged area is huge compared to the size of the bullet.
So yes, internal hemorrhaging, loss of blood pressure, shock, etc.
You don’t die instantly, but your body may react by dropping you to the ground (relaxing your muscles, making you pass out, etc.) from the shock.
Nobody dies within seconds of a gut shot (unless they were hit with a .50 BMG), that’s a TV/Hollywood thing. Depending on where you’re hit in the abdomen, there’s blood loss and septic shock to worry about. Blood loss get worse the closer you get to the pelvic girdle, but you can potentially hang on for *hours* after an abdominal gunshot, even days.
Gut shots typically take days. It used to be one of the meaner ways to casually kill somebody.
Also, something that is lesser known is sonoluminescence, which is shown in [this video](https://youtube.com/shorts/o9M8UwrSQpg?feature=share3) which shows the affect in ballistic gel that is suppose to mimic what would happen to a human
If it doesn’t hit any vital organs, you won’t die instantly. But there’s now a big hole in you, so unless it’s treated, within a few minutes you might die of blood loss.
You could also pass out, rather than die right away, either due to the shock, the damage, or the blood loss. Obviously then it’s harder to get help.
And depending on the bullet, it could shake you up and disrupt stuff in you just from the force of the impact.
It all depends on where you’re hit. As you’ve pointed out, a hit to the brain or heart is nearly instantly fatal (barring some miraculous situations). The only other place you can really get shot and be instantly down for the count is the upper spine. Even then, that may not instantly kill you. Just paralyze you. A hit to most other body parts, while still extremely dangerous, aren’t nearly as damaging. Most other organs aren’t necessary for *immediate* survival. I.e., if you suddenly lost your liver (in a non traumatic fashion, like it suddenly popped out of existence), you wouldn’t die right away. It would take up to a day.
That said, besides the brain, people almost always die from blood loss after being shot. Many organs, such as the lungs, liver, etc. are heavily infused with blood, and if any of these organs, or a major artery/vein, gets shot, then you can bleed out in seconds. Most people, unless they’ve actually seen it happen, underestimate how quickly blood loss can kill someone. Completely severing an artery can kill someone in under 2 minutes, where traumatic damage to a major organ can kill in under 5 due to blood loss. However, the pain, bodily trauma, and shock from being shot *can* cause a person to pass out really quickly, making it *seem* like they died, when in reality they were just unconscious until they bled out.
All that said, the way gunshots are portrayed in media is often incorrect. Usually, you don’t die right away. In fact, there are **many** stories of people being shot (particularly in war time) and despite the injuries they carry on doing what they’re doing, often because adrenaline let’s them ignore the pain, up until the blood loss finally catches up to them. There are countless stories of one or two individuals holding off dozens of enemies for a short time despite being severely wounded because bullets don’t *immediately* kill you unless they hit the brain, heart, or spine.
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