Walking, Talking After Gunshot to the Head
It's Rare, but Doctors Report Some Can Walk, Talk or Even Make Tea After Gunshot to Hea
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/MindMoodNews/story?id=7385084&page=1

I remember reading something about the Russian Mafia. It said their trademark was always putting three bullets in a hit's head. Apparently they know about this.

Benny used a 9mm pistol which don't pack too much of a punch from what I know so I'm not surprised that he survived.

apparently a headshot means instant death IRL

you also get bouns points for running down old ladys.


facts are awesome.

Zearox, it really depends on the gun. There are alot of different 9mm cartridges out there used in different 9mm guns. Given they are all still a .38 caliber bullet but the cartridge size varies in length meaning more or less powder. For instance this Cz.82 pistol I want to get for $199 it uses the 9mm Makarov round which is a weakling compared to the Cz.52 which I am trying to track down as well which uses the 7.62 Tokerov round. The 9mm Makarov round or the 9x18mm cartridge has a velocity of 1,050 feet/sec with a 95 grain bullet. Ok the smaller 7.62 cartridge used in the Cz.52 which comes out to a .30 caliber compared to the .38 caliber of the 9x18, has a velocity of 1,450 feet/sec on avg. This round the 7.62x25 has been known to punch through standard issue ballistic armor vest as well as kevlar helmets without being a armor piercing steel core. A friendly gun shop owner I know down here he worked for the police in the ballistic department back in the 70`s and he said that round would go through body armor like a hot knife through butter.

So not to get too far off topic though it reall depends on where you shoot them and what cartridge you using. Caliber isnt everything because be it a 7.62mm or a 9mm round the diameter of the bullet doesnt tell you much about how it will perform. And for those that dont know the standard steel core armor piercing round I am using in my M91/30 rifle it has a velocity of 2,840 - 2,900 feet/sec with a 148 grain light ball round and accurate up to 2,000 meters but is only deadly out to 1,500 meters if you can see the target that far away.

Its all about what gun your using as well as what round. You got the 9x18mm Makarov round, the 9x19 Parabellum, 9mm Browning Long, 9x23 Largo, 9x25 Mauser, ect.

Now while its possible to survive a head shot with a pistol I would have to say a head shot with the 7.62 Tokerov round with a velocity of 1,450 feet/sec (on avg I should add, been known to be as high as 1,900 and 2,000 in some loadouts) would scramble your brains and you would be dead in an instant. The 9x18 you could possibly survive that round traveling at just barely over 1,000 feet/sec.

I am roleplaying that I am that guy from The World is Not Enough that was shot in the head and lost his ability to feel pain.

I am constantly on Med-X and Psycho.

It really depends on it's path, it obviously got stuck within the cranium at somepoint. In a 'Fallout' environment you'd be looking at most probably poorly conditioned weapons and ammunition as well as the fact you'd have many civilians whom are poorly trained at using them. There has been all kinds of rounds, above 9mm, that people have survived; even to the head. Though it is rare, it is possible, but not likely and that's where I lost interest - the game was too full of insecurities to be entertaining.

In all reality if it did penetrate or break bone then bone fragments would go into the brain, luckily this guy was picked up by a Doctor. Oh, how magic those Doctors are.

But seriously, you expected correctly modelled damage values with realistic wound ballistics? No. That's why guy's still take multiple rounds that will 1) incapacitate, 2) destroy them outright e.g. to the CNS. We don't play Fallout for over-the-top realism; we play it for a mix of something you would sense to be true if put in that situation but a bigger sense of feeling in a fantasy world with links to some of the reality we know or think of now.

The reality is that we don't really know how our brain works. As long as Benny didn't hit anything too important you would be okay. The main issue is whether or not the round fragments, sends bone fragments into your brain, or ricochets off the inside of your skull.

Another issue would have to due with blood hemoraging into your brain. You can patch that up with medical treatment, but you'd want a damned good doctor to do it, or you might end up a vegatable. If anything in your upper spinal column or in what snipers call the apricot shot (I think they call it crossing the T, if it's frontal, though) where it passes through your Autonomic Nervous Center you're dead before you hit the ground.

If it hit where your nerve cluster (that's right behind your eyeball) you can expect complete and total blindness. If it hit anywhere in your Cordical Homunculus you would loose all feeling in that portion of your body. If there's enough damage to your frontal lobe, you'd lose your personality. If it his the Temporal lobe, you'd lose your hearing (depending on where it hit, you'd also lose the ability to walk) If it caused any kind of clotting, there's a good chance that eventually that would block a blood vessal, which would eventually burst, and kill you.

Hopefully it would exit your skull, as you wouldn't want a peice of lead sitting in your brain giving you lead poisoning on top of everything else. Even with a fairly large exit wound, you might be able to find someone to patch you up before you bled out. I guess that is the less than believable part of this whole story. You were burried with a head wound? that would get infected in a heartbeat. I don't know how good the antibiotics are in Doc Mitchel's place, but an infection in your brain is usually a death sentence.

So assuming it doesn't tear any of those areas up too badly, you could posibly walk away from it. People have survived all kinds of brain injuries and have gone on to live perfectly normal lives.

Another thing that has been known to happen on occasion, and particularly with lower-velocity pistol rounds, is that the bullet doesn't penetrate the skull if there is a bit of an angle to its trajectory. Instead, the bullet veers to the side and follows the contour of the skull under the skin, and either exits farther around, or loses momentum and lodges somewhere between the skin and the bone. This would of course knock the victim senseless, and the shooter wouldn't realize they'd flubbed the kill. I remember a serial killer in Oregon who did this to one of his helpless victims, when he attempted to execute two women clerks in the back of a convenience store he robbed one night. One of them lived, even though he put one in the back of her head- it contoured around the side of her head and lodged near her eyebrow.

I guess having an extra thick skull can't hurt, sometimes.