If water is denser than air, then if a bullet was shot in the water could it kill someone?

Question

If a bullet was shot inside the water could it kill someone?

If the gun was shot outside the water, and the bullet trajectory was toward the water, would it kill some one?

2 Things have got me asking this question

1. On CSI: Miami, there was this episode where during a party, a girl was shot from the inside from the inside of the pool. they talk about how the bullet had mushroomed because water is denser than air.

2. In a Medal of Honor ( a world war 2, first person shooter) game for the xbox. In the beginning it puts you in D-day, and your boat gets blown up, and you land into the water. the character is fully submerged and he sees other friendlies fully submerged in the water too, and the next thing you see is bullets from a machine gun entering the water and killing your friends.

if water is denser than air, wouldn't it stop or slow down the bullets trajectory?

IM NOT LOOKING TO MURDER SOMEONE LOL

laugh as you may, but ever since i started watching shows like CSI, i have gotten interested in science, and i just want a scientific explanation for this.

Answer 1

depends on the gun if its a 50 caliber machine gun like on the game yea but a lil pistol it would

Answer 2

check out old episodes of myth busters. they did a show that was related to that i think.

Answer 3

They tested this on mythbusters, it depends on the cailber of the bullet you use.

Say you shot a handgun into water, it would more than likely hit the person

Now if you shot something like a 50 cal. into water, it would break up before it hit the person.

Answer 4

Most bullets break up in water as they are hollow.  Mythbusters handled this.

I have played Rising Sun.  Perhaps yes, the solid bullets used in machineguns back then may have worked, but it's unlikely that modern bullets would do the same.

Answer 5

Within a few feet of traveling through water, almost all bullets would become non-lethal.

Answer 6

ya bro it does slow them down but if the distance is close enough the force is still enough to kill or injure .....but no doubt bullets do slow down a **** load after they hit the water  

Answer 7

I'd like to be the 50th person to say they did this on mythbusters, and the bullets had trouble penetrating more than a few feet.

Answer 8

Water is definitely denser than air, but not so dense that a bullet can't travel through it.  The bullet will slow down much more quickly, but the speed of a bullet shot directly out of a gun is so fast to start anyway (and bullets are designed to be aerodynamic) that it can still puncture your skin and kill you.

Answer 9

I dont have a scientific explanation but i too have thought about this (as well as watch crime shows) i say a bullet can kill u if shot in water but depending on trajectory, and where person is and gun used (not every gun has the power) a tec 9 would, a HKG36 would, a D. Eagle or Socom would but maybe not a .22..i just believe it all depends.

Answer 10

Yes you could kill someone if they were close to the surface...but if they were a bit of a distance then the water would slow the bullet down and it would lose momentum and the bullet would be harmless.

Answer 11

not if there is too much water resistance, but little bit of it, will surely slow it down, but it will still hurt you

Answer 12

mythbusters did this, but i forget what the conclusion was =/

Answer 13

there is alot of contraversy in this issue. they tested it on mythbusters(a show on discovery channel.) and proved it is not possible to shoot a bullet through water! ha! imagine that!

Answer 14

it depends how close to the surface you are, if you're 1 to 5 feet under you're gonna be hurt bad. if you're 5 to 8 feet under, you're iffy. after that you're pretty safe, unless they're shooting 50 cal. or 20mm at you, then you're screwed.

Answer 15

They did this one on Mythbusters.  Basically, except for a very low caliber bullet, the water will cause the bullet to shatter and go everywhere, not being lethal at all.

Answer 16

s***w csi miami its just tv didnt u see mythbusters it may be tv but its educational tv and yes it can kill someone assuming ur shooting a handgun and someones 8 feet or higher towards the surface any bigger caliber than a handgun goes less deeper

Answer 17

you'd have to be really close to the surface for it to effect you but if you were say 9 feet down you'd be safe, they tested it on mythbusters :)

Answer 18

water being denser than the air slows all the moving bodies down.

(that's why the light bends)

remember the water only slows it down, doesn't stop it completely.

so the bullet's trajectory won't be as much as it used to be in air. but if the target is close by, it can still kill a person.



the distance, upto which it can kill a person depends on the caliber or the energy contained in the bullet, the machine gun bullet has much higher energy(due to its size or the different chemicals used) and thus has much higher kinetic energy and has higher velocity but it doesn't mean that it can travel longer distance and can kill a person easily.

this is because, i think as the size increases, the speed increases and in high speeds the water is just like concrete.

in machine gun bullets, the tip when comes in contact with the water slows down but the back part still travels in high velocity and thus the resultant velocity is no longer in the original direction of the bullet. and thus it stops sonner.

so the smaller the bullet, the farther away it will be lethal. but even the .22 is only lethal for about 3 -4 fts. if in the CSI episode, the distance was only about 2 -3 fts it would have been lethal but if it was any farther than that, it wouldn't be lethal at all

as u wanted some technical explanation, i have tried to give u some

eventhough, the CSI is a tv show and medal of honour is a game,

i think the producer did enough research

but they show a lot of c**p as well especially in case of chemicals and stuff

Answer 19

Slow down yes ... but lethal depending upon bullet size/weight, velocity ... and how far in water it has to travel to reach target. A 22 cal short wouldn't do much harm after 12 inches of water.

A 50 cal machine gun would rip you apart with only 12 inches of water to slow it down.

Answer 20

Mythbusters did an episode on this that was very good.  It turned out the smaller caliber guns like a .22 made it through the water farther.  The larger guns like the .50 caliber didn't make it as far because the bullets would just smash to pieces when they hit the water.  So yes you could kill someone underwater by shooting them, but they would have to be close to the surface, within about 4-6ft.

Answer 21

ok watch myth busters... if you are around 6 to 8 feet under the water and someone is shooting straight down at you even with a 40. cal browning semi auto machine gun it will break apart and dispurse b4 it gets to you however whens hooting at an angle you dont have to be as far under the water but it does have to travel a longer distance after reachign the water. the gunshot at those men who died that day were a high cal. round and they were at the top of the water or just under so yes those poor men were shot and killed like that but water does mushroom and rip apart water.

Answer 22

lol they did this on mythbusters, yes the water does slow it down, they had a really powerful gun and the water stopped it after only like one meter, the bullet broke up and disintergrated! I wouldnt believe you can be hurt if you are deep enough!

Answer 23

Water is a very good bullet stopper, as the Mythbusters demonstrated very well. Doing that in a video game would require a lot of number crunching, which might slow down game play drastically during underwater scenes.

Or maybe the designers just couldn't be bothered. I've played Oblivion, and used water many times to protect my character from archers.  

Answer 24

Water does slow down the bullet, but its velocity is still high enough to kill. There were many scenes in 'Saving Private Ryan' where people were being killed while under water.

Answer 25

This was covered in an episode of MythBusters.

The water will slow a bullet down, but there were differences in type of bullet and gun.  In some cases they tried, the impact from the bullet was still lethal.

The total writeup is here:

http://kwc.org/mythbusters/2005/07/mythb...  

Answer 26

If a bullet is shot into the water it will be slower than if shot into the air, but it will still be fast. So if close enough yes the a bullet can kill someone inside the water.