bullet wounds

So it's established that if you get shot in a survival situation, you're probably dead.

So besides running and hiding, what about body armor options?

To my knowledge most civilians don't have legal access to kevlar or other real armoring materials.

Flak jackets, available on eBay or any military surplus store, can provide protection not only from shrapnel, but some shotgun pellet hits and low velocity small arms fire.

Any other ideas out there?

Here is what I consider the best stealth body armor. No one will have any idea that you are wearing protective gear and it passes for casual day wear. Check it out: Casual protection

It offers a high level of protection in a clever package.

I keep forgetting the international option! There is a world past that there water, isn't there?!

Originally posted by wcssar
get yourself a copy of st 31-91b the u.s. army special forces medical handbook. it covers most thing you will encounter.
here is a link to amazon books:

www.amazon.com...

I realized I have this manual and have scanned in the appropriate chapter:
Emergency War Surgery. (PDF 122KB)

It's one of those free file upload sites, but it's one of the easier ones I've found to navigate.

Enjoy!

[edit on 29-3-2007 by apc]

I know a navy guy who has been shot on two occasions that i know durring his career. Once was through the left bicept by a 7.62 sniper round in afghanistan. He was evacing his guys near a helocopter. He made a thumb jerking movement (signalling everybody to get the hell in the copter)with his left hand while simultainiusly taking a step back, just then he saw a spark on his reciever of his M4 and the gun sorta broke. he figured a ricochete had hit his gun. They were under sporadic fire at the time. After a few minuts in the helo getting a ride back to where ever he looked down and noticed loose threads blowing around his arm sleeve. WTH was his intital response and discovered that a bullet had gone from behind him. Just missed where his heart would have been a few milliseconds earlier and hit his left arm instead. The bullet went clean through missed all thearteries and split in half at the same time. The scar is bretty gnarly. The wound didn't hurt nearly as bad as some of his other ones (he's got plenty glass from blasts, shrapnel, parachute wear n tear etc, frostbite, etc...) and didn't really prevent him from living out the rest of his career well. The wound itself healed pretty quick.

Same guy got hit just recently about a year and a half ago just above his right knee in the theigh. They aren't sure from whatbut they think it was a machine gun round that bounced off the road and hit him. The bullet got lodged ,but almost penetrated all the way through. He could barely walk, and was put in the hospital for two weeks while they had a tube inserted into his arterie going all the way to his heart to prevent blood infections. The wound had gotten infected and the doctors talked about possibly amputating. Luckely for him it turned out OK. he went to rehabilitative therepy for half a year maybe a little bit more. He still walkes with a sligh lymp and now they have him proctoring at Specwar schools and finishing off the rest of his days pencil pushing on the east coast but no more combat for him.

The poor guy also is developing spinal abifida and disks are disolving as we speak in his vertebre from too many hard parachute landings. he can barely ride his motorcycle now.

Both times he was shot he would have survived, but he still amounts it all to luck. he has seen one of his guys lose their heads literaly from a round. SO he counts himself lucky. He says the hardest part about being shot is not the initial survival. On both occasions he claims that he was cool and collected. But then again hes seen hardend men completely loose it and freak out from torso wounds. He says anybody shot in the body freaks out. The hardest part is dealing with the aftermath months down the road. He has to take a cornocopia of pills a day to keep post traumatic stress at bay+ he says that rehabilitation is just plain depressing because each day he learned about one more thing he would never be able to do.

There are kevlar vests which have a metal "vital plate" in the center to give added protection to your vitals.

There are different classifications of body armor -- I, II, and III (I believe), with Type I being the best (??).

My Tokarev pistol with lead-core bullets can defeat the lowest level of body armor. With steel-core bullets, I can defeat the "mid-grade" armor. Only the best body armor can resist the high-speed Tokarev round, but then again, one could use armor-piercing .308 or .30-06. I think body armor was meant to deal with pistol and intermediate rounds (AK-type), but not full-length rifle rounds, like the .30-06 or 8mm Mauser.

Uhm, no, actually its I to IV, with IV being strongest and holding off .308 AP rounds.
Protection levels

Wow... Thanks for the additional information. I don't think the highest level of protection would be available legally to the average citizens in the states.

reply to post by FredT


In life threatening situations the human body can do amazing things. I was recently in a park about a half mile from my house and was shot at close range with a .223 assault rifle. The slug entered my chest between my heart and lung but miraculously didn't hit any vital organs or arteries. The bullet exited out of my back leaving a golf ball-sized hole. I did not feel any pain at first and didn't even know I was shot until around 20 seconds after the shooting i felt a tingling and burning sensation. I then ran a half mile to my house, got in my car and drove to the emergency room. So my point is that you react instinctively in a life or death situation and also the location of the gunshot/injury is significantly important.

I think PaddyInf's scenario of gunshot wounds and their aftermath degenerating back to the days of Yore is very probable in an extreme Situation X.

In the Napoleonic Wars, Soldiers used to carry small tins with maggots in them to place into wounds to help clean up infections. Also Officers aboard the ships of the line before going into combat used to change their shirts to clean silk ones, the reason being that silk was easier for the surgeons to pick out and silk is less likely to cause an infection.

Storytime: I once nursed a patient who was a Spitfire Pilot who was wounded 4 times during WW2. Two of his scars were from the same bullet, passing through his left leg into his right one where it lodged.

of course you can survive getting shot. damn. look at fitty. (50 cent) he got shot 9 times and dont even walk with a limp.

Some addtional suggestions - please don't try this at home (unless you have no other choice)...

If you get taken to the hospital with a gunshot wound, what they'll probably do is first irrigate the wound. In a survival situation this means using your CLEAN water - iodine-treated would be ideal, I think, because of the added anti-bacterial properties of the tablets. Wash all the crud out of there and see what you're dealing with.

If the bullet is still inside you, you may have to get it out (depending on location). I'm not sure, but it seems like if it's in muscle or jammed up against a bone, you want to get it out. If it's lodged in your heart (or other organ) or your spine or something, leaving it in might be preferable to messing with it at all. Just pray you're lucky enough to have it pass right through you in one piece. More likely the bastard who shot you is using ammo that breaks up on impact and swims through the target, creating separate wound channels. That means you probably have to dig out somewhere between 2 and 5+ shards of metal. Fun...

After that they're going to try to stop any large veins/arteries whatever from bleeding by sewing/clamping/cauterizing. I imagine this is made trickier in a survival situation because you've lost a good deal of blood and are probably weak and in and out of consciousness, and your eyes may not want to focus. If the bleeder is somewhere buried in your body cavity where you can't reach it, I don't know what to tell you. Pray it stops on its own?

The exception to that order would be (I think), if the bullet severed one of your major arteries, like in the neck or the inner thigh - then priority number 1 is to stop the bleeding. You'd be amazed at how fast blood can exit the body through one of those big vessels...

You would have to stop the bleeding first, by clamping the vessel or putting pressure on the wound. In a hospital they have a greater margin of error, because they can give you more blood. In a survival situation you've only got your own blood, so don't stand on ceremony.

My guess is that superglue might be the best way to quickly and effectively stop bleeding arteries you can see. Using (hopefully sterile) pliers or fingers you get a hold of the offending vessel below the point where it's cut and, after wiping it dry with (hopefully sterile) cloth or gauze, you seal up the ragged end with a drop or three of superglue.

Superglue is an often-overlooked, but VERY helpful addition to any field medkit. You never know when you'll need it, and the uses don't stop at medicine...

Anyway, if you can manage to close up any major open veins (the small ones should clot themselves shut in short order), and you haven't passed out from pain or blood loss, you have to bandage the wound.

When treating a gunshot or any other puncture wound, there's a drastically increased chance of infection. The infection is going to take root in short order, and the pain will only get worse, so do what you have to do to limit infection, keep the wound clean, protected from outside germs, and make sure the germs that are already in there have a way to get out.

I think we have a few doctors on the boards, maybe they can chime in on this part in particular, pros and cons and whatnot. I certainly don't want to give bad advice.

It may make sense to create a drainage system. I have surgical tubing in my pack anyway (for a wrist rocket), so this should work fine. One end goes in the wound, then the bandage goes on over it, so the other end is exposed. This gives an outlet for gas (from decaying flesh) and pus (from dead white blood cells) to escape, so it doesn't build up and cause toxic shock. You have to make sure it's sterile, and you have to make sure (excuse the grossness of this next bit) that nothing crawls up it while you're sleeping and gets inside of you, so clamp that sucker when you're not using it. One more reason to carry a few clothespins with you (another super-useful thing to have with you when you go out into the wild, and they weigh practically nothing).

Any flesh that's not getting fed blood will necrotize (die and rot), and that will contribute to infection - so you have to trim that junk away from the wound site as soon as it develops. I don't know how long this takes to develop - maybe Google it? Don't go nuts and cut away all your healthy flesh, but you have to trim the dead stuff or it will make the situation worse.

Obviously this is all contingent on you being unable to get to an emergency room for proper treatment - I really don't want to hear that some cheapskate read this and decided to save a few bucks by employing these ideas.

I'm not a doctor (and I didn't stay at a Holiday Inn last night), and you should take everything I've said with at least a pound of salt.

I think though that everything I've said is pretty sound advice, from a layman to a layman. You have to clean the wound, stop the bleeding, keep it safe from outside sources of infection while draining off the infection inside, all while waiting weeks for it to heal up.

Sounds like fun, doesn't it?

It sucks getting shot, even if you live in a major city with a dozen hospitals nearby. Getting shot out in the timber when nobody is there to help..well the word suck doesn't begin to address the situation.

Originally posted by WyrdeOne
If it's lodged in your heart.

if its it your heart you have nothing to worry about - except maybe God stood there tutting at your time keeping......

PaddyInf gave an awesome example of how a bullet destroys through a vaccum effect i.e. drags crap in through with it.

One other thing to mention is hydrodynamic / hydrostatic shock waves within the body. This alone can kill you because it tears your inner organs from their blood supply.

I saw a guy stone cold dead on a slab who had been shot in the right lung. The bullet was a .45 and the shockwave had torn his aortic arch right off the heart and split his liver from its blood supply. Nasty.

Paddy was also dead on when he said

"Don't get shot".

My strong advice is to head the other way if you hear gunfire in sitx. A buddy of mine was a LRRP in laos and the upper delta, and they did the same as the VC. Filed off the ends of the ball ammo and filled the cavities with excrement. This ensured a positive kill on anyone who was even grazed due to septic organ shutdown. In his operating area getting to a hospital before the infection took hold didn't happen very often.

This was common in most every trap spike trap and most rifle rounds. He called it the last laugh. Do yourself a favor and lie low and avoid contact in that sitx.

Originally posted by Illahee
My strong advice is to head the other way if you hear gunfire in sitx. A buddy of mine was a LRRP in laos and the upper delta, and they did the same as the VC. Filed off the ends of the ball ammo and filled the cavities with excrement. This ensured a positive kill on anyone who was even grazed due to septic organ shutdown. In his operating area getting to a hospital before the infection took hold didn't happen very often.

This was common in most every trap spike trap and most rifle rounds. He called it the last laugh. Do yourself a favor and lie low and avoid contact in that sitx.

yep. Lay low and don't get shot. Two of the simplest and best answers in the thread.

If you do get a round in you, make your peace and get ready. Your going to die without expert care.