At first I thought about some kind of substance made with gypsum or something with endothermic properties, but then I realized that the answer is salt. If you use the right kind of salt, you give the target a heart attack to go along with his flesh wound.

the way i think to make the ice bullitt work would be to incase the ice projectile in a metal jacket and then freeze the jack as well as hace the ice bullitt protect form the gun powder by a thin heat resistant material. when the gun powder heats the case it should be heated to normal temp and the ice projectal should those still be frozen and the heat resistant would stop the gun powder from melting it. the jacket would then peel of leaving nothing but the ice bullitt.

Originally posted by MrRadicalEd
Well they tried the "ice bullet" three different ways. Just plain straight frozen water in liquid nitrogen to cast the mold of a bullet in to a rim fire shell. The bullet lobbed out only nicking the ballistics gel dummy failing to penatrait.

Then the other two methods was a frozen gel slug and a frozen ground beef slug. The frozen gel slug penatraited, but not like a real metal slug would. Then the frozen meat slug that did penatrait, but not as desired. So they moved in to the umbrella airgun idea that eventually worked.

[Edited on 22-11-2003 by MrRadicalEd]

They should have tried a dry-ice slug, about an inch long. That would withstand the heat from the gun, the pressure and still provide a hard projectile.

What you need is a frozen mercury bullet. using liquid nitrogen.
I'd like to see a memory metal bullet. Once fired changes shape and leaves no evidence of barrel scaring.

The mythbusters were trying it with a 6.5x55 rifle. That is just dumb, of course it wont work in a rifle.

It will work in a large caliber revolver with reduced loads. It also works as a shotgun slug. You open one end of the shell, take out the shot, and put some water in there, freeze it, and viola, you have an ice bullet. You have to keep the water off the powder however, either with a plastic wad, or otherwise. You have to store the ice ammo in the freeze, and use it shortly after taking it out. It helps to keep the gun in the freezer until it is time for use as well.

Post Deleted

I do not want to give someone a bad idea

[edit on 4-9-2008 by infolurker]

I just watched (on Google video) black and white 1960s era footage of Senate CIA hearings where they were passing around, looking at, and asking the CIA director about a special CIA dart gun that shoots a very small poisoned ice darts at point blank range (looked like it had a Co-2 tank on top of the barrel) just under the skin of the victim who would then have a heart attack(poison induced and untraceable)
I think they planned on using it on Castro

So just say you crush the ice and pack it sooo tightly under extreme pressure, and then you fire it out of the gun using highly compressed air / gas (which of course is extremely cold..... that there is going to be tooo much heat?

If you're really set on firing ice, use a large bore and fire it with compressed gas. I've broken through the screens of old CRT monitors using a 1.5 inch diameter ice projectile fired from a compressed air smoothbore. At about 90 psi, it'll pierce an inch of plywood.

This wouldn't exactly make sense as a covert assassination weapon; the result would look like blunt trauma; which shouldn't leave much evidence either. there's also be a fairly sizable puddle, with that much ice.

Remember; Ice is lighter than water per volume, since it floats on water, and water is much lighter per volume than metal, which quickly sinks in it. Ice is brittle. Ice bullets would not do well with rifling, nor supersonic speeds. You can't rely on sheer kinetic energy with ice projectiles, because they'll break apart. You have to rely on momentum. as it has little mass for it's volume compared to metal, to get good momentum, you need a relatively large projectile.

There might be some merit on using a small caliber low velocity smooth bore to fire ice bullets tipped with deadly poison, but if you're firing poison, there's all kinds of other nasty tricks that don't require refrigerated ammunition storage.

Originally posted by Lucifer
I find the discussion of violence, war and the like as primitive, unevolved and the obvious self-empowerment a one attempts to enjoy by sharing fear-based garbage like that. Sorry sniper talkers but there must be a little too much need in you for hairless-monkey talk like that! Who but a feeble and weak being believes that their life holds any value over another's by general majority? A killing-minded person has a definate disadvantage in personal growth and development, for that is just so animal mentality. This site is for intellectual and personal vision I thought.

this coming from a person with the user name LUCIFER

An ice bullet may could possibly be fired from a high pressure air rifle as it would not melt the bullet.

I find this thread rather interesting for some weird reason.

Still I think most likely a compressed dart of some type with some poison on it's tip would be the easiest to make. . .

I'm only speculating here but. . .

But after careful thought, one really could build a frozen round. Maybe not of ICE if you wanted it to have good weight or sectional density for flight. But there are other materials one could use.

Most likely you wouldn't use a normal propellant, but a gas that would expand rapidly at a lower temperature or something similar to a cyrogenic liquid combined with a carefully calculated expanding heating charge of some type. Digging though my old books, LOX (liquid oxygen) for example expands at a rate of 861 to 1 @ 68 deg F. (I'm not saying LOX is a viable material since it might ignite any oils in your gun. And the fact it's highly reactive. But something with a high expansion ratio.) It would be a one shot affair however, and unless you can get your propellant to produce gunpowers pressures forget about cycling the action on some assault rifle or machine gun. . . What you are trying to create is a controlled BLEVE (boiling liquid expanding vapor explosion) and keeping the expanding gas fairly cold in the process.

As a side note: (I believe most .308 cartridges (closest match to a 7.62 x 51mm Nato) out there produce 50,000 to 67,000 psi at the chamber depending on what you combine (cartridge, case, primer, , but then again you would have to match up the weight of your bullet to your charge. Bullets for that caliber run anywhere from 55? grains (plasic saboted - no longer made? I'm thinking of the winchester accelerator ammo btw.) to 250 grains)

Most likey the if you are using ice the round would be in the subsonic catagory unless you took the time to wrap the round in a protein chain or plasma (not the hot stuff folks but what's in your blood stream) or basically something that will melt off and blend with the target. Ideally you would put it into a cartridge that would fit a normal gun, and go that way with it. And to be effective you would probabily want to keep it larger caliber with a lowered barrel spin (rifling)

Something to remember is bullets are made though many methods, some fragmentation rounds are made by pressing powdered metal together. I seem to remember some claims about some law enforcement officer shooting a pistol out of some guy's hand while he sat in a chair in the middle of some road . . . and the round that was used was claimed to be one of these 'pressed' fragmentation rounds. To speculate a bit since I don't remember the details, I think the round was used to prevent a ricochet?

Now that I've said all of that all I'm trying to get you to understand is it's all in how you put the materials together. Don't think at STP or standard, temperature and pressure. . . (68 degs F and 14 psi / 1 ATM (- weight of atmospheric air btw)) when these bullets are put together but at a perhapse much lower temperature and quite possible higher pressure. And the same could be said of the propellant.

Something also someone must remember that ideally you will have to store the round somewhere under certain conditions before deployment.

Now rather this is practical? Heh. . . who knows. We as people have built alot of strange things out there, and one only has to do a light search to find that out. Still I find some of these things interesting to analyze.