Saturday, 11 June 2016

How Much Paper Does It Take to Stop a .50-Cal Bullet?

You may know the story of how President Teddy Roosevelt was shot just before a speech, but the 50 pages of paper in his pocket helped slow the projectile enough that he managed to orate for over 90 minutes before going off to the hospital. How thick would that packet of paper need to be if it had been a .50-cal headed his way at point-blank range? A lot thicker.
After already tackling questions like 
What's the best gun for shooting open a lock ? and what if you drill bits in a shortgun?, the guys at Demolition Ranch just took to firing .50-cal rounds into stacks and stacks of paper to see exactly how far they could get through. Any guesses?

  • Enjoy it

Surprisingly enough, two sets of five reams of paper—that's 5,000 sheets in total—weren't enough to stop the a .50-cal in its tracks. Two separate bullets, one an Armour-piercing tracer round, made it seven reams (3,500 sheets) in before escaping out the side, probably due to the way somoe of the reams reel back on impact. That's over twice as many pages as you'll find in the typical copy of War and Peace, and thicker ones at thatWay too many to ever fit in your front shirt pocket.


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