Why is it that shooting yourself in the head causes instant death?

Question

This must sound like such a morbid question, but I just finished watching a movie where someone commits suicide with a shotgun, and I couldn't help but wonder. Your brain has so many different parts to it - how could one bullet trajectory hit every single essential part? Do you really die instantly, or does it take a couple of seconds?

Answer 1

the shock of the bullets just turns your brain into mush!

Answer 2

You can live if shot in the head it all depends where, if you hit the part of the brain that tells your body to breathe or to beat ur heart of course its gonna kill u, because your heart and or lungs won't know to work. Sometimes it doesn't kill instantly, you could bleed out or cause so much swelling from the wound that it will kill you. But again it all depends on where.

Answer 3

lol has nothing to do with fracturing your skull like the first person said. the brain is the command center for your whole body. It controls are your sensory and motor nerves. Your whole entire body. So once that goes, everything in your body goes. that's why if someone has really bad brain damage, they can be a vegetable who's really dead on the inside but just breathing hooked up on machines. but if you're shot in the head, you'll more than likely just die. not everyone dies though. some people just end up a vegetable.

Answer 4

Of course, it matters what you mean by "dead", and what you mean by "shooting yourself in the head".

I'm assuming by "dead", you mean unaware of your being (ie. unconscious).

But how you shoot yourself in the head is quite variable. There are many examples of people living after being shot in the head. Just type "shot in the head and lives" into Google. But I'm pretty sure with a properly placed 12 gauge shotgun, consciousness after the blast would be exceedingly brief.

That all said, let's hope we'll never find out.

Answer 5

Who says you die instantly? Don't believe everything that you see in the movies.

Answer 6

i was going to commiy suicide that way probably because it shoots your skull and fractures it

Answer 7

Your brain is packed tightly in the skull.  When a bullet enters at high speed, the shock wave slams the flesh against the container and mulches it.   Go and look at high speed pictures of bullets hitting watermelon or blocks of gellitin and image the result when that shock wave is confined.

  Like this one

http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=bu...

Answer 8

I wrote a detailed answer and then looked at your question again.  A shotgun is not a single bullet, it is multiple small hard "shot".  That shot is going to spread out as it exits the barrel of the gun.  If that gun is against a brain then the shot will make multiple wounds.

Answer 9

Because your brain sends signals to your whole body, and when you shoot yourself in the head it blows up your brain...

Therefore stoping all the signals to your body a.k.a DEAD.

Answer 10

I could be wrong, but I think I remember hearing that the bullet doesn't leave the skull, it just kinda ricochets around in there for a bit.

Answer 11

You don't always die instantly, no. Contrary to what movies often show, 1 bullet often does not = 1 instant kill. I've heard of people been still conscious after been shot in the head (though one side of them was paralysed, but still...) or even an incident in which the bullet didn't even penetrate the skull.

Really, it all depends. It's completely unpredictable how much and what type of damage the bullet does, there is just so many factors which is taken into account (velocity, calibre, angle, range, where exactly the bullet hits just to name a few). The bullet might always ricoshet though, or the energy from the bullet might spread out through the brain destroying all the "essential" parts.