Why do gunshots in the head kill so quickly?
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The head is where the brain is. The brain is the center of consciousness and controls breathing, heartrate, and pretty much everything else.
By destroying this with a gunshot, this kills the person.
Even if it doesn’t outright kill the person, there is likely enough damage to effectively remove what makes them, them.
It turns out that the brain is super duper important for controlling thoughts as well as controlling the rest of the body. If a bullet damages any one part too much, that part ceases to function. The person might be gone, or the person’s critical body function might not work.
Additionally, brain damage in general knocks people out. So someone going down might not mean they’re dead yet, merely knocked unconscious.…but when combined with the brain’s blood supply, they could easily bleed out before waking up.
They dont always kill but they produce lots of damage and since several parts of the brain control things like breathing and heart beating there are vital areas that can result in immediate death if hit.
In addition to the damage caused in the path of the bullet, the bullet will send out shock waves, like violently jiggling jello, and that disrupts all sorts of nerve connections, shearing the neurons so they separate, increasing the odds of a vital part being damaged.
Finally, if that isnt enough, it turns out that blood and cell innards are poisonous to brain cells. the first bullet pathway causes blood loss in the brain and the blood kills cells. The bullet also kills cells. When cells die they rip open and lose their innards.
The loose cell innards and blood kill the cells around them and now those cells rip open and spill their innards which triggers more cells to die and so on. This is called a cascade. and it doesnt stop until it runs into bone or pre-existing scar tissue. Basically, damage the brain cells and the brain self-destructs.
Hemorrhagic strokes (caused by a bleed, not a blockage) are very likely to kill the person because of the cascade.
Wear a helmet doing any vigorous physical activvity or riding a motorcycle.
Because the head contains our brain and our brain contains our consciousness. It’s the one thing in our body that’s really “us”, everything else only exists to keep the brain alive long enough to procreate.
Your brain is you. The entire rest of the human body exists to support the brain. Therefore any damage to the brain essentially damages you, and since so little is known about the brain and how it works (compared to the rest of the organs in the human body, at least), brain damage is *serious* business.
Bullets don’t just poke a hole in people. Once they enter the human body, a couple of different things happen.
One, the amount of kinetic energy combined with the spin of the bullet creates a kind of a shockwave that can cause serious damage to soft tissue (i.e., not bones) without the bullet actually touching it. The more energy transfer involved, the more trauma inflicted on the surrounding tissue. That “fine” if the surrounding tissue is body fat, muscle, *some* organs, etc., because those can be treated and/or repaired, and will (usually) heal over time. Your brain, on the other hand, not so much.
Thing number two that happens is that bullets don’t exactly stay stable once the encounter something. Even a full metal jacket round can end up tumbling through the body once it hits, taking a path through tissue that can be unexpected. Some bullets actually shatter under the stress of this tumbling. Then soft points and hollow point bullets actually expand and look like a mushroom, transferring that kinetic energy over a wider area. All of these cause a *hell* of a lot more damage and a simple hole in the body. And the more damage a brain receives, the more likely its function will be impaired resulting in death.
And there’s one more thing to consider: bullets that hit bone tend to break said bone, if not outright shattering them (especially at the impact point). That shattered bone causes even more damage to the surrounding tissue (knew a guy that took a hit in the left arm from an AK-47 in Iraq and they found bone shards in his right lung). Taking a shot to the dome means the bullet hits the skull, and if it penetrates the skull it’s taking a portion of the skull along with it into the brain.
All of this means that taking a bullet to the brain pan means you have kinetic energy waves travelling through the soft-tissue, bullets tumbling through the surrounding tissue, and bone fragments going every which way though the skull as a whole. And sense your brain controls all of your autonomic functions, you lose the ability to control your body pretty quickly. Couple that with all of the blood your brain needs pouring out of the new ventilation system in your cranium, and it doesn’t take long for your brain to die. Hell, hit the right spot (affectionately referred to as the “light switch”) and the recipient of the new blowhole will never even know he/she has been shot. They’ll just immediately cease to exist.
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