I mean, if you get shot anywhere in the chest, that’s going to hit your lungs or your heart, how do you not die almost instantly?
In: Biology
It all depends. Depends:
* How big the bullet is
* How fast the bullet is
* What the bullet’s made of
* Exactly where it hits.
The first 3 of those help determine:
* If the bullet fragments or passes through relatively cleanly, or stops/lodges in bone.
* How big a hole it makes in whatever it does hit.
* If the ballistic shock of its passage does additional tissue damage beyond the physical hole.
It also depends on how close and competent help is.
* Your brain has to be deprived of oxygen for 3-5 minutes before irreversible brain damage occurs, which means that even if the bullet prevents your heart/lungs from operating effectively, or you lose so much blood that there isn’t enough pressure to keep getting it to your brain, you still have up to 10 minutes without oxygen (maybe more if you’re also hypothermic) before you’re brain-dead.
* If the victim receives prompt traumatic bleeding control, chest compressions, plasma, etc, the brain can continue receiving oxygen and that survival time can potentially be extended significantly. Long enough for a competent trauma surgeon to, e.g., repair a nick in a pulmonary artery.
Obviously, if the bullet shreds the heart itself or severely damages multiple major arteries, you’re done. If you don’t get help fast, you’re done. But if first responders can extend that survival timeline long enough, it’s amazing the things that can be repaired.
There are a lot of ifs, and bullet wounds involve a lot of chaotic forces, so practically anything can happen.
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