Some of these are wrong.
Tracing a call is instant. It took longer back in the days when there were physical switches, but that’s been a long, long time ago.
Silencers can make a gun nearly as quiet as the movies, in limited cases. Something like a subsonic .22 will be about as lout as a golf clap. A 5.56x45mm rifle will be hearing-safe, but only barely; it’s still going to be very loud, and will def. sound like a rifle.
You can shoot some locks off. You’re not shooting through the shackle, you’re disrupting the locking mechanism that keeps the shackle closed. It’s still unsafe; you’re going to have ricochet and spall going everywhere.
Supersonic bullet still makes a crack. When you fire subsonic you can get just the sound of the metal bits hitting each other. Whoever is interested look up what an MP5S with subsonic ammo in a firing range sounds like (the S is important in this search)
It’s still louder than just the bolt cycling; you’re hearing the gas escaping at high speed, but subsonic ammunition through a silencer is definitely significantly quieter than supersonic ammunition. One of the very, very few positive things about .45 AARP is that it’s always subsonic, so it’s easy to get it very quiet, as long as you have the slide locked so that it doesn’t cycle. (IIRC Knights Armament Corp made a .45 for SOF that had a locking slide.) Videos aren’t great for hearing what a silenced firearm really sounds like due to the way that most microphones compress sound; they end up sounding very different IRL.
I’ve been at the range when some other people were testing out a night-fighter rig with .300 AAC and a silencer; it sounded like they were shooting a .22.
I’d love to get a silencer for my Ruger Mk. IV, because that’s one that will get very, very quiet with subsonic ammunition. I also want to get a silencer for my AR-15, mostly because that sharply reduces the amount of smoke you have to deal with at night matches.
To add to this a bit more:
Generally, if you want to shoot a lock (or door frame hinges) off, you use a shotgun with special breaching rounds.
Various forms of these have been and still are used by various Militaries, but more often SWAT or equivalent type units.
The general video gamey / movie portrayal of how this works is usually wildly exaggerated / inaccurate though, usually with pistols at moderate ranges.
Conceivably you might also be able take a door lock/hinges apart with an anti materiel rifle, but this would be wildly impractical.
My favorite cliche under that umbrella is people shooting chains to cause something to fall. Chains are strong as all get out, round, and they’re hanging. Shooting a big heavy chain might just clean some corporation off.
I think the idea of just shooting the lock off came about from the idea that our character had nothing else available. Like what average street criminal goes about with breaching rounds? And in the movies its often in a pinch. Breaching rounds are used by military and swat because they are equiped and prepared for that possibility, just like a professional theif is equiped with lock picking tools instead of a glock (or at least their glock isn’t used on the locks).
The default scenario that comes to mind when I think of shooting a locked door open is to put a bunch of bullets into the door around the latch and then kicking the door to smash the now-weakened latched part off. That seems like a reasonable approach to me, especially as a desperation maneuver.
Tracing a call is instant. It took longer back in the days when there were physical switches, but that’s been a long, long time ago.
Yup. Back in the days of analog phone exchanges, you literally had to send a guy to check electrical connections between lines. Which is why it took time and which is why they encouraged the people to keep on the line as long as possible.
Digital exchanges added call tracing as a design requirement. Everything gets logged. Even if you spoofed or blocked your number, the phone company knows what you did. They are the Phone Company.
It gets more complicated if you’re using VOIP, and a logless/anonymous VPN. But yeah, tracing calls is pretty simple for the most part. Now that cops are aware of it, people tend to get busted for SWATting these days.
- Shooting two guns at the same time looks cool.
- Aiming at two targets at the same time is hardly possible.
These are not in any way mutually exclusive and in fact are both true.
I’m here to learn how many of these truths are actually just myths of their own!
A stopped heart can actually be started with bullets fired from two guns with silencers.
That’s only true if you’re both skydiving.
They used a picture of a guy who canonically has techno-jesus powers for the two guns example. This is like showing a picture of Superman and saying “Actually, people can’t leap tall buildings in a single bound”
The drowning one doesn’t only apply to drowning but a lot of medical emergencies. People in need are often embarrassed to ask for help. Some are to busy panicking so they cometely freeze up. If someone acts odd just ask if they are alright.
Asteroids in a belt have a large distance between them, but I’d imagine rubble from a planet or moon recently destroyed by the empire would probably be grouped a lot more tightly.
Some grenades can have their pins pulled with teeth, but it’s a dumb idea.
Some fire extinguishers have pins that can be pulled with your teeth, some don’t. Doesn’t make it a “myth”…
What a dumb, inconsistent list.
Yup. One that got me was the one about shooting two guns.
“Aiming at two targets is hardly possible”… It’s absolutely possible. You can aim at two things all day long. If you’re firing two guns at two targets, having to aim at them isn’t really the issue.
The issue is that any aim you have one either target is going to suck. Combined with the difficulty of simply holding a several pound hunk of metal at arm’s length, and having it violently shake around every time a round is discharged because you don’t have adequate control over it to keep it from shaking every which way.
No sir. Aiming is not the problem. Actually hitting the target is the problem.
Shooting two guns at the same time does in fact look cool. That’s not a myth. Hitting two targets with two guns at the same time is really hard though.
Defibrillator:
Weeeell, not exactly. A defibrillator is essential to restarting a heart under specific conditions, and greatly improves the odds of survival to discharge. If your patient is already wired up and you see them go into a shockable rhythm, you can go ahead and shock them immediately. Otherwise, you’re going to need to do some CPR to prime the heart before you deliver the shock. At that, it’s worth noting that not all rhythms are considered shockable (that is, experience a clinical benefit from being shocked), and asystole (flatline) is not among them. Source: am paramedic.
The lock: depends. Notice they said a small bullet. A 12 gauge slug can change a lot of facts about a lock in a hurry. I can’t say it would blow a lock clean out, I think the mythbusters tried it with mixed results, but it’s sure as shit take care of a padlock.
Aiming at two targets: more of a shitty technicality, but if you’re using a shot load in a shotgun, it’s perfectly viable to aim at multiple targets (in a target dense environment) at once. Your aim just has to be generally correct.
Tracing a call: bullshit, especially with cell phones. Modern dispatching centers can generally triangulate a 911 caller’s position (if they’re in range of multiple towers) in under a few minutes, it’s a thing. If 911 can do it, you just know the feds can. Also, phone companies and phones keep records of what device pinged what tower and when, people have been convicted off of that data.
Also, phone companies and phones keep records of what device pinged what tower and when, people have been convicted off of that data.
To me this is why that point is especially misleading, the movie trope is that as long as you hang up the phone soon enough they can’t find you, but that’s obviously not how it works at all.
It is how it used to work back when these tropes came about.
Here’s an interesting video on the topic
I would like to add that a suppressor can render certain specialized firearms nearly silent if they are used in conjunction with subsonic ammunition. A suppressor can deaden the sound of the initial explosion, but a supersonic bullet will continue to create a sonic boom as it flies through the air. A subsonic round doesn’t create a sonic boom and as a result nearly all of the sound of firing comes from the initial explosion. If that explosion is well sealed and is funneled through the right supressor, nearly silent operation can be achieved. A good example of this is the Welrod used during World War Two, which was quiter than an airsoft gun and was only really audible at point blank range.
TLDR, how quiet a gun gets with a suppressor is determined by the ammunition, the type of firearm, and type of suppressor. Suppressed gunfire can range from as loud or louder than a nail gun to as quiet as a sneeze.
The lock: There are rounds made specifically for this https://clucas.com/ammunition/hatton-round/
Aiming at two targets: Only if you’re Jerry Miculek …
Like half of these are TV shows. House MD, X Files, Baywatch just at a glance.
And imagine trying to suggest Baywatch isn’t the number one source for first aid/resuscitation information. Smh.