Ripley's Believe It or Not by Ripley’s Believe It or Not! for December 22, 2011

I don’t believe the “fact”. Because if it was true, half the Islamic world would be dead as they fire their AKs into the air for any reason at all. 30 rounds apiece.

Hawgowar, people probably do die..just no one notices. With all the violence, poverty and disease..it’s just another statistic over there. But many of the bullets will fall harmlessly into buildings or a variety of stuff that ‘gets in the way’ of the fall.

Ohio Mormon girl was killed Saturday December 22, ’11 by a man firing his breach rifle into the air. She was riding back from a Christmas party in a buggy by herself.

I remember Myth Busters bust this myth of being killed by a falling bullet. Yet I guess wikipedia terminal of velocity explanation says it’s true.

Was he charged with murder? Because that’s what it is.

read about the Amish girl accident.. just down the road from us.. very sad, never knew what hit her, dead before she hit the ground, fell out of her buggy, horse kept going.. everyone knew eachother and the shooter did the right thing and turned himself in.. Amish are really great people, keep to themselves and have beautiful large healthy families… make great simple country comfort food too….

I may have a new favorite dinosaur.

There have been several studies about falling bullets. When a bullet falls it reaches terminal Velocity on the way down. A 30 cal bullet (weighing .021 pounds) reaches 300 f/sec on the way down. That’s only 30 foot lbs. Only enough to go an 1/16 of an inch into a pine board. It’s when you shoot at a 45 deg angle is when you get into trouble because the bullet never slows down or stops in the air to start traveling downward.

Mythbusters proved this wrong. If the bullet is shot nearly straight up it falls harmlessly to the ground. If shot on an angle into the air it can be deadly. A “falling” bullet is harmless to humans and will not penetrate the skull.

MythBusters Episode 50: Bullets Fired Up achieved busted, plausible, and confirmed. The “all of the above” ruling on the bullets fired into the air myth was a new one for MythBusters. All of their tests showed that if you fire a bullet perfectly straight up into the air, it will not kill you as it will fall down on its side and have too low of a terminal velocity to kill, much like the Penny Drop myth. However, it is very difficult to fire perfectly straight into the air and they even found an international expert in falling bullets who was able to confirm for them that people have died from bullets fired up into the air. Those people were killed by bullets fired at angles, not straight up, meaning the bullets didn’t stop forward motion before falling back to earth.

I would be curious to know exactly what extent air resistance plays into all of this. In a vacuum, a bullet fired up should decelerate by the (negative) acceleration due to gravity until it comes to a halt, and then accelerate (positively) by the same amount coming down, to reach the same initial velocity (but in the opposite direction) when it gets back down to the same level.

@Gocomicsmemberthe vacuum perspective is an interesting viewpoint, just think about it, the bullet would attain supersonic speeds twice!but as Jared Louis said, the bullet will reach a “terminal Velocity” on the way back down, that is where the air resistance is so great that it will no longer fall any faster. I don’t know the exact numbers and I believe a fair share would depend on the projectile (weight, cal, BC ect..) just think of all the duck hunters who would be killing themselves every year if we lived in that vacuum world, but as it is those little BB size pellets fall back to the earth safe and unnoticed. boy, wouldn’t be be something if you could hit ducks with the shot twice though? once on the way up and then again later when they came back down just as fast.. but talk about danger..another thing, what about arrows? not wise to shoot those straight up.. but seriously, who’s that stupid?..

There isn’t no saurus? What an odd name… Still, it must be handy to be able to roast marshmallows without having to find a stick…